IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/ecoind/v43y2022i1p198-220.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Lean production, work intensification and employee wellbeing: Can line-manager support make a difference?

Author

Listed:
  • Meng-Long Huo

    (University of South Australia Business School, Australia)

  • Peter Boxall

    (Department of Management and International Business, The University of Auckland Business School, New Zealand)

  • Gordon W. Cheung

    (The University of Auckland, New Zealand)

Abstract

Using a two-wave survey of 315 workers in a lean manufacturing plant, this study examines how work intensification affects employee wellbeing and how its effects may be ameliorated. It demonstrates that work intensification is transmitted into poorer wellbeing through greater emotional exhaustion. It shows that this mediation process is moderated by line-manager support, which buffers the relationship between emotional exhaustion and wellbeing. The study suggests that the health-impairing risks of high work intensity in lean settings can be reduced through better supervisory support. Ensuring that line managers have the opportunity, skills and motivation to offer good support to workers is a vital aspect of the interventions needed to counteract the health risks posed by lean production.

Suggested Citation

  • Meng-Long Huo & Peter Boxall & Gordon W. Cheung, 2022. "Lean production, work intensification and employee wellbeing: Can line-manager support make a difference?," Economic and Industrial Democracy, Department of Economic History, Uppsala University, Sweden, vol. 43(1), pages 198-220, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:ecoind:v:43:y:2022:i:1:p:198-220
    DOI: 10.1177/0143831X19890678
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0143831X19890678
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0143831X19890678?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Andreas Klein & Helfried Moosbrugger, 2000. "Maximum likelihood estimation of latent interaction effects with the LMS method," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 65(4), pages 457-474, December.
    2. Erich C. Fein & Natalie Skinner & M. Anthony Machin, 2017. "Work Intensification, Work–Life Interference, Stress, and Well-Being in Australian Workers," International Studies of Management & Organization, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 47(4), pages 360-371, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Seán Ó Riain & Amy Erbe Healy, 2024. "Workplace regimes in Western Europe, 1995–2015: Implications for intensification, intrusion, income and insecurity," Economic and Industrial Democracy, Department of Economic History, Uppsala University, Sweden, vol. 45(2), pages 415-446, May.
    2. Joey Soehardjojo & Rick Delbridge & Guglielmo Meardi, 2023. "The hidden layers of resistance to dominant HRM transfer: Evidence from Japanese management practice adoption in Indonesia," Economic and Industrial Democracy, Department of Economic History, Uppsala University, Sweden, vol. 44(3), pages 679-702, August.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Son K. Lam & Thomas E. DeCarlo & Ashish Sharma, 2019. "Salesperson ambidexterity in customer engagement: do customer base characteristics matter?," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Springer, vol. 47(4), pages 659-680, July.
    2. Slupphaug, KJell & Mehmetoglu, Mehmet & Mittner, Matthias, 2024. "modsem: An R package for estimating latent interactions and quadratic effects," OSF Preprints h3rpw, Center for Open Science.
    3. Anastasia Stathopoulou & Tommy Kweku Quansah & George Balabanis, 2022. "The Blinding Effects of Team Identification on Sports Corruption: Cross-Cultural Evidence from Sub-Saharan African Countries," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 179(2), pages 511-529, August.
    4. Maggioni, Isabella & Sands, Sean & Kachouie, Reza & Tsarenko, Yelena, 2019. "Shopping for well-being: The role of consumer decision-making styles," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 21-32.
    5. Bouncken, Ricarda B. & Ratzmann, Martin & Kraus, Sascha, 2021. "Anti-aging: How innovation is shaped by firm age and mutual knowledge creation in an alliance," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 137(C), pages 422-429.
    6. Seon, Youngwoon & Smith-Adcock, Sondra, 2023. "Adolescents’ meaning in life as a resilience factor between bullying victimization and life satisfaction," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 148(C).
    7. Yihan Huang & Daehwan Kim, 2023. "How Does Service Quality Improve Consumer Loyalty in Sports Fitness Centers? The Moderating Role of Sport Involvement," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(17), pages 1-24, August.
    8. Alina Simona Tecau & Cristinel Petrisor Constantin & Radu Constantin Lixandroiu & Ioana Bianca Chitu & Gabriel Bratucu, 2020. "Impact of the COVID-19 Crisis on Heavy Work Investment in Romania," The AMFITEATRU ECONOMIC journal, Academy of Economic Studies - Bucharest, Romania, vol. 22(Special 1), pages 1049-1049, November.
    9. Masood Badri & Mugheer Al Khaili & Guang Yang & Muna Al Bahar & Asma Al Rashdi, 2022. "Examining the Structural Effect of Working Time on Well-Being: Evidence from Abu Dhabi," International Journal of Social Sciences, European Research Center, vol. 11(2), pages 24-44, September.
    10. Ingo S. Seifert & Julia M. Rohrer & Boris Egloff & Stefan C. Schmukle, 2021. "The Development of the Rank-Order Stability of the Big Five across the Life Span," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 1156, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    11. Yajun Wu & Xia Kang, 2021. "A Moderated Mediation Model of Expectancy-Value Interactions, Engagement, and Foreign Language Performance," SAGE Open, , vol. 11(4), pages 21582440211, November.
    12. Graciela Corral de Zubielqui & Noel Lindsay & Wendy Lindsay & Janice Jones, 2019. "Knowledge quality, innovation and firm performance: a study of knowledge transfer in SMEs," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 53(1), pages 145-164, June.
    13. Eelen, Jiska & Özturan, Peren & Verlegh, Peeter W.J., 2017. "The differential impact of brand loyalty on traditional and online word of mouth: The moderating roles of self-brand connection and the desire to help the brand," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 34(4), pages 872-891.
    14. Ranjith Vijayakumar & Ji Yeh Choi & Eun Hwa Jung, 2022. "A Unified Neural Network Framework for Extended Redundancy Analysis," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 87(4), pages 1503-1528, December.
    15. Cicala, John E. & Bush, Alan J. & Sherrell, Daniel L. & Deitz, George D., 2014. "Does transparency influence the ethical behavior of salespeople?," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 67(9), pages 1787-1795.
    16. José Martín-Albo & Andrés Lombas & Teresa Jiménez & Sonsoles Valdivia-Salas & Juan Núñez & Jaime León, 2015. "The Mediating Role of Relatedness Between Repair and Loneliness: A Preliminary Model in High School Students," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 16(5), pages 1131-1148, October.
    17. Oc, Burak & Daniels, Michael A. & Diefendorff, James M. & Bashshur, Michael R. & Greguras, Gary J., 2020. "Humility breeds authenticity: How authentic leader humility shapes follower vulnerability and felt authenticity," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 158(C), pages 112-125.
    18. Jule Specht & Boris Egloff & Stefan C. Schmukle, 2012. "Everything under Control?: The Effects of Age, Gender, and Education on Trajectories of Perceived Control in a Nationally Representative German Sample," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 445, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    19. M. Barendse & F. Oort & G. Garst, 2010. "Using restricted factor analysis with latent moderated structures to detect uniform and nonuniform measurement bias; a simulation study," AStA Advances in Statistical Analysis, Springer;German Statistical Society, vol. 94(2), pages 117-127, June.
    20. Pankaj C. Patel & Marko Kohtamäki & Vinit Parida & Joakim Wincent, 2015. "Entrepreneurial orientation-as-experimentation and firm performance: The enabling role of absorptive capacity," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(11), pages 1739-1749, November.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:ecoind:v:43:y:2022:i:1:p:198-220. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.ekhist.uu.se/english.htm .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.