TY  - CONF
TI  - When you meet Lean Construction gurus - beware!
C1  - Singapore, Singapore
C3  - Proceedings of the 34th Annual Conference of the International Group for Lean Construction (IGLC 34)
SP  - 899
EP  - 910
PY  - 2026
DO  - 10.24928/2026/0100
AU  - Lappalainen, Eelon
AU  - Ainamo, Antti
AU  - Desmarais, Dominic
AU  - Reinbold, Ana
AD  - Visiting Scholar, Civil Engineering, Aalto University, Espoo, Finland, ext-eelon.lappalainen@aalto.fi, orcid.org/0000-0002-7573-344X
AD  - Associate Professor, Institute of Computer Science, University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia, antti.ainamo@ut.ee, orcid.org/0000-0003-0210-0294
AD  - Assistant Researcher, Civil Engineering, University of Alberta, Alberta, Canada, ddesmar1@ualberta.ca, orcid.org/0009-0002-0506-5041
AD  - Doctoral Researcher, Civil Engineering, Aalto University, Espoo, Finland, ana.reinbold@aalto.fi, orcid.org/0000-0002-7774-7984
ED  - Hamzeh, Farook
ED  - Poshdar, Mani
ED  - Garcia-Lopez,, Nelly P.
AB  - Research shows that people can become dependent on “gurus” or teachers whose theories and systems they deeply respect. Such dependence can become an anxious form of attachment that hinders critical thinking, genuine understanding, and independent decision-making. Building on these premises, this article revisits lean construction (LC), a recent, fashionable construction management paradigm that challenges established construction practices. Limited attention has been paid to guru discourse in the context of LC. Drawing on prior research on gurus and LC, we argue that the interpretive flexibility of LC has enabled continuous reinterpretation and provided fertile ground for guruism. Using a Google search, we collected LC discourse-related data in the form of 100 posts posted between 2019 and 2025 on LinkedIn, a professional social media platform. We analyzed these posts using netnographic methods as a theory-testing approach. Our findings identified five interrelated dimensions: (a) charismatic expertise, (b) rhetorical simplification, (c) framing LC as a universal solution, (d) emphasis on doctrinal purity and orthodoxy, and (e) prosocial community building. We argue that these dimensions shape online communities on social media platforms and crowd out reflexive, critical, professional judgment in contemporary LC discourse.
KW  - Lean construction
KW  - guru
KW  - charismatic leadership
KW  - social media
KW  - discourse analysis.
PB  - 
T2  - Proceedings of the 34th Annual Conference of the International Group for Lean Construction (IGLC 34)
DA  - 2026/06/22
CY  - Singapore, Singapore
L1  - http://iglc.net/Papers/Details/2440/pdf
L2  - http://iglc.net/Papers/Details/2440
N1  - Export Date: 19 June 2026
DB  - IGLC.net
DP  - IGLC
LA  - English
ER  -