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Introduction
How to fully integrate sustainability issues with lean operations and supply chains has been identified as one of the major challenges facing contemporary operations management (OM) (Kleindorfer et al., 2005). The mutually beneficial relationship between sustainability and economic performance is now generally accepted as true (Porter, 1991; Porter and van der Linde, 1995; Jeffers, 2010). Previous studies highlight a range of positive relationships between sustainability and economic performance, including: cost savings, product quality improvement, increasing market share, getting ahead of legislation, accessing new markets, increasing employee retention, and improving public relations (Zhu and Sarkis, 2004).
It is also clear that OM plays an important part in delivering these positive outcomes, although what that role may be is less certain: “We are just beginning to understand and map the territory for sustainable OM” (Kleindorfer et al., 2005, p. 489). While Florida’s (1996) study of nearly 2,000 companies highlighted a strong positive relationship between the outcome of good operations and the environment, the nature of achieving this outcome (i.e. the process of strategy formation and implementation) between sustainability and OM is unclear and the engagement with “lean operations” remains under-examined. Addressing this topic 16 years later Azevedo et al. (2012) report that there remain almost no rigorous academic studies investigating lean operations and sustainability.
A focus on lean operations as a specific subset of world-class operational practices is a recurrent theme in the operations literature (e.g. Piercy and Rich, 2009). Researchers are beginning to link lean operations to sustainability, promoting the mantra that “lean is green” (e.g. Corbett and Klassen, 2006). One of the goals of lean operations is to use fewer resources to generate the same outcome. This is clearly, inherently environmentally friendly: as less materials are used in production, and also quality improvements reduce rework, scrap, power/water consumption, and pollution costs, environmental benefits are observed (King and Lenox, 2001; Rothenberg et al., 2001; Simpson and Power, 2005). This conceptualisation has formed the basis of almost all past research on lean operations and sustainability. Thus, the sustainability benefits lean operations can affect have been limited to environmental performance (e.g. Florida, 1996; Zhu and Sarkis, 2004; Kainuma and Tawara, 2006; Lapinski et al., 2006; Farish, 2009; Mollenkopf et al., 2010; Oglethorpe...