Assembling Work: Remaking Factory Regimes in Japanese Multinationals in Britain

Japanese manufacturing firms established in Britain have often been portrayed as carriers of Japanese corporate best practice for work and employment. In this book, the authors challenge these views through case study research, undertaken at several Japanese manufacturing plants in Britain during the 1990s. The authors argue that in actual fact production and employment regimes are adapted and 're-made' in a number of ways, responding to specific corporate and local contexts. In particular, they focus upon the ways in which Japanese and British managers have sought to construct distinctive work regimes in the light of their particular branch plant mandates and competencies, the evolving character of management-worker relations within factories and the varied product and labour market conditions they face. The book highlights the constraints as well as the opportunities facing managers of these greenfield workplaces, and the uncertainties that continued to characterize the development of management strategies. Ultimately the authors show how arguments about the role of overseas branch plants in the dissemination of management practices must take more careful account of the varied ways in which such factories are implicated in wider corporate strategies. The operations of international firms are embedded within intractable features of capitalist employment relations, especially as they are 're-made' in specific local and national settings. This book is an important intervention in contemporary debate about international firms and globalization, and will be of interest to teachers, researchers, and advanced students of this subject from disciplines including Business Studies, Organization Studies, Industrial Relations, Sociology, Political Economy, and Economic and Social Geography.

Table of Contents:
Part I: Theoretical Issues 1: Transplants, Transfer, and Work Transformation 2: The Japanese Model and its Implications for International Transfer and Work Transformation 3: The Internationalization of Japanese Manufacturing 4: A Model for Understanding Work Organization in the Transnational Company 5: Research Methods: The Strategy of Multiple Case-Study Research Part II: Manufacturing Transplants: Cluster and Company 6: The Arena of Transplant Capital: Space and Locality Studies 7: Work and Employment Relations in the Large Assembly Transplants 8: Work and Employment Relations in the Smaller Component Sub-Contractors 9: Upgrading Production Regimes: R&D - the Apricot/Mitsubishi Electric Drama Part III: Remaking Work Lives: The Scope and Limits of Collective and Individual Action 10: Remaking Working Lives: The Scope and Limits of Collective and Individual Action 11: Managers and Workers: Collective and Individual Froms of Resistance and Acqueiscence 12: Conclusions: Transfer and Hybridization of Production Models: Lessons from Japaneses Transplant Research

About the Author :
Tony Elger has taught Sociology at the Universities of Aberdeen, Birmingham and Warwick. His main research interests are in the Sociology of Work and Employment and Comparative Labour Studies. He is currently the Director of the Centre for Comparative Labour Studies. Chris Smith has taught Industrial Sociology, Industrial Relations and Organization Studies at the University of Aston, and held visiting positions in the Universities of Hong Kong, Sydney, Wolong and Griffith. His main research interests are in the Sociology of Professions, Labour Process Theory, Comparative Work Organization, and Human Resource Management. He is currently Research Director in the School of Management and Director in two research Centres: Health Experts in Call Centres; and Centre for Workplace Research in Asia Pacific Societies.

Review :
'...the work is really a stellar example of the extended ethnographic method ...the case studies do a very good job of giving greater nuance and complexity to the notion of "hybridity".' American Journal of Sociology '...the book is successful in illustrating the contested nature of policy implementation and the challenges that this poses for management.' Historical Studies in Industrial Relations 'The sharp synthesis of the framework, and the ways in which Elger and Smith put it to use in interpreting and evaluating their data, will be of considerable value to researchers.' Organization Studies 'Theoretically, it provides critical engagement with perspectives on the Japanese model and in particular, problems arising from the reification of this model in academic analysis...Empirically, the book provides a wealth of rich case study data governing the nature of the labour process and employment relations in each factory, the different experiences of Japanese managers, British managers, manual workers and non-manual workers, and the patterns of consent and conflict on the shop-floor...highly recommended.' British Journal on Industrial Relations Elger and Smith contribute to deepening our understanding of this issue through a close investigation of the ways and the dynamics in which Japanese companies construct their work organisation. Business History 'Elgar and Smith contribute to deepening our understanding of this issue through a close investigation of the ways and the dynamics in which Japanese companies construct the work organization and employee relations on foreign soil' Business History, Vol 48