The mediating role of management capability in the effects of lean manufacturing practices on organizational performance: A research on the manufacturing companies in Türkiye

The main aim of this study is to determine whether there is a mediating effect of management capability in the relationship between lean practices and organizational performance. It focuses on how lean practices and performance criteria of manufacturing industry firms in Türkiye are shaped. The study aims to analyze the scope and level of lean manufacturing practices as well as organizational performance measured by Balanced ScoreCard (BSC). Another objective of the study is to determine the extent to which management capability among the capabilities of organizations changes the effect of lean production on organizational performance. The study consists of two stages. In the first stage of the study, a literature review was conducted on the concepts of lean management dimensions, management capability and organizational performance. In the second stage, the relationships between the dependent and independent variables were revealed. The population of the research covers all manufacturing enterprises in Türkiye. Within the scope of the population of the research, data were collected from 393 people at the management level in production enterprises. The data obtained within the scope of the research were analyzed with the help of SPSS and AMOS programs. As a result of the research, the hypothesis "management ability has a mediating variable effect on the relationship between lean practices and organizational performance" could not be confirmed in all of the sub-dimensions analyzed. There is no mediating effect of management capability on the effect of Just-in-Time production (JIT), kanban, single minute exchange die (SMED) on learning development performance. Similarly, there is no mediating effect of management capability on the effect of SMED, Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) on customer performance, and similarly on the effect of 5S on financial performance. In the relationship between the other dimensions within the scope of the analysis, it is seen that management capability has a mediating effect. Finally, within the framework of the findings, a number of recommendations are presented for organizations and researchers implementing lean production. Keywords: Lean manufacturing practices, Organizational performance, Management capability, Balanced ScoreCard, Structural Equation Modeling