A RETROSPECTIVE STUDY ON THE INFLUENCE OF A STATE PARK-LAKE ON LAND VALUE,FROM THE TIME OF LAND ACQUISITION TO RESERVOIR FILLING

A new multiple purpose park-lake facility is being developed in the sub urbanrural fringe of the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania metropolitan region. This study assesses the impact of the new park-lake upon surrounding land values in order to provide information for improved planning and decision making in such a context. The investigation covers the period from the time of land acquisition to that of near-completion of dam construction. The results of the study provide a “baseline” from which it will later be possible to assess changes in land values as the park-lake becomes fully operational as a major public recreational facility. Two geographic zones of impact on surrounding land value are identified by the analysis, and variations in the impact of the park-lake over time are identified. The importance of these new findings to public organizations involved in recreational decision making is discussed and areas for future research are suggested.     

Lean implementation in a service factory: views from the front-line

The deployment of Lean methods in service work is increasingly viewed as a legitimate response more efficient front-line service delivery. However, there are mixed results with process efficiency gains frequently marginalised by losses in employee satisfaction and customer focus. It is suggested that these sub-optimal outcomes result from partial adoptions of Lean with emphasis on process efficiency neglecting employee and customer outcomes. Utilising Action Research this paper investigates a Lean implementation within a UK call centre. This research finds that Lean when implemented properly can lead to improved process efficiency, a better customer experience and increased employee satisfaction. It suggests that to achieve these optimum outcomes Lean implementations must as a priority be focused on creating customer satisfaction and be customised to fit with particular contingencies in the organisational context such as the nature of the interface between the front-line worker and the customer.     

Operationalising lean in healthcare: the impact of professionalism

Abstract

Lean is endorsed as policy in practice in the UK but the challenges and complexities affecting Lean in healthcare are still to be adequately assessed. Through a qualitative single case study of an NHS organisation implementing Lean, 43 interviews with multi-disciplinary team members involved in Lean were conducted. The progress of Lean is found to be inhibited as medical professionals have failed to engage or provide clinical leadership in supporting the trajectory of Lean. This resulted in limited outcomes, sustainability implications, and failed projects. Lean is challenged by complexity and this is evident in conflicts between professional identity, corresponding status and clinical/managerial relationships. Medical professionals as a group have received a limited focus in papers assessing the progress of Lean in Healthcare from an operational perspective. Going forward, strategies for mitigating the negative impact of this can be developed to support operational managers in the healthcare domain.     

Synergies and misalignments in lean and green practices: a logistics industry perspective

Abstract

This paper conducts an exploratory case study-based research in three companies to identify the main synergies and misalignments between Lean and Green in the context of a range of distribution networks operating globally, regionally and domestically. The research strategy applied by this study is exploratory multiple case studies in three companies, particularly in the road transport and logistics sector. Semi-structured interviews with 15 executives from three companies were conducted to identify activities within logistics operations leading to synergies and misalignment between Lean and Green practices. The outcome of the three cases shows that several improvements can be achieved by the simultaneous adoption of Lean and Green. The study contributes to the literature by extending the research in the logistics sector and providing examples from a wide variety of logistics operations on synergies and misalignments between Lean and Green practices. The findings and outcome of this study are a starting point for further research in the logistics sector.     

Measuring impact of Lean implementation on construction safety performance: a structural equation model

Abstract

The construction industry is a risky endeavour. Therefore, it is essential to develop significant safety measures for lowering risks and ensuring safety during projects. However, current safety applications are yet to be developed given the increasing number of workplace accidents. Among these, Lean applications have the potential to improve safety standards and enhance safety performance. Within this context, this study develops components for Lean implementation and construction safety performance, and it presents a conceptual framework to study the relationship between them. A questionnaire was designed and given to Lean practitioners to quantify the impact of the components. Structural Equation Modelling was used to analyse the framework and validate the relationship between Lean implementation and safety performance. The results of the study indicate that there is a significant relationship between Lean implementation and safety performance. The findings also imply that firms that perform well in implementing Lean practices achieve better safety performance. The primary contribution of this research is to prove that Lean practices are closely related to safety performance, with the aim of encouraging construction practitioners to work in a safer environment by using well-established Lean practices. Moreover, the study aims to expand the use of Lean practices to achieve better safety performance by revealing the strong ties between safety and Lean. Finally, this study can guide construction practitioners to adopt Lean techniques and apply them in their projects to enhance safety performance.     

Achieving Lean Objectives through RFID: A Simulation‐Based Assessment*

Lean concepts in manufacturing have focused on elimination of wastes within the business processes. This study investigates whether addition of radio frequency identification (RFID) technologies in the manufacturing process can complement Lean manufacturing. Specifically, will more accurate information from RFID‐based solutions help achieve the goals of Lean initiatives in manufacturing plant performance and, if yes, in what specific ways? The analysis is based on a comparison of the following three automatic identification technologies: existing (one‐dimensional) 1D barcode, 2D barcode, and the use of RFID in a real job‐shop environment where items are manufactured for meeting actual demand and also future forecast demand. We analyze the effect of information visibility in these settings by examining the various types of wastes that are typically addressed in Lean initiatives. The results of a discrete‐event simulation suggest that employing RFID in Lean manufacturing initiatives can reduce some wastes but not necessarily all types of waste. We observe an increase in overproduction waste in our setting, although other wastes are reduced with improved information visibility. Overall, our results indicate that manufacturing organizations should explore information visibility through RFID to enhance their Lean initiatives.     

Examining Localized Patterns of Air Quality Perception in Texas: A Spatial and Statistical Analysis

Environmental and human health issues associated with outdoor air pollution, such as ozone, sulfur dioxide, and other pollutants in metropolitan regions, are an area of growing concern for both policy officials and the general public. Increasing attention from the news media, new health data, and public debate over the effectiveness of clean air regulations have raised the importance of air quality in the public consciousness. While public perceptions of air quality have been studied thoroughly dating back to the 1960s, little empirical research has been conducted to explain the spatial aspects of these perceptions, particularly at the local level. Although recent studies suggest characteristics of local setting are important in shaping perceptions of air quality, the roles of proximity, neighborhood characteristics, and location have not been clarified. This study seeks to improve understanding of the major factors shaping public perceptions of air quality by examining the spatial pattern of local risk perception, the role of socioeconomic characteristics in forming these perceptions, and the relationship between perceived and scientifically measured air pollution. First, we map the spatial pattern of local air quality perceptions using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) across the Dallas and Houston metropolitan areas. Next, we explain these perceptions through local contextual factors using both bivariate correlations and multivariate regression analysis. Results indicate that perceptions of air quality in the study areas are not significantly correlated with air quality based on readings of air monitoring stations. Instead, perceptions appear to be influenced by setting (urban vs. rural), state identification, access to information, and socioeconomic characteristics such as age, race, and political identification. We discuss the implications of the findings and provide direction on how further research can provide a deeper understanding of the local contextual factors influencing public perceptions.     

Barriers in Green Lean implementation: a combined systematic literature review and interpretive structural modelling approach

Green Lean has recently emerged as an alternative strategy for organisations to pursue both operational and sustainability excellence. The interest on this approach has rapidly risen in both academic and industry circles. However, despite this interest, very limited research has focused on its implementation, and no research has investigated the barriers that hinder the success of such activity. This study investigates the Green Lean implementation barriers and their contextual relationships and effects on the integration and deployment of this approach. A Systematic Literature Review (SLR), Interpretative Structural Modelling and fuzzy Matriced’ Impacts Croise’s Multiplication Appliqée a UN Classement (MICMAC) analyses were carried out. Fifteen barriers were extracted from the SLR and then validated in consultation with industry and academic experts. The Interpretive Structural Modelling (ISM) method was used to understand the relationship between the fifteen barriers and to develop a hierarchical model of these. The different barriers were classified into ‘linkage’ and ‘dependent’ barriers by using MICMAC analysis. The results suggested that all the identified barriers play an important role, and hence can equally act as a significant hurdle to the implementation of Green Lean projects. This study can help managers and policy-makers in better understanding these barriers. Thus, they can be assisted in managing and prioritising barriers towards the successful implementation of Green Lean initiatives for better financial and environmental performance.     

Lean in Swedish agriculture: strategic and operational perspectives

The purpose of this article is to present and test a framework for lean implementation in the agricultural sector, addressing challenges from an operational and strategical perspective. The article builds on the previous literature on the use of Lean and reports empirical data from a lean implementation project in the south-western Sweden, including interviews, observations, diaries and questionnaires. A framework is developed to examine strategic and operational perspectives on Lean Thinking. Using this framework, a number of challenges encountered in Lean implementation are presented. This article is limited to the study of Lean among a group of Swedish farms although its findings may have implications for the wider agricultural sectors. Many societal challenges are linked with agricultural sustainability, stressing the need for productive, resource-efficient, resilient and less wasteful food production. This article is the first to develop and test a Lean implementation framework in the agriculture sector.     

5 Public Administration and Organization Studies

Abstract

The study of public organizations has withered over time in mainstream organization studies research, as scholars in the field have migrated to business schools. This is so even though government organizations are an important part of the universe of organizations—the largest organizations in the world are agencies of the U.S. government. At the same time, the study of public administration, once in the mainstream of organization studies, has moved into a ghetto, separate and unequal. Centered in business schools, mainstream organization research became isomorphic to its environment—coming to focus on performance issues, which are what firms care about. Since separation, the dominant current in public administration has become isomorphic with its environment. In this case, however, this meant the field moved backward from the central reformist concern of its founders with improving government performance, and developed instead a focus on managing constraints (i.e., avoiding bad things, such as corruption or misuse of power, from occurring) in a public organization environment. Insufficient concern about performance among public administration scholars is particularly unfortunate because over the past 15 years, there has occurred a significant growth of interest among practitioners in improving government performance. The origins and consequences of these developments are discussed, and a research agenda for organization studies research that takes the public sector seriously is proposed.     

Getting to the Helm: Women in Leadership in Federal Regulation

Why is it important for women to hold leadership positions in organizations? If it is important for women to hold leadership positions in organizations, how do women get into such positions? Both public administration research and organizational research provide answers to these questions. However, the integration of these two bodies of literature remains limited. This study joins public administration scholarship on representative bureaucracy and management scholarship on women in leadership to hypothesize and test institutional, organizational, and political explanations for women’s attainment of leadership positions together in one model. This study examines how women get into upper-level leadership positions in 12 federal regulatory organizations over more than 20 years of time. Findings suggests that women are more likely to gain access to leadership positions when the dominant political ideology is democratic and in agencies that work in feminine policy contexts, are younger, and where the risk of failure is higher.     

Values and behaviors of effective lean managers: Mixed-methods exploratory research

Lean Management is a managerial approach focused on enhancing customer value through the elimination of non-value adding steps from work processes. Lean Management is also enjoying a resurgence, largely because its ‘do more with less’ philosophy is particularly well-suited for the austere conditions of a 'Great Recession' recovery. Despite this resurgence with practitioners, however, academic research of Lean Management, in particular research on the leadership of lean initiatives, remains limited. In this study, we identify a constellation of lean values and behaviors of effective lean managers, based on extant research and the views of expert practitioners, and a field study of lean managers. In the first of two empirical studies, we produce an initial list of values and behaviors, derived from both the lean and leadership literature, and from three Delphi rounds with 19 expert lean practitioners. In study 2, we corroborate and refine the list with a sample of effective lean middle managers, through 18 interviews; a survey (N = 43); and fine-grained video-analyses of their in situ behaviors during meetings with subordinates. The values identified include: honesty, candor, participation and teamwork, and continuous improvement—all indicative of self-transcendence and openness to change. Regarding behaviors, we find that the effective lean middle managers of our sample, compared to other middle managers, engage significantly more in positive relations-oriented “active listening” and “agreeing” behaviors, and significantly less in “task monitoring” and counterproductive work behaviors (such as “providing negative feedback” and “defending one's own position”). To conclude, we put forward five new propositions intended to guide future research and a more successful practice of ‘lean leadership.’     

Performance Decline and Turnaround in Public Organizations: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis*

Public sector performance is currently a significant issue for management practice and policy, and especially the turnaround of those organizations delivering less than acceptable results. Theories of organizational failure and turnaround derive largely from the business sector and require adaptation to the public service. The performance of public organizations is more complex to measure, is related to institutional norms, and the idea of ‘failure’ is problematic. Empirical findings from a real‐time, longitudinal study of poorly performing English local authorities are used to develop an initial theory of performance failure and turnaround suited to public organizations. The paper argues that the typical performance of public organizations over time is cyclical. Where cognition and leadership capability are absent, organizations fail to self‐initiate turnaround. In this situation authoritative external intervention is necessary. The strategies applied are principally concerned with building a leadership capability that engages senior politicians and managers in order to overcome inertia and collective action problems. The theory is presented in the form of seven propositions that provide a basis for further research across the public sector.     

Green and lean: a Gemba–Kaizen model for sustainability enhancement

Abstract

Despite the encouraging results obtained from the application of Green Lean, organizations have found the integration of Green and Lean, and their implementation as an integrated approach, challenging. This paper therefore presents a model for integrating Lean and Green based on the Gemba-Kaizen approach. The proposed model was developed on the basis of a through literature review on Gemba and Kaizen, conducted on peer reviewed journal articles and pragmatic books, and the more than 40 years of accumulated experience of the authors as academics, researchers, industrialists and consultants. The model was validated through two cases study in the aerospace and automotive industries. The results showed that the proposed model helped the case organizations to reduce the consumption of resources and improve their environmental performance. The proposed model can be the basis for further research on Lean and Green, contributing to help organizations to improve their sustainability performance.     

Expectations and the performance of governance functions between a board,management and other stakeholders: the case of Robotdalen

Previous research has called for an enhanced understanding of the dynamic and interactional aspects of board work in public sector governance. Using a longitudinal case study of Robotdalen, this paper attempts to meet this call through a processual and qualitative study of board work in public organisations. The aim of the paper is to enhance our understanding of the human side of governance and the interactions between a board, the management in the governed organisation and other stakeholders. We do this by addressing the theoretical concept of an expectations gap. The results demonstrated how funding regimes influence governance functions, structures and practices at the organisational level, and how internal actors such as managers also carry out governance functions. Moreover, the results show how an expectations gap shifts and changes over time. In this way we have contributed a more nuanced theoretical understanding of how the governance function is co-produced and the importance of understanding the expectations gap to further understand the dynamics of public sector board work.     

LEAN AND GREEN? AN EMPIRICAL EXAMINATION OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LEAN PRODUCTION AND ENVIRONMENTAL PERFORMANCE

Lean production may have a significant public good spillover—improved environmental performance. However, empirical evidence of the link between lean production practices and environmental performance has not resolved the nature of the relationship. To explore this issue, we conduct an empirical analysis of the environmental performance of 17,499 U.S. manufacturing establishments during the time period 1991–1996. We find that those establishments that adopt the quality management standard ISO 9000 are more likely to adopt the environmental management standard ISO 14000. We also find strong evidence that lean production, as measured by ISO 9000 adoption and low chemical inventories, is complementary to waste reduction and pollution reduction.     

Insurance,Public Assistance,and Household Flood Risk Reduction: A Comparative Study of Austria,England, and Romania

In light of increasing losses from floods, many researchers and policymakers are looking for ways to encourage flood risk reduction among communities, business, and households. In this study, we investigate risk‐reduction behavior at the household level in three European Union Member States with fundamentally different insurance and compensation schemes. We try to understand if and how insurance and public assistance influence private risk‐reduction behavior. Data were collected using a telephone survey (n = 1,849) of household decisionmakers in flood‐prone areas. We show that insurance overall is positively associated with private risk‐reduction behavior. Warranties, premium discounts, and information provision with respect to risk reduction may be an explanation for this positive relationship in the case of structural measures. Public incentives for risk‐reduction measures by means of financial and in‐kind support, and particularly through the provision of information, are also associated with enhancing risk reduction. In this study, public compensation is not negatively associated with private risk‐reduction behavior. This does not disprove such a relationship, but the negative effect may be mitigated by factors related to respondents' capacity to implement measures or social norms that were not included in the analysis. The data suggest that large‐scale flood protection infrastructure creates a sense of security that is associated with a lower level of preparedness. Across the board there is ample room to improve both public and private policies to provide effective incentives for household‐level risk reduction.     

A Systematic Literature Review on Recent Lean Research: State‐of‐the‐art and Future Directions

Lean management (LM) has attracted the interest of scientists and practitioners since 1990, when Womack et al. (Womack, J.P., Jones, D.T. and Roos, D. (1990). The Machine that Changed the World. New York, NY: Rawson Associates) popularized the Japanese manufacturing approach aimed at eliminating waste to improve operational performance and customer satisfaction. Over the years, the lean concept has evolved becoming a managerial paradigm applicable to different sectors and processes with impressive results. This heterogeneity of implementations and settings makes the recent LM literature diverse and fragmented, and an extensive analysis of the latest contributions on this field is lacking. To address this gap, the authors propose a systematic literature review (SLR) of 240 articles published in 25 peer‐reviewed academic journals from January 2003 to December 2015. The purpose is to analyse the recent trends in this area and to provide a framework that organizes lean researched issues into mature, intermediate and nascent, based on their position in the research life cycle. Starting from the gaps that the SLR highlights, the authors suggest conducting lean research in the following directions: (a) grounding lean studies on existing managerial theories; (b) addressing service settings such as banking/finance, public sector and education; (c) exploring the role of national culture through cross‐country comparisons; (d) defining and conceptualizing ‘lean‐x’ processes; (e) understanding the relationships between lean and safety/environmental issues, and (f) unveiling the effects on social outcomes. Finally, the proposed framework helps scholars find issues not sufficiently explored that require theory‐building research (to move from nascent to intermediate) or theory‐testing research (to move from intermediate to mature).     

Die Verbreitung moderner Managementkonzepte im Mittelstand

Within existing studies on the diffusion of modern management concepts, such as Lean Management, Business Process Reengineering or Shareholder Value Management, small and medium-sized enterprises are frequently examined as a homogeneous group of hesitant adopters. Differences among small and medium-sized companies with regard to concept adoption can thus hardly be explained by referring to existing research. In this paper, we argue that differences in adoption patterns of modern management concepts across small medium-sized companies can be explained on the basis of their resource endowment and embedment in different social environments. We thereby employ central arguments from organizational diffusion theory. Based on a multivariate analysis of online-survey data on the diffusion of 22 modern management concepts among 272 German SMEs, our results show that adoption decisions are mainly based on relationships to local organizational environments, whereas concept awareness can be best explained by media-exposure.     

Developing Absorptive Capacity Theory for Public Service Organizations: Emerging UK Empirical Evidence

A strong public policy focus on high performance means that utilizing management knowledge effectively is at a premium for UK public service organizations. This study empirically examined two English public agencies to explore the inter‐sectoral transfer of a strategic management model originally developed in the private sector – absorptive capacity – which is one way of conceptualizing an organizational competence in such knowledge mobilization. Two theoretical contributions are made. First, a new absorptive capacity framework for public service organizations is developed which recognizes the participation of public agency project teams during an innovation process proceeding over time with phases of co‐creation, testing, metamorphosis and diffusion. Second, our novel framework modifies an early influential model of absorptive capacity. Counter to this model, we argue that realized absorptive capacity requires agency from skilled and embedded actors to turn ‘curbing routines’ into ‘enabling routines’ in all four stages. Project (middle) managers have flexibility in their roles to seize episodic moments of opportunity to innovate and achieve service delivery goals, and to build absorptive capacity capability. Absorptive capacity capability develops organically over time. Future research directions are discussed.