Advocates of lean production argue that a work system is truly lean only if a given bundle of practices, including worker empowerment, is implemented in the proper configuration. In contrast, my interviews and observations in six US manufacturing plants demonstrate that substantive empowerment...

According to the theory, a combination of the highly regulated external labour market and the internal rigidity would induce organisational inefficiency. Evidence suggests that theoretically unexpected results of that combination prevailed in Slovenia. Under the pressure of the competition on...