ABSTRACT
The success of a lean organization can, to a large extent, be traced back to its primary production
units: teams at the lowest hierarchical level do a substantial amount of ‘‘value-added work’’ (e.g.
at Toyota, see Liker and Convis, 2012, p. 144). Continuous process improvement within an
organization is difficult to achieve without the smooth cooperation between non-managerial
team members and their leaders. Despite this insight, an insufficient amount of research attention
has been paid to the dynamics of leading effective lean teams (e.g. Van Dun and Wilderom, 2012).
Operations management (OM) scholars emphasize the various bundles of lean tools in relation to
high lean performance (Shah and Ward, 2003). However, these typically non-human tools are
used by humans, who must function effectively in teams. Team human dynamics were long seen
as an add-on instead of a key to lean’s success; they have been analyzed by some other scholars
under the relatively small rubric of ‘‘self-directed work teams’’ within human resource man-
agement (Shah andWard, 2003). This may explain in part why so few organizational-behavior (OB)
studies have dealt with lean teams’ success and/or the implications for durably healthy lean work
units or cultures (see, e.g., Shook, 2010). Without such OB-type knowledge, the unnecessary
failures of lean initiatives will not be curbed.
