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This paper reports on the transfer of Japanese supervisory practices to their Great Britain-based Japanese transplants and to the Great Britain-based emulators. To this end the paper is divided into three further sections. The first section briefly reviewing the state-of-the-debate on Japanization: was it a 'straw man' debate, is it yesterday's news or does it still retain some saliency? The second section will provide a context for the study of supervisory systems and the third will provide the results of a recent empirical study, before conclusions are drawn.

In this paper, the attractions of exposing the ideological dimensions of the thesis of Japanization of British manufacturing are set aside in favor of more basic objectives. The paper divides into four parts. The first shows how the preoccupation with Japanese methods has distorted the understanding of developments in the British manufacturing industry. Too much effort has been directed at understanding the operation of a small number of Japanese transplants; at the same time, the idea that there is a distinctively British pattern of organization has been played down. In the second section we use the concepts introduced originally by one of the authors to demonstrate the limited impact of both 'direct' and 'mediated' Japanization. The third section of the paper sets out the nature of the British manufacturing organization, bringing out its distinctive structural flexibility. The way in which it achieves this, the development of a form we have called the 'new flexible firm,' is explained in the paper's fourth section. Here we set out the combination of production technology, labor utilization and management control that characterizes much of British manufacturing.

This paper presents evidence on the management of the labour process (and responses to it) at Rover and Peugeot-Talbot. The analysis of this material is intended to contribute to the wider debate on the claimed Japanization of British industry (Bratton, 1992; Oliver and Wilkinson, 1992) in three main ways. First, it will analyse existing studies of Japanization in terms of two major theoretical models — labelled the "diffusion" and the "bolt-on" model — together with their associated underpinning assumptions. Second, it will compare these models with the recent empirical evidence gleaned from Rover and Peugeot-Talbot. Third, it will outline an "adaptation model" of change based on this evidence. This model highlights the creative role played by both management and unions in responding to lean production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the human resource and shopfloor work organization aspects of the Japanese model of manufacturing in both Japan and Great Britain. The basic human resource elements of the model include: shared destiny relations between employee and employing organization; team-based work organization on the shopfloor, including labor flexibility and multi-skilling; opportunities for shopfloor workers to improve the production process, via suggestion schemes and problem solving groups; and much greater responsibility for front line operators for a range of activities on the shopfloor, including quality monitoring and improvement, maintenance and personnel issues such as the selection of new members for work groups.

Debate over the transfer and adoption of industrial models prompted by the globalization of Japanese manufacturers continues to draw attention. Most discussion has concerned issues of work and employment relations, where the new multinationals have interacted most directly with host societies. Theoretical issues are addressed in a case study of operations, organization and employment relations at the Honda factory at Swindon in southern England, Honda of the UK Manufacturing. The analytical approach adopted in this paper is based on the following proposition. The relationship between Honda's global corporate strategy and the local operating environments of its factories is mediated by a nexus consisting of the production system, the organization of work, hiring and training processes, organizational processes and philosophies, and employment relations frameworks.

The aim of this paper is to delineate and assess three key approaches to the implications of Japanese involvement in Great Britain and to suggest an alternative to the so-called 'Japanization' school in its various incarnations. Far from seeking to provide anything approaching a definitive account of the full range of participants involved in the discussion over the nature of Japanese inward investment in Great Britain, let alone the character of the debate at an international level, my main priority is to attempt to draw out some basic themes by assessing the continuities and discontinuities in the various positions delineated. These are broadly conceived, far from definitive and of course open to elaboration and debate. The range of material drawn is thus deliberately limited so as to focus primarily on the key participants, if progenitors, mostly in Great Britain.

Presents the guest editor's comments and introduction to the special issue of "Employee Relations" in 1998. Decision that the term 'Post Japanization' really did seem to suit the content of what was coming in; Hope that the title presents and frames the labors and careful scrutiny of the researchers and writers published; Meaning of Post Japanization on the British and global stage.

Interest in the 'Japanization' debate of British manufacturing has focused on the effect that these new manufacturing initiatives will have on the design of jobs. One of the key questions in the 'Japanization' debate has been to what extent will the introduction of new production practices, such as just-in-time, lead to work intensification and de-skilling, or alternatively provide opportunities for skill development. This article, rather than focusing on these wider issues, provides a descriptive account of the impact of new production methods on a major automotive component supplier and the consequences for the internal dependency relationship. The case study examples illustrate the nature of the internal dependency relationship under the new production methods and attempts to assess how this internal dependency relationship interacts with increasing levels of devolved responsibility; problem solving and continuous improvement at source, and the use of increased information at shop floor level. Implications for future management of these dependencies are examined.

The article reports on research which is part of a larger project on Japanese-owned manufacturing companies in the West Midlands, for which case-studies have been conducted at ten sites owned by six companies. At each of the case-study research sites employees were interviewed from a full range of functions and backgrounds and this was supplemented with appropriate documentary and observational material. A total of 184 workplace informants were interviewed, which meant a minimum of 7% in the larger establishments and higher percentages in the smaller workplaces. In addition we have also monitored the financial press, collected further documentation and interviewed a range of key informants from outside the workplace, particularly people from local state agencies, trade union officials and others in Telford, England, the locality where many of our case-study plants are situated. For the purposes of this article, focus was on the four Telford cases drawing data primarily from Copy Co. and Carpart Co., but with some references to the other two cases.

The article considers the issues arising from the Japanisation process by examining two sets of events at Ford UK in 1988; the national strike and the row and subsequent withdrawal by Ford over the planned electronics plant at Dundee. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic links between north-east England and Japan go back to the turn of the century, when Japan's first modern battle fleet was built by Armstrongs on Tyneside: no small irony, then, that British Shipbuilders (headquarters in Tyneside) should turn to the Japanese in the 1980s to re-learn how to build ships! Japanese direct manufacturing investment in Britain began in the early 1970s. One of the pioneer entrants, the bearing manufacturers NSK, started operations at Peterlee in mid-Durham in 1976. But the turning point for the north-east was, of course, Nissan's decision in 1984 to locate its British manufacturing operation at Washington New Town, near Sunderland. The number of Japanese companies in the north-east has since grown steadily. By the end of 1988, 20 Japanese companies were operating in the area between Teesside and the Tweed, involving 14 manufacturing plants. North-east England has the largest concentration of Japanese engineering plants in Europe, and a rapidly growing presence in electronics assembly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]