Lean management and hybrid masculinization - a case study from Finnish healthcare

Abstract

This chapter investigates the workings of hybrid masculinization in the arguments of lean experts making lean applicable to Finnish healthcare. 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. By drawing on an analysis of 11 interviews with lean management experts conducted from 2019 to 2020, the chapter shows that lean does not exclude either ‘masculine virtues’ of rationalization nor interpersonal practices associated with women and femininity but appropriates, modifies and re-contextualizes various forms of (stereotypical) gendered expressions, associations, styles, and practices to create a hybrid masculinization of lean. The chapter reveals that hybridization of lean healthcare is both a mechanism through which patriarchal relations may endure or re-emerge in new forms and a mechanism that (re)produces capitalist relations.