Arguments in favor of skill development and employee involvement can be linked
to a developing interest in the concept of ‘human capital’ (Lepak and Snell 1999 ). Put
simply, there has been burgeoning interest in the prospect for the development of
employees with a set of unique skills and experiences which are diYcult to replicate
and that may represent a source of sustainable competitive advantage forWrms
(PfeVer 1994 ). It has been argued that the very nature of lean manufacturing and
HPWSs leads to enhanced social complexity, causal ambiguity, and the development
of tacit knowledge, and these combine to enhance aWrm’s human capital (Lepak and
Snell 1999 ). Such arguments return us to the relationships among employee orienta-
tions and action, management practices, and organizational performance.
The overall argument at the heart of the lean model in conjunction with HPWS
reXects both the skill development of individuals and the nature of how these
skills are organized. It is posited that contemporary manufacturing requires both
a broadening of worker skills and the combination of these skills into cross-
functional, problem-solving groups. This can be seen in a number of studies that
have combined both an evaluation of direct production teams and oV-line prob-
lem-solving groups or ‘quality circles’ (Lowe et al. 1997 ; MacDuYe 1995 a). Such
studies have revitalized managerial interest in employee participation (Strauss
1998 ). Schemes that encourage employee participation, internal labor markets
that provide opportunities for employee development and advancement, and
team-based production systems are all practices that have been argued to aVect
both employees’ experiences at work andWrm performance positively (Delaney and
Huselid 1996 ). However, Fairris’s ( 1997 ) analysis of the changing nature of shopXoor
labor–management relations in large US manufacturingWrms over the twentieth
century sounds a note of caution with regard to the extent to which such develop-
ments have altered decision-making on the shop Xoor. He argues that while
teamwork and quality circles represent a certain decentralization of shopXoor
governance, they do not allow workers increased empowerment in shopXoor
decision-making such as to alter fundamentally the distribution of rewards or
contravene the authority of shopXoor management (Fairris 1997 : 8 ). Indeed,
research using the WERS 98 dataset found that employee involvement schemes
focused at the point of production, such as teams and quality circles, led to lower
levels of perceived employee job inXuence than broader-based participation
schemes such as representative participation or brieWng groups (Delbridge and
WhitWeld 2001 ). The empirical evidence on how lean manufacturing has been
implemented in practice carries a number of important lessons for management.
- 4 The Lean Model in Practice
A host of studies, predominantly quantitative and conducted in the USA, have
found empirical support for arguments linking HPWSs and stronger economic
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