Analysing the influence of organisational culture and leadership styles on the implementation of lean manufacturing

Abstract

This paper aims at identifying the combination of organisational culture profiles and leadership styles that best support companies implementing lean manufacturing practices. For that, 225 leaders from manufacturing companies at various stages of lean implementation were surveyed. The analytical approach clustered respondents and their respective firms according to prevailing organisational culture, leadership style and level of implementation of lean practices, testing for frequency differences among clusters. This study states that organisational culture profiles are related to leadership styles and lean manufacturing implementation level, suggesting different-from-expected effects of this relationship on lean manufacturing implementation. The study bridges a gap in the literature by exploring how the association between organisational culture and leadership styles occurs in companies that are adopting lean practices.

Keywords:

• Lean manufacturing
• leadership
• organisational culture
• multivariate data analysis

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Guilherme Luz Tortorella

Guilherme Luz Tortorella is an Associate Professor of the Department of Systems and Production Engineering of the Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Brazil. He is the Head of Research of the Productivity and Continous Improvement Lab and the Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Lean Systems. He is one of the founders of the Brazilian Conference on Lean Systems and has more than 18 years with practical and academic experience with manufacturing and operations management.

Diego Fettermann

Diego Fettermann is an Associate Professor of the Department of Systems and Production Engineering of the Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Brazil. He was a Visiting Professor at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), Australia (2020), working with BIDA Research (Business Intelligence and Data Analysis). President of the Institute of Innovation and Product Development Management (IGDP) between 2018 and 2020. Co-Editor of the Journal of Lean Systems (JOLS) and member of the editorial board of the Latin American Journal of Applied Engineering.

Flavio S. Fogliatto

Flavio S. Fogliatto holds a Full Professor position in the IE Dept of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. He received his PhD in Industrial & Systems Engineering from Rutgers University, USA. Prof. Fogliatto specializes in the research areas of Quality Engineering, Operations Research, and Healthcare Analytics. His work has been published in Chemometrics, PP&C, Computers & Industrial Engineering, International Journal of Production Research and International Journal of Production Economics, among others.

Maneesh Kumar

Maneesh Kumar is a Professor of Service Operations at Cardiff Business School, Cardiff University. He conducts cross disciplinary applied research in the area of Operational Excellence including topics such as Quality Management, Lean Six Sigma (LSS), Lean, Green, and Innovation (iLEGO), Healthcare Process/Service Innovation using Big Data Analytics, Knowledge Clusters for capability enhancement within SMEs. This has resulted in publications of over 120 journals and conferences papers, edited books, and conference proceedings. His research participants encompasses range of industry including Automotive Industry (India, UK, Japan), Service Industries and Public Sector organizations including NHS.

Daniel Jurburg

Daniel Jurburg is currently a Professor of the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Montevideo, Uruguay. He is director of the Global Supply Program, which is carried out in collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh, and an active researcher at the initiation level within the SNI of ANII. His areas of interest comprehend continuous improvement processes within companies and supply chain management.