Contributor
Stewart, Paul.
Imprint:London ; Portland, OR : Frank Cass, 1996.
Description206 p. : ill. ; 25 cm.
Note:Beyond Japan, beyond consensus? From Japanese management to lean production / Paul Stewart -- A fallen idol?: Japanese management in the 1990s / Colin Haslam, Karel Williams, Sukhdev Johal, John Williams -- The changing nature of Japanese production systems in the 1990s and issues for labour studies / Koichi Ogasawara, Hirofumi Ueda -- Working conditions under lean production: a worker-based benchmarking study / Wayne Lewchuk, David Robertson -- A New model Ford? / Steve Babson -- New manufacturing strategies and labour in Latin America / John Humphrey -- Volvo: a force for Fordist retrenchment or innovation in the automobile industry? / Kajsa Ellegard -- The competitivity of the automobile industry: the French way / Jean-Pierre Durand -- Reactions to the crisis: job losses, shortened working week, income losses and business re-engineering in the German auto industry / Ulrich Bochum, C. Dorrenbacher -- Taylorism, lean production and the automotive industry / Mike Rawlinson, Peter Wells.
Bibliography Note:Includes bibliographical references and index.
Note:"This collection of ten essays is critical of claims about both the superiority of Japanese manufacturing techniques, or "lean production," and the notion that automobile companies in other nations can successfully compete with the Japanese by duplicating these techniques and becoming "lean producers...." Contributors advance three important counterclaims. First, the success of the Japanese automobile industry rests more on favorable structural conditions and the superexploitation of labor than on the superiority of its techniques. Second, no company outside of Japan, not even a Japanese company, has successfully reproduced the Japanese system. Instead, the implementation of lean techniques has resulted in hybrids that combine elements of the Japanese system with local peculiarities. Third, in cases where existing systems of production were altered through the adoption of Japanese techniques, the workforce was reduced, organized labor weakened, and the quality of working life degraded." -- From Choice Reviews
Note:Recommended in Best Books for Academic Libraries
