Going lean or going native? The social regulation of ‘lean’ production systems

Abstract

Abstract The experience with Japanese or ‘lean’ production systems when trans‐’ planted to the West has often been below expectations. This article reviews some of this experience and the surrounding debate. Adopting a theoretical position akin to that of the Regulation School, we argue that production systems need to be understood from within the wider sociocultural context in which they have been embedded. We next examine five critical features of the Japanese production system and their modus operandi within Japanese society. We submit that the sociocultural context creates and is reproduced by psychological factors, in particular a concept of self which is arguably different from that which drives the motivations of Western homo economicus. A concluding section explores to what extent, in the West, information technology is accompanied by an organizational function that may replace the role of indigenous social structure in Japanese production systems.