TAXING TIMES: LEAN WORKING AND THE CREATION OF (IN)EFFICIENCIES IN HM REVENUE AND CUSTOMS
| Date | 01 March 2013 |
| Author | HELEN RICHARDSON,ANDREW SMITH,PHIL TAYLOR,BOB CARTER,ANDY DANFORD,DEBRA HOWCROFT |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.2012.02073.x |
| Published date | 01 March 2013 |
doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9299.2012.02073.x
TAXING TIMES: LEAN WORKING AND THE CREATION
OF (IN)EFFICIENCIES IN HM REVENUE AND CUSTOMS
BOB CARTER, ANDY DANFORD, DEBRA HOWCROFT, HELEN RICHARDSON,
ANDREW SMITH AND PHIL TAYLOR
The prevailing economic and budgetary climate is intensifying the search for methods and practices
aimed at generating efficiencies in public sector provision. This paper investigates the increasingly
popular bundle of techniques operating under the generic descriptor of lean, which promises
to improve operational quality processes while simultaneously reducing cost. It offers a critical
appraisal of lean as a fashionable component of public sector reform and challenges the received
wisdom that it unambiguously delivers ‘efficiencies’. Quantitative and qualitative research in HM
Revenue and Customs (HMRC) centred on employees’ experiences has indicated the extent to which
work has been reorganized along lean principles. However, employees perceive that changes in
organizational processes and working practices have unintentionally generated inefficiencies which
have impacted on the quality of public service. These suggested outcomes raise wider concerns as
lean working is adopted in other public sector organizations.
INTRODUCTION
Over the last three decades the UK public sector has been subjected to continual reform,
restructuring, and re-engineering. Financial constraints have long pressurized govern-
ment to consider how best to ‘re-commodify non-productive’ public services (Kirkpatrick
and Martinez Lucio 1995), a pressure that has intensified following the financial crisis and
budgetary constraint. Government objectives have pushed for solutions that ostensibly
increase efficiency, and productivity as well as delivering cost-effective quality provision
(Diefenbach 2009; Pollitt and Bouckaert 2009). From the 1980s, efficiency has become
pivotal to many reform initiatives (Ackroyd et al. 2007), to the extent that public admin-
istration scholars regard it as one of the most important dimensions of public service
performance (Andrews and Entwistle 2010). Yet the conundrum of how government best
achieves efficiency rationalization persists.
In this context, the paper investigates the ‘mechanics, policies, philosophies and tech-
nologies [that] are being used to create efficiency in public sector organizations’ (Public
Administration call for papers) through a study of the implementation of lean techniques
in the UK civil service, specifically tax processing work in HM Revenue and Customs
(HMRC). The appeal of lean is evident given that it offers techniques and philosophies
that appear to deliver efficiency (Radnor et al. 2006). Moreover, it is suggested that ‘pub-
lic benefits can be considerable’ (Radnor and Boaden 2008, p. 3). However, there is a
critical lacuna in the debate on the applicability and efficacy of lean to public services.
To date, studies have neglected the experiences of employees whose task performance
has been reconfigured by lean. It is argued that the testimony of those working on the
organization–public interface can provide an important complement or indeed corrective
to claims of lean’s value based upon limited empirical evidence.
Bob Carter is at Leicester Business School, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK. Andy Danford is at Bristol Business
School, University of the West of England, Bristol, UK. Debra Howcroft is at Manchester Business School, University
of Manchester, UK and Social Informatics, Lule˚
a University of Technology, Sweden. Helen Richardson is at Salford
Business School, University of Salford, UK. Andrew Smith is at Bradford University School of Management, University
of Bradford, UK. Phil Taylor is at Strathclyde Business School, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK.
Public Administration Vol. 91, No. 1, 2013 (83–97)
©2013 Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden,
MA 02148, USA.
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