The Facets of ‘Respect for People’ Principle: A Systematic Review and Thematic Analysis of the Literature

The core of lean is formed by two key principles: continuous improvement (CI) and respect for people (RFP). Although lean holds a lot of promise to improve operations, the implementation success rate outside of Japan is still fairly low. Recent literature shows that one of the main reasons for failed implementation is a lack and poor understanding of RFP principle, which results in reduced people involvement. This paper aims to improve the understanding by exploring the prevailing discourses in lean literature related to the RFP principle to distil dominant themes which break this complex concept into facets that could be systematically studied. For this purpose, we propose a systematic literature review of 26 articles published in 21 peer-reviewed international journals that explicitly discuss RFP principle. Four themes emerged from the analysis, and three RFP facets were distilled from these themes. The analysis shows that all of RFP facets must be in place to enhance people's involvement in problem-solving. A specific relation between the facets is observed that needs to be acknowledged when RFP is considered. The results also show that RFP enables CI and complements it as an intervention in its own right. While this study is far from exhaustive, we believe the results will introduce additional clarity and improve the utility of the complex RFP principle for research and practice.