‘All they lack is a chain’: lean and the new performance management in the British civil service

Abstract

The adaptation of lean techniques in public services is viewed as an innovative managerialist response to government demands for more efficient services amidst large reductions in public spending. This paper explores workers' experiences of the impact of lean on work organisation and control and provides new insights into developments within contemporary back office clerical work. Bob Carter (rcarter@dmu.ac.uk) is Professor of Organisational Change Management at De Montfort University. His research interests are in labour process analysis, restructuring the public sector, class relations and trade union organising strategies. Andy Danford (corresponding author: andrew.danford@uwe.ac.uk) is Professor of Employment Relations at the University of the West of England. His research interests include labour process analysis of lean production and the high performance workplace and union organizing strategies. Debra Howcroft (Debra.howcroft@mbs.ac.uk) is Professor of Technology and Organisations at the University of Manchester and visiting Professor at Luleå University of Technology. Her research interests are concerned with the drivers and consequences of socio-economic restructuring in a global context. Helen Richardson (H.Richardson@ salford.ac.uk) is a Reader at the University of Salford. Her research interests encompass technology, work and organisation including issues of gender, the ICT labour market and the global location of service work. Andrew Smith (A.Smith14@Bradford.ac.uk) is a Lecturer in Human Resource Management and Employment Relations at the University of Bradford. His current research focuses on change in the public sector. Phil Taylor (philip.taylor@strath.ac.uk) is Professor of Work and Employment Studies at the University of Strathclyde and has researched and published extensively on call centres, offshoring, occupational health and safety, the labour process and trade union organising. New Technology, Work and Employment 26:2

‘Lean’, new technologies and employment in public health services: employees' experiences in the National Health Service

“…Radnor's (2010: 420) research with HMRC employees on the receiving end of Lean found that many 'felt that they had not had significant involvement in the development of the processes… staff felt that Lean was imposed and that front-line staff had no real say in how it was implemented'. Further research in the same organisation reported how management characterised as negative, and tried to shut down, any employee criticism of Lean's impact on work organisation and job quality (Carter et al 2011a(Carter et al , 2011b.…”

“…However, there remains debate as to the appropriateness of Lean-type approaches as a tool for improving performance and work organisation in public service organisations (Radnor and Osborne 2013). Specifically, there are concerns that, despite rhetoric suggesting that Lean can empower employees to get involved in organisational reform, many individuals report experiences of increased work intensification and reduced job quality following such reform programmes (Carter et al 2011a). …”

Lean thinking: outside-in, bottom-up? The paradox of contemporary soft lean and consultant-driven lean implementation

“…A soft, participationoriented lean does not fit easily with the rational, objective and decontextualised notion that lean is something that can be brought in and installed by an outside expert. Management consultants have been blamed for imposing standard solutions on diverse organisational problems, often bringing to the table nothing but Taylorism wrapped in fancy rhetoric (Carter et al, 2011;Jung & Kieser, 2012). Despite such criticism and developments in lean thinking, organisations still call in management consultants to help them implement lean (Radnor & O'Mahoney, 2013).…”

Teamworking and Lean revisited: a reply to Carter et al.

“…As part of the attempt to draw the wider implications of these findings, we set them against what Carter et al had found in their study of Lean in the same organization (Carter et al, 2011a(Carter et al, , 2011b(Carter et al, , 2013a(Carter et al, , 2013b. Our argument here was that Carter et al had taken little or no account of the way in which teamworking operated in HMRC, and that, had they done so, then it might have been easier to understand the differences between their findings and ours-and also between their findings and the results of an official employee survey undertaken at around the same time (Civil Service People Survey, 2011).…”

“…They describe the ways in which they claim that this literature portrays lean teams (Carter et al, 2015: 4), but provide no specific references to back this up. (Carter et al, 2011a;2011b;2013a; 2013b) that we cite in our original article (Procter and Radnor, 2014), then only one of them (Carter et al, 2013b) cites the majority of the papers on their recommended reading list.…”