Thomas Houy

Research on HRM and lean management: a literature survey

The key mechanisms and the decisive variables that appear to justify the comparative advantage of lean companies deal with Human Resources (HR) issues. The purpose of this literature survey is therefore twofold. First, this paper sets out to clarify what lean management is from a Human Resources Management (HRM) viewpoint. Second, this paper identifies the main characteristics of HRM in lean companies.

Can Agile Collaboration Practices Enhance Knowledge Creation between Cross-Functional Teams?

Agile philosophy emphasizes constant interactions and close collaboration between team members. This emergent management philosophy relies on a set of practices that aim at creating an environment in which teams are able to respond rapidly to customer’s needs and to deal effectively with changing situations. From this perspective, agile practices can be viewed as a way to enhance knowledge creation and knowledge sharing between team members. However these emergent practices necessitate an environment that facilitates communication and coordination mechanisms. The present paper aims at analyzing how large organizations, characterized by distributed and cross-functional teams, can cultivate an agile environment where inter-individual knowledge exchanges are encouraged. Even though mutual adjustments and face to face interactions are not easily achieved in large and distributed organizations, the contributions of agile practices in such contexts remain significant. These practices can foster knowledge development and collective learning processes and subsequently improve organization’s adaptability.

Outils de reporting structurés et pratiques d'amélioration continue

This article aims at providing new insights on the relation between StructuredReporting Tools (SRT) and management practices designed to encourageemployees to improve production processes. In this paper, the authors use aprincipal-agent model with moral hazard. They consider a situation whereinformation on the efforts made by operators can be observable or not by themanager based on its decision regarding the installation of a SRT. They showthat this installation is all the more profitable where the efficiency of routineefforts is high relative to the efficiency of non-routine efforts. They also showthat the effect of productivity on the installation of a SRT is ambiguous.