Laurent is currently the Caterpillar France managing director. He has had several positions in his company, mainly in operations, but also in HR and finance. He decided to embark on the DBA journey in 2011 in order to better understand the academic world and needs and to be able to transmit to younger generations what he has learned in the industry.
Economic globalization pushes multinationals to develop themselves across the
globe and limitations of management theories and tools as well as their universal validity
become an interesting field of research. The purpose of this study is to evaluate, using
lessons from Caterpillar, if national culture is influencing lean tools adoption in order to
assess the opportunity to provide alternatives to increase the efficiency and effectiveness
of a worldwide deployment. In other words, can we better understand the potential
impact of national culture on the performance of a production system in order to propose
adjustments to make deployment easier and more efficient? The literature review reveals
abundant work related to management tools and their applicability as well as a lot of
research related to production systems, lean tools and national culture. But surprisingly
enough, there is very little research studying the relationship between national culture and
lean tool adoption: this gap in the literature is examined in this study.
Data representing the evolution of the production system score for 80
Caterpillar facilities across the world from 2006 to 2010 in 17 countries were collected
and compared by country. A correlation was calculated with Hofstede’s 6 latest national
cultural dimensions: Power Distance (PDI), Individualism (IDV), Masculinity (MAS),
Uncertainty Avoidance (UAI), Long Term Orientation (LTO) and Indulgence Versus
Restraint (IVR).Findings from the study indicate that indeed, there is a clear correlation between
Hofstede’s dimensions and the evolution of CPS scores which is a good way to assess
effectiveness of lean tools adoption.
We can expect to get better results in countries with:
• High Power Distance, Long Term Orientation
• Low Individualism and Indulgence
And we have not found any influence of Masculinity and Uncertainty
Avoidance.
It is interesting to notice that there is a positive correlation with the level of
industrialization as well.
When looking at each lean principle, a lot of them follow the same pattern as
the total score (Chase Waste, Make Value Flow and Act Decisively) but we have also two
groups of two other principles (Pull and Validate our Process as well as Actively Listen and
Make it Visual) and eventually all other principles which follow a unique pattern.
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