Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-8bljj Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-03T07:09:37.169Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Bad Work Practices and Good Management Practices: The Consequences of the Extension of Managerial Control in British and Japanese Manufacturing since 1950

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 December 2011

John Williams ,
Colin Haslam  and
Karel Williams
John Williams
Affiliation:
John Williams is professor in the Department of Economics and Agricultural Economics atthe University of Wales, Aberystwyth.
Colin Haslam
Affiliation:
Karel Williams is senior lecturer.
Karel Williams
Affiliation:
Colin Haslam is principal lecturer in business studies at East London Polytechnic.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Although the existing academic literature on management practices contrasts national styles, it does not pose or answer key questions about the effectiveness of different approaches. Industrial relations specialists and engineers both offer highly specialized work that provides little detailed analysis of the productivity and profit results of changes in production techniques or of the interaction between the two. The applied economics literature on profit and productivity is equally unhelpful, because it relates differences of output to general differences in factor input, rather than to the detailed organization of production. This article provides some tentative answers to new questions about the efficacy of different approaches to production management, and it contributes to the ongoing debate about whether the significance of the “labor problem” has been over-rated in Britain.

Type
Articles
Information
Business History Review , Volume 64 , Issue 4 , Winter 1990 , pp. 657 - 688
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1990

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Williams, K., Williams, J., and Haslam, C., The Breakdown of Austin Rover (Leamington Spa, 1987)Google Scholar; Cutler, T., Haslam, C., Williams, K., and Williams, J., The Aberystwyth Report on Coal, mimeo typescript (Abersystwyth, Wales, 1985)Google Scholar.

2 Atkinson, J. and Meager, N., Changing Work Patterns: How Companies Achieve Flexibility to Meet New Needs (London, 1986)Google Scholar; Curson, C., Flexible Patterns of Work (London, 1986)Google Scholar.

3 Schonberger, R., Japanese Manufacturing Techniques (New York, 1982)Google Scholar; Schonberger, , World Class Manufacturing (New York, 1986)Google Scholar; Hartley, J., Robots at Work (Bedford, 1985)Google Scholar.

4 Melman, Seymour, Dynamic Factors in Industrial Activity (Oxford, 1956), 130Google Scholar.

5 Williams, K., Williams, J., and Thomas, D., Why Are the British Bad at Manufacturing? (London, 1983)Google Scholar; Williams et al., Breakdown of Austin Rover.

6 Abegglen, J. and Stalk, G., Kaisha, the Japanese Corporation (New York, 1985)Google Scholar.

7 For example, see Doyle, P., Saunders, T., and Wong, O., “A comparative study of US and Japanese marketing strategies in the British market” (mimeo, University of Warwick, 1987)Google Scholar.

8 Abegglen and Stalk, Kaisha.

9 National Institute Economic Review (Aug. 1982).

10 Nichols, T., The British Worker Question (London, 1986).Google Scholar

11 Daniel, W., Workplace Industrial Relations and Technical Change (London, 1987)Google Scholar.

12 Atkinson and Meager, Changing Work Patterns; Curson, Flexible Patterns of Work.

13 J. MacInnes, The Question of Flexibility, paper no. 5, Dept. of Economic and Social Research, University of Glasgow (Aug. 1987).

14 Institute of Development Studies, Study 360 (Brighton, England, 1987)Google Scholar.

15 Curson, Flexible Patterns of Work.

16 Atkinson and Meager, Changing Work Patterns.

17 A. Daley, D. Hitchens, and K. Wagner, “Productivity, Machinery and Skills in a Sample of British and German Manufacturing Plants,” National Institute Economic Review no. III (Feb. 1985): 48-61; H. Steedman and K. Wagner, “A Second Look at Productivity, Machinery and Skills in Britain and Germany,” Ibid. no. 121 (Nov. 1987): 84-95.

18 New, C. and Myers, A., Managing Manufacturing Operations in the U.K., 1955-1985 (British Institute of Management, 1986)Google Scholar.

19 Williams et al., Breakdown of Austin Rover.

20 Our own earlier work (Williams et al., Why Are the British Bad at Manufacturing?) made a similar argument in a partial and less satisfactory form.

21 Meyer, A. De and Ferdows, K., “Managerial Focal Points in Manufacturing Strategy,” unpublished paper, INSEAD (Fontainebleau, 1987)Google Scholar.

22 New and Myers, Managing Manufacturing Operations, 7.

23 Williams et al., Why Are the British Bad at Manufacturing?.

24 Cusumano, Michael, The Japanese Automobile Industry (Cambridge, Mass., 1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 Cusumano, Japanese Automobile Industry.

26 Graham, I., Development of Just In Time Manufacture in the West, mimeo, Dept. of Business Organisation, Heriot Watt University (Edinburgh, 1987)Google Scholar.

27 Cusumano, Japanese Automobile Industry, 324-25.

28 Ibid., 278.

29 Ibid., 285.

30 Ibid., 276.

31 Ibid., 242.

32 De Meyer and Ferdows, “Managerial Focal Points.”

33 Wickham Skinner, “The Focused Factory,” Harvard Business Review (May–June 1974), 113-21.

34 Choi, F. and Hiromatsu, K., Accounting and Financial Reporting in Japan (London, 1987), 157–59Google Scholar.

35 Nakahara, S., “Added Value Accounting of Enterprises in Japan,” Keizaigaku Ronshu 15, 2 (Sept. 1983): 25–53Google Scholar.

36 Choi and Hiromatsu, Accounting and Financial Reporting, 157-59.

37 Pratten, C., Labour Productivity Differentials within International Companies (Cambridge, England, 1976)Google Scholar.

38 Cutler et al., The Aberystwyth Report on Coal.

39 Cusumano, Japanese Automobile Industry, 300.

40 Altshuler, A. et al. ,The Future of the Automobile (Cambridge, Mass., 1985)Google Scholar.

41 Kamata, Satoshi, Japan in the Passing Lane (London, 1984)Google Scholar.

42 Doyle et al., “Comparative Study.”

43 Hartley, Robots at Work, 91.

44 Cusumano, Japanese Automobile Industry, 209.