Stairway to heaven or a placebo: the impact of lean leadership, through job demands, on hospital workers' engagement and performance.

Purpose: This study aims to examine to what extent the relationships between hospital workers' perceptions of lean leadership behaviour, their engagement and the hospital unit's perceived performance are mediated by job demands.

Design/methodology/approach: The data ( = 1,624) come from a lean implementation study in a Dutch hospital and are analysed using structural equation modelling in Mplus (v8.4).