The influence of lean practices on employee social sustainability: an exploratory study

Abstract

Corporate sustainability and lean manufacturing have been linked in late research with a major interest in environmental benefits, leaving the theoretical insights and the practicality of the social sphere of sustainability considerably underdeveloped. Social sustainability on the shop floor of productive systems can be translated to employee social sustainability (ESS), which is an emerging topic given its potential to leverage corporate sustainability at the bottom line. However, procedural aspects of ESS are still ill-explored. Addressing this gap, this dissertation investigates the influence of lean manufacturing practices on dimensions of employee social sustainability, which enabled the identification of the most critical practices. Given the incipient stage of the present disclosure, an exploratory study was conducted in two phases: first, seeking evidence in the literature through means of a systematic literature review, and second, applying the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to connect ESS to lean practices based on expert opinion. From the systematic review, 23 links were found bridging the gap between eight lean practices and four dimensions of employee social sustainability. Based on these pieces of evidence, an AHP model was designed to calculate priorities among lean practices and social dimensions. Relying on expert opinion, “health and safety” was assessed as the most critical social dimension, and 5S was rated the most influential lean practice on ESS overall. This study contributed to introducing the perspective of lean practices as enablers of ESS. Particularly, it pointed which specific practices should be prioritized in the lean implementation process with social sustainability purposes. Additionally, it identified unreported connections in the literature, thus building a basis for further investigation.