Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- About the cover
- 1 Going under the knife: Downsizing and de-layering the modern corporation
- 2 Exploring corporate life: A realist view on management restructuring
- 3 Living in the house that Jack built: Management restructuring in America
- 4 Maximising shareholder value: Management restructuring in Britain
- 5 New world of the salaryman: Management restructuring in Japan
- 6 Fighting back? Addressing the human costs of management restructuring
- Appendix
- References
- Index
2 - Exploring corporate life: A realist view on management restructuring
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 February 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- About the cover
- 1 Going under the knife: Downsizing and de-layering the modern corporation
- 2 Exploring corporate life: A realist view on management restructuring
- 3 Living in the house that Jack built: Management restructuring in America
- 4 Maximising shareholder value: Management restructuring in Britain
- 5 New world of the salaryman: Management restructuring in Japan
- 6 Fighting back? Addressing the human costs of management restructuring
- Appendix
- References
- Index
Summary
[O]ne of the great tasks of social studies today [is] to describe the larger economic and political situation in terms of its meaning for the inner life and the external career of the individual.
(C. Wright Mills, 1953: xx)Gaining access to large organisations to conduct research inquiries can be extremely difficult. When the topics of inquiry include such sensitive issues as job cuts, stress and employee dignity, the task can be made considerably tougher. Adding an international element to the mix complicates matters yet further, especially when one of the nations to be studied is Japan, a country renowned for complex trusted relationships, and where requests for information from outsiders are met with silence, or guarded responses shrouded in corporate tatemae. These concerns were prominent in our minds as we embarked in 2003 on what was to become a five-year research project. This chapter begins by describing the processes we went through in gaining access to the giant firms that feature in the book. It then goes on to cover the methodology and theory that underpin our study.
Access to the firms across the countries did at times prove difficult, but in general it was far from insurmountable. Many companies in the UK and the USA declined to give assistance. In Japan, our access was dependent almost entirely on what our intermediaries could arrange for us.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Managing in the Modern CorporationThe Intensification of Managerial Work in the USA, UK and Japan, pp. 39 - 54Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009