Editorial: The landscape of Lean across public services

Taken from start of article……Ten years ago in Public Money and Management (Volume 28, Number 1), Radnor and Boaden (2008) wrote an editorial entitled: ‘Lean in Public Services – Panacea or Paradox?’ (pp 3-7) as an introduction to a set of articles examining lean in Public Services. In this themed issue Radnor returns with Bateman and Glennon to reflect on the implementation of lean in public services ten years on. The first point to note is that lean (and associated techniques) is still being implemented and the question is still being asked! Can lean address the challenges of public service delivery (a panacea)? Or is it a distraction for public sector managers (a paradox)? In this editorial, we reflect on the original editorial and issue to understand how far we have (or have not) come, as well as examine the current state of play and introduce the articles in this issue. We will not give a detailed overview of lean, as this was presented in 2008 (Radnor and Boaden, 2008) and can be easily found in other sources (e.g. Liker, 2004; Ohno, 1988; Womack and Jones, 2010; Womack et al., 1990), with Holweg (2007) providing a useful genealogy of lean’s production origins.