Implementing lean management in hospitals: a survey on social and technical outcomes of kaizen initiatives

Kaizen initiatives are core organisational mechanisms in lean healthcare projects. Although they show specific peculiarities (e.g. a narrow goal and an accelerated timeframe), they can vary in the way they are planned and executed. This study investigates what types of configurations of kaizen initiatives (profiled as gestalts of specific characteristics) can exist in healthcare, if they differ for social and technical outcomes, and for their application context (here considered in terms of work area routineness and team composition). The study is based on data from 362 participants to 105 kaizen initiatives implemented in two public hospitals in Italy. It identifies three clusters (i.e. ‘hard practices-oriented’, ‘soft practices-oriented’ and ‘full-lean adherent’ kaizen initiatives) characterised by different social and technical outcomes. The original contribution to the lean healthcare literature is twofold: first, the simultaneous focus on performance improvement (technical outcome) and modification of operators’ mindset (social outcome); second, the adoption of a configurational approach to understand how gestalts of many variables explain the dynamics that lead to social and technical outcomes. No significant differences were found among clusters in terms of work area routineness and team composition, which also opens interesting directions for future research.