The relationship between leadership style and the success of Lean management implementation
Leadership & Organization Development Journal
ISSN: 0143-7739
Article publication date: 17 July 2018
Issue publication date: 24 July 2018
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to better understand the role that leadership plays in the success of Lean management (LM) implementation, by trying to identify what is the impact of the transactional, transformational, directive and empowering leadership styles on the success of such an implementation in Portuguese companies, and what are the most important leaders’ attributes.
Design/methodology/approach
An on-line questionnaire was distributed to 65 manufacturing and services Portuguese organizations that have implemented LM.
Findings
The results suggest that the empowering leadership style has a positive impact on the success of LM implementation. Even though results do not allow concluding about the impact of the other styles, several leader’s attributes were identified as having influence: individualized consideration, information sharing, skill development, intellectual stimulation, assigned goals and self-directed decision making.
Originality/value
Very few studies have addressed the role of leadership in the success of adopting LM and, to the best knowledge, only one paper studied the critical attributes of leaders in LM implementation. Moreover, the present study focuses in Portugal, country where this topic has rarely been investigated.
Keywords
Citation
Nogueira, D.M.d.C., Sousa, P.S.A. and Moreira, M.R.A. (2018), "The relationship between leadership style and the success of Lean management implementation", Leadership & Organization Development Journal, Vol. 39 No. 6, pp. 807-824. https://doi.org/10.1108/LODJ-05-2018-0192
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2018, Emerald Publishing Limited