Lean Management and Innovation—A Paradox? Reinventing the Role of Problem-Solving Within Organizations

Organizations today are faced with the dual imperative of fostering both quality and innovation. The simultaneous pursuit of quality and innovation may introduce a paradox: achieving quality involves the promotion of a lean management climate, characterized by standardization, risk mitigation, waste reduction, and resource efficiency, while innovation necessitates a climate conducive to risk-taking, challenging established norms, accepting potential wastefulness, and allocating resources. We propose that problem-solving that encompasses the identification and resolution of disruptions and challenges can serve as a critical bridge between these two potentially conflicting climates. Results of a survey of 402 employees and their managers working in 53 teams in two organizations (a hospital and a high-tech company) demonstrated that when the level of problem-solving was low, the paradoxical relationship between high lean management and innovation climates impaired the teams’ quality performance. Conversely, under higher levels of problem-solving, high lean management and innovation climates were associated with better quality performance. However, problem-solving did not solve the abovementioned climates’ paradoxical relationship regarding innovation performance, i.e., innovation performance was high when the innovation climate was higher and the lean management climate was lower. Future article and implications for practice are discussed.