Human Res MGMT Journal - 2012 - Sterling - Lean Production Employee Learning and Workplace Outcomes A Case Analysis

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doi: 10.1111/1748-8583.12010
Lean production, employee learning and workplace

outcomes: a case analysis through the
ability-motivation-opportunity framework
Amanda Sterling and Peter Boxall, University of Auckland
Human Resource Management Journal, Vol 23, no 3, 2013, pages 227–240
This study examines an implementation of lean production in fast-moving consumer goods

manufacturing, analysing how it has affected employee learning and job quality. We find major variation
in these outcomes. Where line managers have relinquished significant control, and workers have had the
requisite levels of literacy, more powerful forms of learning have occurred, and the outcomes are mutually
beneficial. However, deeper learning has yet to take hold where production pressures are high, line
managers are not enabling and workers lack self-efficacy because of low literacy. Better outcomes depend
on greater investments in the development and ongoing support of front-line managers and in literacy
development. The study shows how the ability-motivation-opportunity framework can be used to organise
relevant theory and throw light on the systemic nature of workplace learning.
Contact: Professor Peter Boxall, Department of Management & International Business,
University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, 1142, New Zealand. Email:
p.boxall@auckland.ac.nz
INTRODUCTION
L
ean production is increasingly dominant in manufacturing plants, but research on how
it affects workers remains controversial. To what extent does it improve opportunities for
employee learning? Can it be implemented in ways that enhance outcomes for both
companies and workers? In this article, we address these questions through a case study in a
fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) manufacturer, whose performance depends on better
quality, cost and delivery. We apply relevant theory within an ability-motivation-opportunity
(AMO) framework to analyse variations in what and how workers have learned and to assess
outcomes for the company and for them. This enables us to answer some questions, and raise
others, in respect of how lean production can simultaneously improve manufacturing
performance and the quality of working life.
We begin by outlining the essential features of lean manufacturing and discuss their
implications for employee learning, placing emphasis on the way that opportunities for
learning are affected by the structure of work, not simply by training activities, which have
more ambiguous outcomes. We then describe our case study organisation and the lean practices
it implemented. This leads into our analysis of worker responses and our conclusions about
learning and mutuality.
LEAN MANUFACTURING AND EMPLOYEE LEARNING
Epitomised in the Toyota Production System, lean manufacturing aims to generate better value
through eliminating waste, whether in excess inventory, poor quality, production bottlenecks or
unnecessary work (Womack et al., 1990). These changes imply a significant reform of traditional
mass production with its ‘just-in-case’ buffers and prioritisation of output over quality.
HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT JOURNAL, VOL 23 NO 3, 2013 227
© 2012 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Please cite this article in press as: Sterling, A. and Boxall, P. (2013) ‘Lean production, employee learning and workplace outcomes: a case analysis
through the ability-motivation-opportunity framework’. Human Resource Management Journal 23: 3, 227–240.
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Employee learning under lean production
According to Shah and Ward (2003), the key facets that distinguish lean from traditional mass
production include total quality management (TQM), continuous improvement (Kaizen),
just-in-time, teamwork, supplier management and cellular manufacturing. ‘The core thrust of
lean production is that these practices can work synergistically to create a streamlined,
high-quality system that produces finished products at the pace of customer demand with little
or no waste’ (Shah and Ward, 2003: 129).
Niepce and Molleman (1998: 269) describe the philosophy of Kaizen as ‘the continual
rationalisation of production’, targeted at the ‘minimisation of waste . . . by reducing manning
and working-time buffers’. To serve this end, lean manufacturing encourages work reform
towards cross-functional, self-directed work teams (Womack et al., 1990). Rather than use a
separate quality group or rework area, this implies that operators should be able to stop the
assembly line if they notice defects and instigate problem-solving techniques to ensure they are
not repeated. ‘Housekeeping’ and up-to-the-minute visual results management make quality
defects visible, as and when they happen, implying a need for workers to respond to them.
Lean production, then, calls for the application of skills that are not required, or are less
prominent, in traditional mass production, including technical skills and the ‘soft skills’
associated with greater teamworking and interpersonal communication. A successful transition
to lean ways of working hinges on whether workers will learn to perform in the envisaged
ways. This learning problem can be analysed through the ‘AMO framework’, which argues that
all employee performances are a function of ability (A), motivation (M) and the opportunity to
perform (O). This conceptual framework is fundamental to Appelbaum et al.’s (2000) theory of
high-performance work systems, which sees greater discretionary effort and better-quality jobs
deriving from work reforms that open up opportunities to participate. Its antecedents include
the models of Vroom (1964) and of Campbell et al. (1993), which argue that performance is an
interactive function of ability and motivation. Blumberg and Pringle (1982), however,
demonstrate the importance of adding the opportunity factor to these models. Their point is
that employee abilities and motivations are subject to a work context, which can be more or less
enabling. To perform well, employees need resources, such as information and technology,
and their potential is limited by the extent to which significant others, including supervisors
and co-workers, are supportive. It is now widely accepted that employee ability, motivation and
opportunity are an inevitable set of mediators in any model of HRM (Boxall and Purcell, 2011).
A shift to a more demanding production system, such as lean production, ‘raises the ante’
in terms of the AMO variables: to enhance the quality of performance outcomes, management
will need to make investments in HRM that exceed those required for mass production. Success
will depend on whether workers respond positively to these investments and to the demands
of the new production regime. Using a data set that spans a 24-year period, De Menezes et al.
(2010) underline the importance of the HRM agenda in lean production, showing that those
British firms that first learnt to integrate the operational and HR practices implied by lean
manufacturing have outperformed later adopters.
Ability to perform is an obvious starting point, including improved selection of workers
(Forza, 1996) or, more commonly, better training of the existing workforce. It is important to
recognise, however, that training is not equivalent to ‘learning’. Training is a communication
activity that may lead to the acquisition of information and/or a change in attitudes or
behaviour, but none of this is certain. Training often evokes passive participation, such as
attendance at TQM workshops, whereas learning requires some level of active participation,
bringing about changed attitudes or behaviour (e.g. Illeris, 2010). The distinction is important
in assessing the success of workplace reforms, such as lean manufacturing. An investment in
training nearly always occurs; learning is quite another matter (e.g. Stewart et al., 2010).
228 HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT JOURNAL, VOL 23 NO 3, 2013

Amanda Sterling and Peter Boxall
Figure 1 Decision latitude and psychological demands (Karasek and Theorell, 1990)
This simple observation brings us to the critical point that the analysis of whether learning
will occur needs to incorporate workers’ opportunities and motivations to learn (the ‘O’ and
‘M’ dimensions of the AMO framework), and these are closely connected to the way their work
is organised (Appelbaum et al., 2000). Forms of work organisation, such as self-managing teams,
that offer workers greater opportunity for involvement in decision making create the conditions
for greater learning (Felstead et al., 2010). The kind of learning implied by lean manufacturing
will thrive more readily in a workplace where the structure of work is conducive to workers
exercising control or having sufficient freedom to mould their responses to problems.
The extent to which workers can exercise control is a key dimension of Karasek and
Theorell’s (1990) model of job strain, which Schouteten and Benders (2004) deploy in their
analysis of how lean production affects job quality. The model makes distinctions between
active, high-strain, passive and low-strain jobs, four configurations of the psychological
demands of work and the worker’s decision latitude (Figure 1).
Karasek and Theorell (1990) argue that the environment that is most conducive to learning
is one where there are high levels of psychological demand but in which workers have the
decision-making latitude that enables them to respond creatively. These are ‘active’ jobs, which
are argued to generate lower psychological strain. The contrast is with passive jobs that
have low decision-making latitude, low demands and low learning possibilities, and with
‘high-strain’ jobs in which high levels of work demand and low levels of employee control
seriously impede learning and create health risks (Karasek and Theorell, 1990). Assembly-line
work, which is rigidly constrained and prone to speed-up, is the archetype of the low-quality,
‘high-strain’ job. Karasek and Theorell (1990) argue that people who are repeatedly confronted
with stressful situations in which they can exercise little control stop tackling the problem. They
are less motivated to learn, and their skills may atrophy. Research on the propositions in this
model is extensive and mixed, but there is general support for the contention that greater
autonomy or worker empowerment will foster greater learning (e.g. De Witte et al., 2007). For
our purposes, the value of the model lies in the way it relates the structure and challenges of
the work itself to the opportunity and motivation to learn.
What, then, does the research say about how lean manufacturing affects employee
learning and well-being? In their analysis of the Third European Survey on Working
Conditions (n = 21,703, across 15 EU member states), Lorenz and Valeyre (2005) find that the
lean model does enhance employee autonomy and problem-solving activities, and twice as

many workers agree that they are ‘learning new things at work’ under lean versus Taylorist
conditions (81.7 vs. 42 per cent). At the same time, there is no let-up in the psychological
demands placed on workers: the production pressures are, if anything, greater in lean than
in Taylorist settings.
Concerns for worker outcomes have been explored more fully in case study research that
analyses the relationships among lean manufacturing, work intensity and employee control.
Schouteten and Benders’ (2004) analysis of a lean implementation in a Dutch bicycle
assembly plant found that while workers experienced limited autonomy and gained few
opportunities for personal growth, problems arising in the work were readily manageable by
supervisors and colleagues. They interpreted these lean jobs as falling into Karasek and
Theorell’s (1990) ‘passive category’ in which both job demands and employee control are
low. On the other hand, case studies of lean by Delbridge et al. (1992) and Niepce and
Molleman (1998) found that workers had limited ability to decide how fast to work and that
the removal of inventory buffers further reduced their ability to control work pace. In the
aerospace case studies conducted by Danford et al. (2004: 18), a combination of ‘lean
production control’, ‘more flexible labour deployment’ and ‘quality and process improvement
campaigns’ meant ‘more efficient consumption of a smaller mass of labour power’. In this
context, ‘large majorities of all (worker) groups reported work intensification’ (Danford et al.,
2004: 23).
A particularly challenging study is Parker’s (2003) analysis of a UK implementation of lean
teams, assembly lines and workflow formalisation. The factory she studied doubled its
production over a 3-year period and improved assembly-line speed within the first few months.
However, indicators of worker autonomy, skill utilisation and participation went backwards,
which is not what advocates of lean manufacturing envisage, nor what Lorenz and Valeyre’s
(2005) survey implies is the general pattern. The most pronounced impacts were for
assembly-line workers, who had ‘the greatest reduction in job autonomy and also reduced skill
use and lowered participation in decision-making’ (Parker, 2003: 629). This application of lean
is clearly not a learning-oriented outcome because learning is fostered by enhanced autonomy
and is characterised by greater skill utilisation.
The case study evidence alerts us to the variation that can occur across different work sites
with any kind of work reform. Aside from the ways in which management’s specific intentions
vary across contexts, variation is inevitable because of the distribution of front-line manager
(FLM) behaviour (e.g. Purcell and Hutchinson, 2007). The role of the FLM under lean
production is argued to take on the properties of a trainer and facilitator (Womack et al., 1990),
enabling and encouraging workers to solve problems and implement solutions in a less
directive environment. However, the research suggests that decision making is not necessarily
delegated to lean manufacturing operators. In a survey of 43 Italian plants that had
implemented lean manufacturing, Forza (1996) found that decentralisation of authority had not
changed from traditional Fordist/Taylorist plants. One of the reasons may be that changes to
work structure that empower workers to challenge the status quo can be confronting for FLMs,
who work under conditions of pressure and have their own interests and well-being to consider
(e.g. Batt, 2004).
We must, therefore, approach the whole question of what is happening in any particular
implementation of lean manufacturing with a degree of care. If Lorenz and Valeyre’s (2005)
survey is indicative, we should expect greater employee autonomy and learning, but not any
slackening of work pressure. The case study evidence, however, prompts us to question
whether autonomy and learning are, in fact, increasing, and alerts us to consider the overall
implications for employee well-being.

RESEARCH CONTEXT AND METHODS
The setting is New Zealand, where ‘Renaissance Company’, an FMCG manufacturer, is based.
The company, which employs around 420 people, enhanced its production capacity in 2009
through investing in a larger facility with state-of-the-art machinery, magnet-guided turret
trucks for warehousing activities and enlarged office space (Giotto,1 pers. comm., 1 July 2011).
It exports to over 30 countries, and the quality of the product, from its intrinsic qualities
through to how the packaging looks on the shelves, is important to market share. The products
manufactured are subject to strict quality and certification requirements, and getting products
to market more quickly can be a source of advantage. Some small variations in price may be
obtained by brand positioning, but profit improvement is more likely to come from reducing
unit costs. Quality, speed and cost are, thus, all strategic concerns.
The workforce has historically been recruited by word of mouth, through family working for
the company or through starting as agency temps. The plant is unionised, and operational
managers meet with union representatives every month to discuss employment issues, with
pay and benefits being the main focus. Employees in manufacturing, packing and warehousing
are generally less educated than the company’s white-collar employees, with some form of
secondary education but seldom any formal qualifications. There is naturally an element of
specialist skill required in the machine-based operations, but this can be picked up on the job.
The exception is the warehouse employees who need certifications in forklift operations.
In the manufacturing area, operations are best described as ‘machine tending’ (Blauner,
1968), with machines organised into separate rooms, and each one specialised in creating a
different type or shape of product. Usually an operator is in charge of only one machine at a
time, but he or she is occasionally required to look after other machines while other operators
are on a break or if the area is short staffed. The packing department runs an assembly line in
which individuals supervise one stage of the process before it moves down the conveyor belt
to the next individual. The number of customer orders received and delivered drives the work
in the warehouse, but here machine minding or pacing does not apply, and the levels of
supervision are low. There is one, sometimes two, warehouse managers in an area the size of
two football fields. The work is monotonous, processing order after order, but if employees
work fast, they can generate relaxation time (unless their manager notices and gives them
something else to do).
Renaissance company implemented lean practices in May 2010 to “engage the hearts and
minds of all people in the day-to-day running of our business” (Operations Objectives, 2010)
and improve competitiveness in respect of quality, speed and cost (‘Michelangelo’, pers. comm.,
1 July 2011). The integration of lean manufacturing was based around three principles: training,
establishment of teams and alignment and tracking of key performance indicators (KPIs).
The process began with training in problem solving, including fishbone diagrams, the ‘five
whys’, used to get to the root cause of problems and apply solutions, and training in ‘5S’, which
refers to a method for cleaning up and streamlining the work process (sort and discard, shine
and inspect, signpost and order, simplify and standardise, and sustain). It also embraced goal
alignment, covering the display and review of KPIs.
Each operational area and shift was then formed into a team that meets briefly each day to
discuss their KPIs and is responsible for measuring and monitoring progress. The premise
is that any communication regarding company strategy and direction can be quickly
communicated to the teams.
The General Manager: Operations then set annual KPIs for the operating departments. KPIs
are displayed on charts in the work area, and individuals are assigned responsibility for

TABLE 1 Interview respondents
Category Number
Management (including FLMs and senior management) 5

Front-line workers 55
Male 40
Female 20
Maori or Pacific Islandera 41
European or ‘New Zealander’ 11
Other ethnicitya 8
a
ESOL data were not collected as part of this research. However, based on the
interviews, we estimate that more than 50 per cent of the participants had
English as a second language.
FLM, front-line manager.
updating them. Results are measured daily or weekly, target lines are determined, and the
theory is that any deviation from the target should trigger a problem-solving exercise by the
team. For the majority of teams, KPIs cover customer complaints (quality), output rates (speed),
rework (cost), the number of health and safety observations (health and safety), the number of
innovations raised (innovation) and absenteeism (people).
Front-line managers are responsible for communicating financial and operating information
and ensuring their teams meet their KPIs. Pre-lean, KPIs were defined but not necessarily
communicated beyond the FLM and senior members of their team. If problem solving did
occur, it was informal. Post-lean, the KPIs are defined and visual, there is more information to
communicate, and teams are supposed to use structured problem-solving tools. FLMs are
expected to make sure these things happen, although there is no monetary reward if they do.
Our research goal was to understand how the lean implementation affected employee
learning and the quality of working life. A qualitative research approach was chosen over
survey methods because we had concerns about the prose literacy of the workers. This study
was retrospective in nature, involving one-to-one interviews with 5 managers and 55 front-
line workers (Table 1). This amounted to 51 per cent of the employees in the departments
being researched, including one FLM from each department. Participation was voluntary,
and interviews were conducted in work time. With 50 per cent of the workforce from a
non-English-speaking background (spread evenly across teams), we were concerned that only
those more confident in English would come forward. However, workers with a range of
English capability volunteered, and we tailored each interview to their language abilities by
keeping our use of language simple, proceeding at their pace and asking them to further
explain their comments. Those interviewed had been employed by the company for between
1 and 10 years. Interviews were not recorded, but extensive notes were taken and immediately
typed up.
The interviews were semi-structured, and our goal was to invite participants to reflect on
how their jobs used to be and how they might have changed. Our questions included whether
responsibilities, decision-making powers and use of skills had changed; if so, why these
changes had occurred and the effects on their job interest, learning and happiness at work.
Open-ended questions were used, giving the interviewees leeway in how they replied, and we

used probes, wherever necessary, to enable us to understand their experiences and their
attitudes.
A mind-mapping technique was then used to identify key themes in the qualitative data, and
a numerical tally of key points was also kept to validate the consistency of key themes.
Quantitative data were used as a form of triangulation. This included absenteeism percentages,
employee turnover levels, number of customer complaints (quality), customer delivery levels
(speed) and overhead margins (cost). These indicators can be tracked pre- and post-lean.
THE LEAN IMPLEMENTATION: COMMONALITIES AND CONTRASTS
The results point to a blend of commonalities and contrasts in how this lean implementation
has transpired and how it has affected employee learning. The most impressive commonality
is that workers report greater understanding of how the business works and what targets it
aims to meet. They show much greater awareness of how their role contributes to performance
measures, and they say they are more interested in what the business is about and their place
in it. This is frequently attributed to the daily meetings and to the charts: “before, we just milled
some powder. Now we have to present that data on a daily basis”. The visual management
of KPIs and the responsibility for following up on these have given them greater ownership
of results. Team members report greater attention to targets such as quality, consistently
describing the goal of having no issues or complaints from customers. This seems to be not
simply a benefit to management. They also see benefits for themselves, describing meeting
targets, and having visibility around the targets, as making the work more rewarding.
Furthermore, they say that they are thinking more about how to help others to achieve their
targets: “before, when we’d finished our job, we’d muck around until they told us what to do
next. With (lean) we work together as a team, we help each other more, we ask other people
if they need help to do something”.
While relevant measures vary in complex ways across the plant, and will be discussed
further below, the quantitative data on quality performance back up these qualitative interview
reports. All teams have seen an improvement in their quality KPI, measured through the
number of customer complaints. Across the company, from August 2010 to August 2011, there
was a 65 per cent reduction in customer complaints per million units produced. Trend data on
absenteeism are also supportive of improvements, suggesting that morale is better. Monthly
absence rates were 5.1, 5.6 and 3.4 per cent in October, November and December 2010,
respectively, but had declined to 3.9, 2.7 and 2.1 per cent for the equivalent 3 months in 2011.
Employee turnover rates remained stable and relatively low over this period (at around
1 per cent per month), but this may be explained by wage levels 15 per cent higher than
the regional manufacturing average. Opportunities for moving on to higher-paid work are
therefore somewhat limited.
However, here the similarities largely come to an end, and it is more helpful to analyse the
situation team by team. Mind mapping of the data revealed distinct patterns, which we can
group into three categories of learning.
Strong learning: teams A and B

Teams A and B are involved in assembly-line processes, and 17 people were interviewed: 69
per cent of team A and 66 per cent of team B. Members of these teams describe having greater
decision-making power as a result of lean. They make decisions after consulting within the
team and keep the FLM or ‘leading hand’ informed. The latter is the person the other operators

look to for ‘management’ when the manager is not there. Members of team A describe their line
manager as someone who asks for their ideas and then usually goes with them. Decisions
include who is working where, calling in engineers to fix machines and what products to run.
Previously, the FLM would make these sorts of decisions. Members of team B describe
individuals within the team as stepping forward to assist in making decisions or coordinating
with those team members affected, as and when the situation requires. Team B is an afternoon
shift that works from 2pm to 10pm. The FLM is only present for 2 hours of this shift, and so
leadership has emerged through a form of social organising. The team essentially organises
itself, with a few individuals acting as coordinators to facilitate and support interaction.
As time has gone by, members of team A have reduced the incidence of problems, either by
applying a technique that has worked before or by consulting within the team and undertaking
a problem-solving exercise to make sure it does not happen again. The majority of deviations
from the norm are eliminated as a result. Furthermore, using problem-solving skills has made
their work processes better and their work easier. Workers describe producing only as much as
is immediately needed and have established agreements with other teams to supply what is
needed when it is required. Previously there was a lot of work in progress sitting around, and
time was wasted trying to find stock. Their work areas are now described as less cluttered and
less disorganised, and they are operating a ‘kanban’ system, ordering materials when they get
low. Overall, they claim that speed to market has improved: goods are now running through
the plant in a couple of days rather than a couple of weeks.
We cannot precisely verify this claim because production speeds have been enhanced by the
plant upgrade, but a significant improvement in speed due to better problem solving is a
credible claim. Improvements in unit costs are more modest: compared with the year to
September 2010, the cost per unit decreased by 3 per cent for team B in the year to September
2011, while that for team A increased by 1 per cent. The latter increase was attributed to sales
not achieving budget, resulting in a pause in production, while team A’s area was shut down
for 2 weeks and workers were temporarily relocated.
On the worker side of the equation, the interview data suggest that a greater sense of order
has been instilled by the application of problem solving and more efficient work processes. The
indications are that motivation and job satisfaction have improved: “the team has better morale
due to less misses against the plan. It’s a better place to work because it is tidier and safer.
Keeping it that way is now a habit” (member of team A). Overall, the members of teams A and
B now enjoy greater autonomy in how they do the work and show higher levels of learning
and motivation. This is mirrored in the feedback from the FLMs from these teams.
Moderate learning: teams C and D

Teams C and D are involved in warehousing activities, and in machine operation and
assembly-line activities. The interview sample size is 27 people: 90 per cent of team C and 44
per cent of team D. Team D is complex, covering six smaller units and involving two FLMs. The
interview data indicate that there have been opportunities for greater decision making and
problem solving in these teams, but the quality of the learning is more mixed, with literacy
issues coming to the fore. Here we have the proverbial ‘Curate’s egg’: good in parts.
Some improvements are clearly evident. Most interviewees describe the tasks as the same,
but the work as easier, after lean implementation. This was attributed to being better organised,
with teamwork helping to reduce costly mistakes. Members of team C described long-standing
problems, such as machine issues, as now being fixed as a result of applying problem-solving
techniques to get to the root causes of the problems. This had led to fewer machine
breakdowns, less downtime and increased output.

However, the FLM of team C described workers as struggling with problem solving: “under
this model, the team needs to discuss how to fix problems, to think beyond the scope of their
role. They struggle with this”. The members of team C corroborated this point, with the more
literate ones saying that other members of the team took sick days when an important meeting
came up. They were terrified of speaking in front of a larger group or in front of senior
managers they did not know, scared of speaking up in case they said the wrong thing. They
were described as having a fear of failure and not wanting to shame or embarrass themselves
because of lack of confidence in an English medium.
Increases in responsibility associated with lean processes had, in fact, exacerbated literacy
issues. As a result of lean teams, senior operators are required to complete more administration
and computer work, and these extra responsibilities have taken them away from hands-on
work. They therefore have less time to help out staff who have English as a second language,
reducing the level of informal support for low-literacy staff: “all of a sudden the weaker staff
are left in the open. It is a lot clearer that some of the staff are not up to the role . . . (lean
working was) not (what) they were employed to do, it used to be a lot more manual labour”.
The flexibility of the team is thus limited by the fact that the low-literacy staff have difficultly
learning new documentation or processes.
Within team D, an interesting process has started to unfold. In the interests of greater
efficiency, one group (around half the team’s members) has taken the step of simplifying their
work, allocating individuals to tasks of lesser scope. They saw this as making their work easier:
“We have one person to pick orders, one to pair orders. Before we used to have a trolley and
walk around the whole warehouse. Now we do less walking around. Teamwork makes it
easier”. There was dissatisfaction, however, in other parts of team D where the lean process
was described as a burden, and staff were critical of a lack of management support. Some
individuals described greater responsibilities: more paperwork, charts to keep up to date, and
having to make sure things were done properly and fill in for other areas that were busy. All
of this was described as more time consuming, and these individuals argued they were not
getting the right level of support from their line manager or their coach. They felt that they
were being left to implement the lean tools on their own. This was recognised by the FLM
interviewed, who is now trying to respond by providing greater time and support.
Apart from the data on quality mentioned earlier, quantitative data are difficult to interpret
in these teams. Speed-to-market outcomes for team C have been complicated by the seasonality
of some production runs and by issues relating to raw material supply. On the other hand, there
has been a small improvement in team D’s customer delivery levels, a measure of customer
orders being filled on time: in the period from August 2010 to August 2011, this statistic
improved by 6.75 per cent.
Weak learning: teams E and F

The picture is predominately negative in teams E and F, which are involved in the
manufacturing process and the packing line. Individuals in these teams were initially reluctant
to participate in this study and required some encouragement, including an emphasis that this
was their opportunity to say what they thought about the lean process. This, in itself, is
revealing. In the end, 13 people participated: 40 per cent of team E and 14 per cent of team F.
Their reports suggest that lean processes have not changed the nature of their work but have
increased its intensity.
Workers in team E report having greater responsibility for quality, for meeting targets and
for keeping areas of the factory clean. However, they described having little control over how
to do this. Opportunities for problem solving were described as limited or non-existent because

of lack of time, resources and decision-making capability. One commented: “I’ll be doing
something that is urgent. The next minute I’m taken away to do something else that is urgent.
Then I get sent back to the first thing. I cannot ask why I have to go there”. Furthermore, if
they made a mistake, they claimed they were penalised. Several workers described a ‘name and
shame’ practice whereby the names of people who had made errors were read out at team
meetings. There was, accordingly, a fear of punishment: “Some people who work with us don’t
have training. If they make a mistake and I don’t pick it up, then I get in trouble. It’s my neck
on the line. If I make a mistake, my manager will tell me off and bring me upstairs. I’m scared
to come to work because I might make a mistake and get the sack”.
In this context, these teams struggle to see problem solving as their responsibility. Where
problems are evident, they are passed upstairs, in the traditional way. As one worker
commented, “[It’s] not to do with me. It’s to do with the manager and engineer: how are they
going to fix it?”. Workers are sensitive to time pressures: “[There is] no time to problem solve.
No time to determine what the problem is and come up with a solution. As a result we don’t
meet our quota”. The evidence strongly suggested that the managers of these teams were under
production pressure, partly exacerbated by higher-than-average levels of absence in their teams
and consequent difficulties with staffing levels. The FLM interviewed claimed that training on
different machines meant the team taking ‘a negative hit’ on speed and quality while people
were learning. They felt that this was not acceptable.
Team members told us they were not actively engaged in the team meetings. In team E,
workers attributed this to the majority of the team having literacy issues. As one commented,
“most people down here have English as a second language. When you get shot down, the
chances of speaking up again are limited . . . most of the people stand in the meeting and either
don’t listen, don’t remember, or don’t understand. We’ve got a very poor level of English.
(People) get lost in these meetings”.
The quantitative data tend to support the story about work intensity. Unit costs of
production have declined in both teams since lean implementation. Between 2010 and 2011,
they fell by 17 per cent for team E and by 3 per cent for team F. This may be associated with
machinery upgrades, but it also suggests that production pressures may have transmitted
themselves into greater rates of throughput.
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS
It is evident, then, that the quality of employee learning is mixed in this lean implementation
and that there is a spread of worker responses to it. How do we interpret what has been
achieved in terms of learning, and what lessons can we draw about how to implement lean
production in ways that simultaneously improve production outcomes and the quality of work?
In what follows, we answer these questions by applying relevant theory within the structure
of the AMO framework.
Our first point is that the significant improvement in product quality can be attributed to a
general improvement in the opportunity and motivation to learn. The workers we interviewed
described an increased awareness of how their performance contributes to company-wide
results. While there is evidence of dysfunctional work intensity in certain parts of the plant, and
we will return to this issue, they reported greater pride in their work and attributed more
meaning to it: “I’ve learnt more about quality and why quality is important. Before I would
chuck it in the box, now I look at everything before I put it in the box”. Furthermore, most
workers were positively motivated by meeting the targets that have been made visible: “it’s
good to know how we are doing, you’re motivated to do better”; “yes, we fill bottles every day,

but making things just that extra bit better is really good”. In terms of the AMO framework,
there is better opportunity to perform because it is clearer what needs doing, and there is better
motivation to perform because, in the main, workers have responded to the new goals. On the
fundamental level of understanding how the organisation earns its living and how they
contribute to it, employee learning is widespread, and the benefits are mutual.
Second, despite this improvement in the clarity and acceptance of work goals, the quality of
learning, on a deeper level, is very variable, and this variation has much to do with the
opportunity factor in the AMO model. Our case study underlines what Appelbaum et al. (2000)
and Felstead et al. (2010) emphasise: it is vital to analyse the impact of work organisation on
workers’ opportunities to learn. The key variable in creating opportunity is the extent to which
control is actually devolved to workers over how they solve problems and organise their
tasks. As shown above, teams A and B have greater control over problem solving and task
organisation. Their line managers have entrusted them with greater authority or have left them
to get on with it. This has enabled them to apply their existing skills and to experiment with
ideas conveyed in the training in lean methods. In these cases, we therefore see a movement
towards the ‘active jobs’ that Karasek and Theorell (1990) describe, which foster greater
learning. The outcomes here look to be robustly win/win.
Teams C and D, however, represent a mixed picture, and teams E and F stand at the other
extreme. In the latter cases, workers have very limited control over their working methods
while work pressures have intensified. They have tougher targets and less influence over how
they achieve them, moving their situation towards Karasek and Theorell’s (1990) ‘high-strain’
jobs. Their line managers, reportedly, have been loathe to trust them. On the worker side, this
is not a better outcome than mass production and may be worse, as in Parker’s (2003) study.
On the management side, there is some gain in work output, but it is hardly satisfying because
the potential for greater gains from lean techniques is limited by the lack of learning in these
teams.
A third lesson, then, affirms the central role of the line manager in shaping the style of HRM
that is actually implemented (Purcell and Hutchinson, 2007) and the quality of learning that
results. As argued in a study of six British manufacturing sites, employee buy-in to practices
such as TQM is contingent on the degree of trust they have in their FLM (Wilkinson et al., 1997).
FLMs are not the only forces in play, but they are central to unlocking the opportunity and
motivation to learn by shaping the degree of control the team has.
It would be tempting to sheet the blame home to the line managers concerned for these
situations, but our fourth lesson is that this kind of outcome needs to be analysed more
systemically. The causes of poor implementation involve interactions among multiple variables.
In this case, while it is true that worker participation levels are lowest where the FLMs are most
controlling, these are also the parts of the plant where production pressures are the highest and
where literacy levels are the lowest. While these line managers are not ‘letting go’, this is in a
situation where production needs are not ‘letting up’, and the workers themselves are not
capable of ‘stepping up’. We think it is useful to see this as a three-way interaction in the AMO
model. Production pressures are constraining the opportunity to learn because both FLMs
and operators are too busy to reconsider their existing approaches, while the attitudes and
behaviour of the FLMs also limit the opportunity to learn and depress motivation by
withholding trust and empowerment. At the same time, worker literacy is acting as a circuit
breaker in terms of the ability to learn and could easily have the same impact in more liberal
circumstances.
What would improve mutual outcomes here? Assuming production pressures will continue,
the most crucial response must be to improve the management of the FLMs. This should

include better coaching from HR staff, who see the line managers as their principal client but
whose role in supporting the greater managerial demands of lean manufacturing has not yet
been fully realised. It should also include greater time allocated to personal development
activities, and stronger personal support and reward from higher-level managers, which should
then lead to better leadership of their teams (Purcell and Hutchinson, 2007). This improved
investment and support needs to help them cope with the conditions they actually face: high
production pressure and low worker literacy.
A second crucial response must be targeted at literacy, not at lean. As this case shows, lean
production can bring literacy issues to the fore, increasing the demand for communication skills
in teamwork and introducing a new language of unfamiliar, abstract terms. When these
demands appear, low literacy is likely to impair feelings of self-efficacy and undermine
participation (Maurer et al., 2003). Furthermore, as our data show, one coping strategy adopted
by low-literacy workers is avoidance of training and teamwork: they will avoid participation
in training and absent themselves from team meetings in order to conceal their weaknesses. In
this context, training that is targeted at lean does not equate to employee learning. It would be
helpful, then, to begin with a contextually sensitive literacy intervention, one that connects to
the relevant lean concepts, so there is a clear reason to learn, but which does not leap into forms
of lean training that assume too much prior ability. This would be of benefit both to the
company and to the workers.
Our fifth and final lesson is that cases like this raise interesting questions about learning
dynamics and the trajectory they might imply for job quality. This is a case where learning has
occurred through greater understanding of the company’s strategic priorities and, more
powerfully, where the scope for worker learning has been enhanced through empowerment.
This empowerment has not extended to the ‘what’ of work targets, which remain under
management control, but has enhanced the ‘how’ of problem solving and organising. These
elements, however, raise an interesting dynamic question. In team D, for example, workers
have used their control over working methods to self-Taylorise their jobs: they have introduced
greater task specialisation, which they see as less wasteful of human movement. This
phenomenon tends to confirm research showing the value workers can place on creating
greater order or efficiency (Harley et al., 2010), but it also recalls Wood’s (1993: 542) observation
that workers in lean manufacturing may ‘go to quality circles and then return to their
Taylorised jobs – or even return to jobs more successfully Taylorised as a consequence of their
work in the quality circles’. The dynamic question, then, is whether this is in the long-run
interest of the employees and, arguably, their employer. Job strain may be reduced, but are
worker-generated solutions likely to make the job more ‘passive’ (Karasek and Theorell, 1990;
Schouteten and Benders, 2004)? Will their skills atrophy over time, as they become less versatile
and drive uncertainty out of their working lives? Or will they, and/or their managers, see the
risks in this and respond by fostering the ongoing growth of their responsibilities and
autonomy, enabling them to reach more of their potential? Our data are insufficient to answer
these questions but indicate the importance of studying learning dynamics in a subsequent
analysis.
In conclusion, we find some general gains for the company and its workers in this
implementation of lean production. Production quality has improved and the workforce has
benefited from greater role clarity. Where line managers have relinquished control over how
problems are solved and how the work is done, and workers have had the requisite levels of
literacy, more powerful forms of learning have also occurred, and the mutual gains are greater.
However, deeper learning has yet to take hold where production pressures are high, line
managers are not enabling and workers lack self-efficacy because of low literacy. There is some

output gain here for the company, but it is hardly satisfying or a vindication of existing
investments in lean manufacturing. There will need to be further investments in line manager
support and in worker literacy to create a more stable, and more mutually beneficial, situation.
Overall, then, this study shows how the AMO framework can be used to organise relevant
theory and throw light on the system of forces that is at play in workplace learning. In this case,
it shows how empowerment, implemented through changes in work organisation in tandem
with enabling line management, can facilitate both the opportunity and motivation to learn,
while low literacy levels can constrain employee abilities despite training. The study also shows
the importance of extending the analysis of learning in a dynamic way. Efficiency has a wide
appeal, not only to managers, but if we wish to keep learning, we should be wary of fostering
the conditions in which Taylorism may strengthen its grip on work processes.
Note
1. All management interviewees have been given the name of a famous painter.
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Lean production, employee learning and workplace

This study examines an implementation of lean production in fast-moving consumer goods

LEAN MANUFACTURING AND EMPLOYEE LEARNING

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RESEARCH CONTEXT AND METHODS

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TABLE 1 Interview respondents

Management (including FLMs and senior management) 5

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THE LEAN IMPLEMENTATION: COMMONALITIES AND CONTRASTS

Strong learning: teams A and B

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Moderate learning: teams C and D

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Weak learning: teams E and F

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DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS

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