The Cultural Change Towards Lean Management

Abstract

Lean management and processes have positive effects on the performance of the organization in terms of quality cost, delivery, and other improvements. However, it is necessary to establish organizational infrastructures which required for effective lean implementation and continuation (Fatma 2015). The Cultural Web, developed by Gerry Johnson and Kevan Scholes in 1992, provides one such approach for looking at and changing your organization’s culture. Using it, you can expose cultural assumptions and practices and set to work aligning organizational elements with one another and with your strategy. These infrastructures must integrate cultural elements as illustrated in Fig. 2.1. The challenge to implement and sustain lean management processes lies in the need to identify the organizational culture infrastructure that will allow this system that was first used by Japanese firms to operate well in other organizational contexts. The values and norms that underlie lean processes may create conflict with the culture that already exists within the organization; such divergence retards adoption and performance (Helmold and Samara 2019). Johnson and Scholes identified six distinct but interrelated elements which contribute to what they called the “paradigm”, equivalent to the pattern of the work environment, or the values of the organization. They suggested that each may be examined and analysed individually to gain a clearer picture of the wider cultural issues of an organization. The six contributing elements (with example questions used to examine the organization at hand) are as follows.

Perfection is not attainable. But if we chase perfection, we can catch excellence.

Vince Lombardi (1913–1970)