IS LEAN MANAGEMENT AN ORGANIZATIONAL LEARNING ENABLER: THE IMPACT OF CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT

Abstract

Despite a strong diffusion and often satisfactory
productive results, lean management approaches
face difficulties at the human resources level: implication, occupational health, employees satisfaction.
Two types of implementation may be observed: lean
as a set of tools or systemic lean as a set of principles.
According to lean promoters, systemic lean should
favor organizational learning. Considering this
hypothesis may lead to recognize a central place
to human resource management in production
management, whereas, through a technical focus, it
is rather about productivity and optimization. Based
on 10 case studies and 380 workers interviewed, we
try to assess this assertion and its conditions with a
mixed research method.