Soft and hard skills development in lean management trainings

Purpose This study aims to investigate the impact of traditional teaching and active learning methods in lean management (LM) on the development of both soft and hard skills. Design/methodology/approach Through a longitudinal study, team members from two different organisations (the administrative sector of a public higher education institution and a public teaching hospital), each adopting different teaching methods to support their LM trainings, were systematically examined at four moments during an 18-month period. How teaching methods impacted team members’ development and knowledge was then assessed using multivariate data analysis techniques. Findings Results indicated that LM trainings can provide significant impacts when a combination of traditional teaching methods and active learning is adopted. Traditional teaching methods can be a good choice for learning hard skills depending on resources’ availability. However, it is recommended to include active learning methods to assist in the comprehension of more complex and abstract LM concepts (soft skills). Originality/value Although there exists a large number of publications on the relationship between LM implementation and teaching methods, the number of studies that consider the development of both hard and soft skills is rather limited. This study complements the existing literature on LM by identifying which teaching methods can support the development of hard skills and which the development of soft skills. Such identification facilitates the work of both scholars wishing either to begin or to dig deeper into this sphere and practitioners pursuing the best outcomes from LM.