Managerial Practices that Support Lean and Socially Sustainable Working Conditions

Abstract

Despite decades of using lean, there is little knowledge of how lean managerial practices af

The Impact of the Direct Participation of Workers on the Rates of Absenteeism in the Spanish Labor Environment

“…The fact that direct worker participation improves absenteeism levels could be explained both by the improvement of the psychosocial environment and by the motivation generated by the very fact of participating in decision-making [45][46][47][48] as well as by the better identification of occupational risks in the evaluation and preventive planning processes, insofar as workers are the ones who best know the risks to which they are exposed and, therefore, it is necessary for the subjectivity of the working class to complement the technocratic vision of occupational health experts, especially with regard to psychosocial risk factors [58]. However, these statements need to be studied and verified in future research.…”

“…In this sense, the direct participation of workers has been studied together with other dimensions of work management, other than risk prevention, finding controversial results. On the one hand, direct participation improves the quality of the psychosocial environment and working life [45][46][47][48][49][50], but, on the other hand, participation has also been associated with self-exploration and labour intensification, to the extent that decentralization of decision-making capacity produces a process of indoctrination among workers themselves and disproportionate expectations from management regarding the commitment of their employees [51][52][53][54][55].…”

Structure Please; Continuous Improvement and Employee Consequences in a Dynamic Task Environment

“…Seen in a broader perspective, our study's contribution to the literature is to stress the importance of looking at the task environment in which a CI program functions. So far, most research has been conducted in repetitive and often discrete manufacturing [2,9,[32][33][34]. In such relatively stable task environments, the already relatively low job demands are likely to become even lower, thus making repetitive work even more repetitive.…”

“…Positive consequences for the quality of working life may also be a third factor stimulating employees to participate in CI, next to the ease of participating and usefulness of participation [36]. Such positive effects can also be expected when CI is implemented with the explicit aim to improve employees' working conditions [34,37]. Lower job demands, and in this dynamic task environment, lower stress, as well as related higher work engagement, are of particular importance given the contemporary concerns about the consequences of nurses' high workloads [38][39][40][41][42][43][44].…”

Continu verbeteren in een Vlaams woonzorgcentrum: ook beter voor zorgverleners?

“…Men kan met de invoering verschillende doelen voor ogen hebben, maar waar focust men op? Voornamelijk op een betere kwaliteit van de zorg, op meer efficiëntie in de zorgverlening, of eerder op een verbeterde kwaliteit van de arbeid (Hasle, 2014;Håkansson, Holden, Eriksson, & Dellve, 2017)? Ten tweede zijn de resultaten uiteenlopend omdat het concept lean op verschillende manieren wordt geïnterpreteerd, ingevoerd en toegepast.…”