Term Paper

THE IMPACT OF LEAN THINKING ON ORGANIZATIONAL

LEARNING

Yaqian Wang1

Lund University

School of Economics and Management

Department of Business Administration

Yaqian.wang@fek.lu.se

Tony Huzzard

Lund University

School of Economics and Management

Department of Business Administration

Tony.huzzard@fek.lu.se

ABSTRACT

Lean management and organizational learning have been seen as two driving forces for

today’s business’ success by contributing to competitive advantage in organizations.

The aim of this paper is to explore and assess the implementation of lean from the

perspective of organizational learning. By revisiting the lean concept and the

relationship between lean and learning, we argue that lean has been through an

evolution both in its scope and empirical application in the last two decades. We argue

that the recent versions of the lean discourse open up theoretical possibilities for a better

balance between exploitation and exploration. However, our empirical exploration of

these issues in a single case study in a paper packaging manufacture suggests patchy

evidence of organizational learning around lean thinking.

Key words: Lean, Organizational learning, Exploitation, Exploration

1 Correspondence: Yaqian Wang, Department of Business Administration, Institute 

of Economic Research, P.O Box 7080, SE-220 07, Sweden

Tel: +46 46 222 72 43; Fax: +46 46 222 45 28

E-mail: yaqian.wang@fek.lu.se

1 

“(Lean is) A way of thinking, not a tool, used to look at your business whether

it is manufacturing, service or any other activity where you have a supplier and

a customer.”

1 INTRODUCTION

It is some twenty years since the ideas of lean production were first articulated in what

became to be a best selling book ‘The Machine that Saved the World’ by Womack,

Jones and Roos in 1990. The basic idea of lean production is that the expenditure of

resources for any goal other than the...