Re-embedding Lean: The Japanese Context of a World Changing Management Concept

• In Event: 161 - Section on Organizations, Occupation and Work Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 02. Organizational Arrangements and Workplace Practices

Abstract

I show how the management concept lean is positioned rhetorically by the authors who popularized it (Womack, Jones & Ross 2007 [1990]), and draw attention to three related claims. 1) Lean will fundamentally change the world for the better; 2) Lean can be considered without taking into account the context in which it evolved; 3) lean will work regardless of the context in which it is implemented. I then detail some of the central claims on lean made by the authors in their seminal works (Womack et al 2007; Womack & Jones 2003). Drawing on cultural and social history (e.g. Burke 1990), the history of mentalities (e.g. Bloch 1992), and institutional arguments (e.g. Guilén 1994) I show how practices and attitudes considered central to lean has a long-standing history in Japan. They can be traced back to the Tokugawa period (1600-1868) and was salient in the trading houses of the early modern Japan, in turn heavily inspired by Japanese religious thinking. Calling on neo-institutional transfer models developed by Lillrank (1995) and Røvik (2007), I suggest that reported problems in attaining a lean culture (e.g. Aberdeen Group 2006), and lack of scientific evidence of sustained positive outcomes (Freytag & Arlbjørn 2011) may be due to the embedded character of lean, making transfer difficult. I argue that the way lean is promoted facilitates decision error when deciding whether to implement lean, and that lack of contextual information may hamper successful implementation, thereby adding to the management fashion tradition from Abrahamsen (1996).

Author

• Christian Wittrock, Aarhus University