LEAN diversity management in practice: The multi-functionality of questions as a resource to ensure understanding, participation and procedural compliance in a diverse workplace

Abstract

This paper explores the way that team managers in an industrial laundry facility use questions in weekly whiteboard meetings to simultaneously manage the diversity and potential language difficulties of the employees and the LEAN based management goals of improved production through employee participation. The paper argues that the multi-functionality of questions provides a resource for balancing for the competing goals of securing intersubjectivity and progressivity in the brief and yet essential meetings, and that this management has both affective and epistemic dimensions.