The Metods of Change in Organizational Culture in Companies using Lean Management

Piotr Walentynowicz and Jarosław Szreder

Abstract:

Lean Management has been popular for a long time, practically since the beginning of the 1990s. Various research results prove that proper enterprise management based on the assumptions of this concept can bring many benefits to the enterprise. Both from the economic and financial side as well as its competitive position. Recent research also shows that a well-implemented Lean concept should be accompanied by a cultural change. Without good results in this area, it is impossible to fully achieve the results expected from the use of Lean Management. Therefore, recently a lot of literature has been focused on the topic of cultural change in the implementation of Lean Management and the interest in this issue in practice is growing more and more. With their article, the authors decided to follow these trends, answering the following research questions:

  1. How can you change your organizational culture towards a Lean Management culture - Lean culture?
  2. What is the average condition of organizational cultures in companies applying Lean Management in Poland?
  3. What methods do companies in Poland use to change their organizational culture to achieve the effects desired from the point of view of the Lean concept, and what are the results?

Therefore, the main aim of the article is to present the answers to the formulated research questions.

Lean culture (the culture of lean organization) is a new, so far rare type of organizational culture, resulting from the application of the Lean concept at a high level of professionalism in the company. It makes it easier for the enterprise to achieve good, often above-average results, desired from the point of view of its contemporary goals (Walentynowicz, 2014a). The prototype of this culture is a set of values, attitudes, behaviors and functioning mechanisms characteristic of the Japanese company Toyota, whose management system (TPS-Toyota Production System) is the basic and unattainable model for the Lean concept (Liker, 2005).

The main research methods used by the authors in the process of seeking answers to the formulated questions were:

  1. Analysis and synthesis of selected literature sources.
  2. CAWI survey research.
  3. Logical reasoning based on the practical experience of the authors and methods of descriptive statistics.