Employee Relations: Volume 20 Issue 3

Out of chaos comes order: from Japanization to lean production: A critical commentary

Paul Stewart

This article is concerned with three key approaches to the implications of Japanese involvement in the UK. It is argued that the paradigms of the so‐called Japanization and lean…

Forget Japan: the very British response to lean production

Harry Scarbrough, Mike Terry

Contrasts theories of the “Japanization” of British industry with empirical evidence from established car producers in that industry. Suggests that while the UK car industry has…

Against Japanization: understanding the reorganization of British manufacturing

Stephen Procter, Stephen Ackroyd

In the late 1980s, the idea of Japanization dominated debates about the restructuring of production, work and industrial relations in this country. There was, of course, some…

Japanization on the shopfloor

Nick Oliver, Rick Delbridge, James Lowe

This paper reports the findings of a study into 12 UK and nine Japanese automotive component plants. Compared to the UK plants, the Japanese plants showed a 60 per cent…

“Front‐end reflections”: supervisory systems in the UK’s Japanese transplants and in “Japanized” companies

Jonathan Morris, James Lowe, Barry Wilkinson

The Japanization debate in the UK has moved considerably since first mooted in 1987. On the one hand academics ‐ advocates as well as sceptics ‐ have questioned its continued…

Greenfields and “wildebeests”: management strategies and labour turnover in Japanese firms in Telford

Chris Smith

This article examines the nature of industrial relations and work practices in Japanese firms within an investment cluster in Telford, Shropshire. Telford has the highest…

Internationalization at Honda: transfer and adaptation of management systems

Andrew Mair

This article reviews Honda’s strategy to localize operations, organization and employment relations at Honda of the UK Manufacturing (HUM). The management literature describes…

The internal dependency relationship in “Japanized” organizations: Experiences of a UK automotive component company

Máire Kerrin

This article provides a descriptive account of the impact of new production methods and the consequences for the internal dependency relationship. The case study examples…