Packages of Participation: Swedish Employees’ Experience of Lean Depends on How They Are Involved

OCCUPATIONAL APPLICATIONS The results presented here show that active and continuous employee participation in organizational change programs, e.g., the implementation of Lean, can have several positive employee effects. However, the benefit of participation may depend on “what is inside the package,” which is important for practitioners to know as they decide both whether and how to involve workers in implementing Lean. Structured and continuous “packages” of participation, such as improvement groups, may provide the most positive employee experience, whereas temporary packages, such as intermittent change projects, may provide the least positive. Packages combining both continuous and temporary participation may even diminish some of the positive effects of continuous participation, while also possibly being the most costly approach. Just as Lean interventions strive to maximize value and minimize waste, so must organizations planning organizational change identify the participatory approaches that will...