Lean practices are known to increase operational performance. Previous research has identified critical success factors for implementing lean practices. This research aims to examine the extent to which success factors are critical for various degrees of lean practice implementation. Using multiple-respondent self-assessments from 33 Dutch manufacturing small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), we conducted a Necessary Condition Analysis. Our findings indicated that the criticality of success factors is progression dependent. In the initial stages of the lean journey, SMEs could improve their lean practices in a bottom-up manner through local factors such as a learning focus, improvement training and support congruence. When lean practices are more advanced, some company-wide factors must be present: top management support, a shared improvement vision and a supplier link. Our findings question the universality of success factors such as strategic involvement and indicate the need for a more dynamic model of lean implementation.

Comments on the quality of working life (QWL) under lean production have varied from devastating criticism on the one hand, to eulogistic praise on the other. These contrasting positions can be related to researchers' opposing societal stances and resulting interpretations, which are reinforced by the methodologies used and the absence of an external framework to judge QWL. Using Karasek's job demand-job control model, the authors investigate a Dutch plant operating under a lean production (LP) regime in an attempt to resolve the controversy. The jobs in this plant can be placed in Karasek's quadrant of low job demands and low job control, which means that antagonists of LP are right in claiming that the work is monotonous and repetitive, while the advocates' claim that workers have sufficient job decision latitude also holds.

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Managers should implement strategies that focus on promoting the work ability of nursing staff in combination with improving work-related characteristics in order to prevent unnecessary changes of employment.

Previous empirical work demonstrated that self-managing teamwork and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems are difficult to combine in practice, and have called for the development of templates for configuring ERP systems to support teamworking. This requires a view on organisation design, dealing with both in an integrated fashion. 'ModernSocio-technology' provides such a view. We discuss its underlying principles and show how it relates to ERP.

Purpose-This paper examines whether and when improvement routines are critical for implementing lean practices in small-and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises (SMEs). Improvement routines such as "employees initiate and carry through improvement activities" are generally seen as an important means to achieve the full benefit of structural lean interventions. Womack and Jones (2003) suggest that these improvement routines should be developed as the company becomes more experienced in lean. The purpose of this paper is to explore the relative importance of individual improvement routines at various degrees of lean practice implementation. Design/methodology/approach-A Between-Case Comparison Analysis (Dul and Hak, 2012) and a Necessary Condition Analysis (Dul, 2016) were performed on self-assessment data from 241 respondents at 38 Dutch manufacturing SMEs. Findings-The importance of improvement routines depended on the degree of lean practice implementation. Lean practices could be implemented to some extend without developing specific improvement routines, yet certain routines were necessary for more advanced implementations of lean. These routines relate to employees conducting shared improvement activities and in the most advanced cases to aligning different improvement activities. Originality/value-These findings question existing lean implementation models that neglect improvement routines and indicate the need to integrate improvement routines into every lean transformation for it to be sustainable.

Demographic changes increase the importance to stimulate working longer. Using questionnaire data, we investigated the relationship between work characteristics, job dissatisfaction and need for recovery in four age groups. Although the moderating effect of age group was rather limited, the salience of specific work characteristics within the age groups varied.