Common sense put to work: The capitalisation of affects in the introduction of a Lean management model to healthcare professionals

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article investigates how Lean model is introduced in a management training course targeted at healthcare professionals in Finland. Lean management originated in the Japanese car industry; since the 1990s it has become a key management doctrine for healthcare reform in Western welfare states. Drawing on ethnographic research on a two-day Lean management training course in 2019, and by applying the analytical lenses of affects and sociomateriality, the article illustrates how Lean is made attractive to healthcare professionals. The article results that Lean training serves as an example of complex mechanism of biocapitalist production in which people’s cognition, feelings, sensitivities and experiences are transformed into tools of labour and are put to work through common sense. Methodologically, the article demonstrates in an illuminating fashion how capitalisation of affects may be studied.