Configurations of high involvement management behaviors and lean tools for a higher financial performance in lean environments: an empirical study

Building on Shah & Ward’s (2007:791) idea that lean production systems are organizational configurations and drawing upon recent developments in lean and behavioral operations literature, this study posits that: a) lean production systems as organizational configurations span the boundaries of lean operations practices and include a larger set of behavioral and structural variables; and b) diverse lean production systems as different combinations/bundles of variables might have differential performance effects or be equifinal. The study applies fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis to explain such variation and investigate the determinants of successful implementation of lean production systems. It analyzes why industry normalized financial performance improvements of firms implementing lean production systems vary and explains this cross-firm variation as the effect of different combinations of: a) level of adoption of lean operations and high involvement human resource management practices; b) lean management behaviors; and c) lean infrastructure and strategic commitment to lean thinking. Complementing existing empirical work, the study shows that the adoption of lean operations and high involvement human resource practices does not represent a sufficient condition to sustainably improve financial performance. A lean infrastructure and strategic commitment, together with the adoption of consistent lean management behaviors are also necessary to drive financial performance improvements.