Investigating the Implementation of Toyota’s Human Resources Management Practices in the Aerospace Industry

Many companies try to follow Toyota’s production model to achieve better performance. In their attempts, however, they primarily focus on Lean Production tools, often overlooking the role of employees and HRM practices. In this work, we aim to investigate the implementation of Toyota’s HRM practices in the aerospace sector. For this purpose, we used a qualitative methodology, whereby data were collected through semi-structured interviews with thirty office and production employees from a Canadian aerospace company. Our results show that the company under study adopted several of Toyota’s HRM practices, including training, communication, respect, supervisor/manager support, fairness, and occupational health and safety. These findings underscore the importance of Toyota’s HRM practices in the aerospace sector. Notably, however, not all of Toyota’s HRM practices were adopted, and among those adopted, we found considerable differences in implementation. Overall, our findings provide novel insights into the implementation of HRM practices in the aerospace sector and highlight the flexibility in their implementation to adapt to the context of the target company.