Flexibility and labour management: Chinese manufacturing enterprises in the 1990s

The rapid economic growth and structural reform that have taken place in China over the past two decades have had a substantial impact on the system of labour management in Chinese manufacturing enterprises. The purpose of this article is to document and analyse the nature of these changes in state-owned enterprises and joint venture companies. The effect of these changes on work relations, employment relations and industrial relations will form the basis of the analysis. The emphasis in the analysis will be on how work, employment and industrial relations have accommodated the demand for greater flexibility. Labour management in six manufacturing firms in the Shanghai region will be examined. This research is a pilot project for a larger-scale research in 1999. While no attempt is made to generalize the research findings, the research clarifies the extent and limits of flexibility in the current Chinese economy.     

制造企业员工绩效管理创新思考

制造企业的人力资源绩效管理是提升企业核心竞争力的重要手段,实施绩效管理对制造企业的发展有着非常重大的意义。文章剖析了我国制造企业人力资源绩效管理现状,对其当前的操作流程及其在具体的实施过程中存在的问题进行了分析,并提出了制造企业员工绩效管理的创新思考对策。     

Labor supply responses to the 1990s Japanese tax reforms

The consumption-leisure choice model implies that an exogenous change in tax rates will induce a change in labor supply. This implication is expected to be important to labor supplied by secondary earners under a progressive tax system when spousal income alters effective marginal tax rates. This paper examines labor supply responses to the income tax changes associated with Japanese tax reforms during the 1990s. The results indicate that the hours-of-work elasticity with respect to the net-of-tax rate is 0.8 for married women.     

White-collar human resource management in large Japanese manufacturing firms

This article explains white-collar Human Resource Management practices in large Japanese manufacturing firms. It first deals with the structural characteristics of white-collar HRM systems and some of its constraints. Then, the article discribes the personnel staff organization and analyzes in detail the four basic HRM functions: selection, development, appraisal, and rewards with data collected in two large Japanese firms. Implications for Western managers are suggested in the conclusion.     

Dollar-denominated accounts in Latin America during the 1990s

In this paper we analyze the evolution of dollar-denominated accounts in Latin America, and how they impact the stability of the banking system and the volatility of macroeconomic aggregates. Our findings reveal that dollar deposits are strongly influenced by depreciation expectations of the local currency even in an environment of fairly low inflation. We also find that having more dollar accounts increases the probability of future crises if the economy is already in a crisis. Finally, our findings suggest that for some macroeconomic aggregates there exists a positive correlation, in the long and short run, between their volatility and the volume of dollar-denominated accounts in the banking system. The views expressed in this paper do not necessarily reflect the views of the Sociedad Hipoetcaria Federal de Mexico. The authors would like to thank Bruce Smith, Scott Freeman, Alex Minicozzi, Li Gan, Subal Kumbhakar, Gil Mehrez, Maria Soledad Martinez-Peria, Keisuke Hirano, the participants of the University of Mississippi, Barcelona, and Texas at Austin seminar series and an anonymous referee for useful comments. The authors would like to dedicate this paper to the memory of Bruce Smith.     

The Japanese way of manufacturing and production management

As Japan has achieved a stable economic growth, Japan and Japanese companies are currently receiving world-wide attention. In this article some characteristics of Japanese manufacturing methods and production management are introduced, including flexible automation, group technology, the Toyota production system, the QC circle, lifetime employment, and product development. In addition, some financial aspects of Japanese companies and the government-industry relationship in Japan are also considered.     

The management of labour in Japanese manufacturing plants in China

While there is now considerable scholarship concerning Japanese management practices in their overseas production operations in Europe and North America, little is known about Japanese investment in other parts of the world, especially in Asia. This paper draws on on-going research into the nature and operations of Japanese manufacturing investments in China. The paper focuses on interviews primarily with Chinese managers in twenty plants in three locations within China, to examine their personnel polices and practices, and draw from this their overall industrial relations strategies. The main findings were, first, that, despite claims of cultural similarity between China and Japan, personnel management practices were generally not transferred from Japan to the plants in China. Second, practices that may appear as Japanese inspired were often informed by local practices. Third, there was diversity in the forms of practices used, indicating neither sophistication nor a singular recipe of management methods. Thus, the paper seeks to challenge proponents of Japanization who claim, essentially, that Japanese management techniques are predicated on the construction of particular forms of social relations around work that allow sophisticated, and integrated, production-management systems to function. Instead, depending on a complex interrelation between location industry and the history of each plant, managers sought to use various local and 'universal' (generic to capitalism) strategies and practices to control and utilize labour.     

企业购并中的人力资源管理研究

企业购并作为企业资本增长和社会资源有效配置的重要方式。具有使企业资本快速增长、降低进入和退出市场壁垒、提高资源配置效率等优势。最近一二十年来,全球企业购并更是风起云涌,且规摸越来越大,涉及的并购资产越来越高。据统计,1998年全球企业并购总额高达2.5万亿美元,比1997年上升了54％,     

Labour productivity and employment in Australian manufacturing SMEs

This paper examines the relationship between labour productivity and employment in Australian manufacturing small and medium enterprises (SMEs). The results indicate that labour productivity of SMEs varies substantially between industries within the manufacturing sector, but on average labour productivity for manufacturing SMEs increased at a faster rate than that of large manufacturing enterprises across all industries. All manufacturing industries except one recorded employment growth during the period under study. However like labour productivity growth, employment growth also varies across industries within the manufacturing sector. Yet the study could not establish any definite relationship between labour productivity growth and employment. This finding is consistent with some previous studies.     

Tensions in industrial democracy and human resource management: a case study of Japanese enterprises in the Philippines

Critical areas in the entry of Japanese enterprises in a developing country like the Philippines involve the following: internal labour market formation, wage and compensation system, labour-management relations schemes and other management strategies. Human resource development in Japanese enterprises in the Philippines faces structural and institutional barriers. A high turnover rate of workers is one structural barrier, involving the labour market, which prevents the internalization of skills. There is an emphasis upon job-based wages and a reliance upon the local minimum wage standards both of which are distinctly non-Japanese practices.

There is a serious gap between perceptions among Japanese expatriates, Filipino managers and the local rank-and-file workers with respect to the hierarchy of factors in wage determination. Differences with respect to the concept and valuation of work add to the problems of communication.

In the Philippines, there are structural and institutional barriers to co-operation and the formation of consensus between the workers and the owners of the means of production. A long history of jurisprudence on labour-management disputes provides an incentive to resort to the legalistic approach to settle conflicts involving work relations. This paper will examine some of the tensions that occur between the expatriate Japanese firms and the industrial relations system of the host country.     

Biting the hand that fed it: Did the stock market boom of the late 1990s impede investment in manufacturing?

The stock market increase in the 1990s may have diverted funds from fixed investments in manufacturing to other investiments, such as share repurchases, and to firms with faster stock price gains. We find that overall investment remained lower than it could have been without the stock price appreciation. We also find that manufacturing investment was impeded by the developments in the stock market. Based on our results, the policy focus should be on offering incentives for corporate decision makers to prioritize productive investments over other uses of funds instead of means to entice lenders to increase lending to manufacturing firms.