Managing Consultants in a Small Firm: A Case Study

There remains a paucity of research on Japanese investment in Asia, especially on Japanese management practices in China. The paper draws predominantly on interviews with Chinese managers in 31 Japanese wholly owned and joint-venture manufacturing plants. In order to account for any differences in the perception of operations between Japanese and Chinese managers, interviews were conducted with Japanese managers in three case-study plants. The purpose was to examine the structure and pattern of managerial control in different locations and industries, and with different patterns of share ownership, size and age of investments. The paper argues that the patterns of control in Japanese manufacturing investment in China are not unique, and as a consequence call into question much of the current conventional wisdom concerning the internationalization of Japanese management practices. Instead of Japanese seeking to maintain strong control over overseas plants and attain high degrees of 'Japanization' (a term used to indicate the dynamics of the transfer process), a complex and varied array of patterns of control are identified. On the one hand, production appears highly Japanized, but personnel management is not. On the other hand, Japanese multinationals make investment decisions that necessitate ceding a high degree of control to local managers. Moreover, it is shown that such 'localization' of control is willingly ceded, if not actively sought, by Japanese multinationals     

Japanisation as mythology

Manufacturing management texts describe ‘just-in-time’ production as an innovative paradigm for manufacturing control, originally developed in Japan, which when implemented by Western companies will enable them to remain internationally competitive. This article describes how manufacturing techniques observed in Japan have been radically modified to suit Western organisations, and discusses the significance of continuing to describe them as ‘Japanese’.     

A comparison of the roles and responsibilities of manufacturing engineers in Japan and the United States

The manufacturing engineering work in nine Japanese firms is structured by a horizontal division of labor between manufacturing design engineers and production process engineers, in contrast to a vertical division of labor between manufacturing engineers and technicians in three American firms. The production process engineers in the Japanese firms link manufacturing engineering processes closely with production processes, whereas less coordination between the two processes occurs in the American firms. Regarding product design, manufacturing engineering, and production processes in the Japanese firms, employees engaged in downstream processes are more heavily involved with work concerned with upstream processes than in the American firms.     

ADOPTING JAPANESE-STYLE MANUFACTURING METHODS: A TALE OF TWO (UK) FACTORIES*

Japanese manufacturing methods such as just-in-time production and total quality control are serving as a model of manufacturing organization which many UK manufacturers are currently emulating. This article describes the implementation of just-in-time production and its supporting practices in two factories owned by the same company. Empirical evidence demonstrates a profoundly political dimension to these innovations, requiring a significant rewriting of organizations’ political and cultural maps.     

THE IRON FIST IN THE VELVET GLOVE: MANAGEMENT AND ORGANIZATION IN JAPANESE MANUFACTURING TRANSPLANTS IN WALES

This paper assesses the transferability of a Japanese form of manufacturing organization to an alien institutional environment - the Principality of Wales in the UK. After characterizing what we mean by a 'Japanese form of manufacturing organization' and the arrival of Japanese companies in Wales, we describe the forms of organization, day-to-day management and working practices which have been established. Our conclusion is that the Japanese form of manufacturing organization has been re-created on Welsh soil, and that any 'adaptations' are not such as to alter the fundamental features of the new organizational form.     

Transferring the Toyota lean cultural paradigm into India: implications for human resource management

This paper argues that the successful international transference of Japanese lean manufacturing practices in general, and the Toyota Way and Toyota Production System (TPS) in particular, is in varying degrees contingent upon the sociocultural, historical and environmental context of the host nations into which such transfer occurs. This has significant implications for human resource management policies and practices. The paper contends that lean manufacturing is not simply a set of concepts, techniques and methods that can be implemented by command and control. In the course of transferring lean practices from Japan into overseas affiliates, either an absence of due consideration or disregard for a host nation's unique sociocultural and environmental factors could lead to unproductive organisational outcomes for the parent company. This viewpoint is examined through a case study analysis of the Indian affiliate of the Japanese automobile industry giant Toyota Motor Corporation, namely Toyota Kirloskar Motors, located at Bidadi, near Bangalore, India.     

The Spatial Distribution of Japanese Manufacturing Industries in Indonesia

This paper presents an analysis of regional changes in the spatial pattern of Japanese manufacturing industries and the effect of deregulation of foreign investment in Indonesia during 1984–1994. Empirical analysis in this paper uses data of 560 Japanese manufacturing industries in Indonesia. The result of this study indicates their continuous regional concentration in the core region of Java. The regression analysis indicates that market, agglomeration and infrastructure continue to be the main reasons for the location of Japanese manufacturing industries. The current economic crisis has substantially reduced the level of new investment in the core region of Java.     

The transfer of Japanese work practices to plants in Thailand

This paper analyses two Japanese transplants that have been manufacturing products in Thailand for a number of years. The research shows that these transplants have not fully adopted three Japanese work practices that are characteristic of workplaces in Japan (the significant troubleshooting skills possessed by production workers, the production support work provided by assistant first-line supervisors and the overlapping roles of manufacturing engineers). The low wages and the subdivided job consciousness of Thai employees, the presence of Japanese expatriates who are not familiar with the workplace practices actually used in Japan and the fact that the transplants have manufactured standardized mature products that do not require high troubleshooting skills, are found to be the main causes for the incomplete transfer of work practices from the mother company.     

Human factors in the transfer of the ‘Japanese best practice’ manufacturing system to Singapore

A detailed examination of the practices reported by managers in thirty-one affiliates of Japanese companies engaged in manufacturing in Singapore revealed a high degree of conformity with the Japanese best practice (also known as ‘lean production’) model in the way work is organized and in the shop-floor level manufacturing practices, but greater conformity to host country norms in the HRM practices applied to the local work-force. This is consistent with the patterns reported in the existing literature regarding Japanese transplants in other countries, including the US and the UK. Strong statistical relationships were found in the Singapore study among the work organization cluster, the manufacturing practices cluster, and the performance outcomes. No significant relationships were found between the HRM cluster and any of the ‘downstream’ variables (work organization, manufacturing practices or performance outcomes), but relatively heavy reliance on expatriates was found to be highly related to work organization, manufacturing practices and performance outcomes. These findings suggest that heavy reliance on expatriates may function as an alternative to Japanese-style HRM practices in situations where it would be unduly difficult or costly to extend the whole package of Japanese-style HRM practices to the local work-force.     

British Factory, Japanese Factory and Mexican Factory: An International Comparison of Front-Line Management and Supervision

This paper presents a case study of a Japanese-owned electronics firm, presenting a comparative analysis of the company's supervisory systems in three of its plants located in different countries – Japan, Mexico and Britain. Comparative analysis is enabled through use of the concept of a supervisory system of control, which allows us to match the relative positions of managers, supervisors and workers across the three sites. The case study data enables us systematically to examine questions of the transferability of a Japanese supervisory system – a central component of Japanese manufacturing – outside of Japan. The results suggest that 'Japanese' supervisory systems have been established with more success in Mexico than in Britain, and the main factors that explain this are varying local labour market conditions, limits to managerial control on the shopfloor, the relationship between the product market and the organization of production, and local and expatriate management commitment to a Japanese system.     

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.     

The Future of Japanese Manufacturing in the UK

The expansion of Japanese FDI into the UK manufacturing sector during the 1980s and early 1990s gave rise to the debate on the Japanization of British industry. The paper argues that this debate was constructed from a Western perspective. It did not locate the strategies and structures of Japanese subsidiaries within the broader context of how Japanese multinational corporations were evolving in this period. The necessity to look at these issues from a more global perspective is reinforced by the changes which have occurred since the mid 1990s in the environment for Japanese multinationals. The global economy offers more choices to firms about their location as well as facing them with a more competitive environment. In the Japanese case, this is leading to a growing differentiation between standardized mass production (which can be located in Asia and Eastern Europe) and science–led sectors of industrial production (which necessitate location near to centres of research and development expertise in the USA and Europe). This means that Japanese firms are reconsidering the strategy and structure of their subsidiaries in the UK. Standardized mass production will only survive in the UK as long as costs can be pushed further down and productivity increased, both of which are difficult conditions to meet given possibilities elsewhere in the world for cheap mass production. The growing area of investment will be in science–based manufacturing, though here the UK will be competing against the USA and Germany for Japanese investment. Here, however, the organizational and management characteristics of Japanese subsidiaries will make the necessary connections with local managers and local networks of expertise difficult to achieve. Thus Japanese subsidiaries in the UK are in a period of prolonged uncertainty about their role in the future. These changes open up the necessity for a new agenda of research which goes beyond the Japanization approach and is concerned with the organization and management of Japanese multinationals in an era of global competition.     

Japan in Britain: the dynamics of joint consultation

Despite the centrality of Company Councils for Japanese firms in the UK, empirical data on their evolution is rare. In this article consultation methods used by a Japanese manufacturing transplant are analysed using a longitudinal approach. The findings suggest that the development of a ‘consensus culture’ proved to be highly problematic for employees, shop stewards, local managers and Japanese staff, especially at the consultation-bargaining interface.     

Strategic international human resource management approaches in the maquiladora industry: a comparison of Japanese,Korean and US firms

The maquiladora option has made Mexico an increasingly attractive off-shore manufacturing site for multinational enterprises (MNEs) seeking global competitiveness. However, MNEs often encounter human resource management (HRM) challenges as they attempt to leverage these maquiladora benefits. MNEs use three approaches to international human resource management (IHRM) design in addressing these challenges – a mechanistic, ‘control’ approach; a paternalistic, ‘human relations’ approach; and a developmental, ‘human resource’ approach. This paper compares and contrasts these IHRM design approaches in Japanese, Korean and US maquiladora manufacturing operations in Mexico, identifies implications for the management of diversity based on these findings, and discusses the related competitiveness implications.     

Farewell to HRM? Personnel practices in Japanese manufacturing plants in the UK

While Japanese manufacturing investment burgeoned in the UK in the 1980s and 1990s, its relative size remained small. Nevertheless, its impact was greater than its size. At its extreme it was championed by the 'new right' as the way forward for industrial practices, while manufacturing organizations in the UK were quick to attempt to emulate Japanese management practices. Core to these practices was the management of human resources. Coincidentally in the 1980s a new model of personnel management was being championed, namely human resource management (HRM). This was eagerly embraced by UK academics and was translated into two distinct forms, 'hard and soft'. Despite appearing mutually incompatible, the hard and soft forms were forged into a unified model. This paper, drawing on an empirical analysis of personnel practices in Japanese manufacturing plants in the UK, searches for a conjuncture between the HRM model and 'Japanese' models. It concludes that, while there are similarities between the two, there are also distinct differences. Moreover, where similarities exist they are with the hard variety of HRM.     

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.     

How Japanese manufacturing firms align their human resource policies with business strategies: testing a contingency performance prediction in a Japanese context

This study examines the interaction effects of business-level strategy and HRM policies upon performance among Japanese manufacturers, in response to the current debate around the contingency fit proposition in the field of strategic human resource management (SHRM). Specifically, it was hypothesized that the three generic strategic types (cost reduction, differentiation (innovation), and quality enhancement) would moderate the relationship between particular HRM policies and the performance of Japanese manufacturing firms. The results, based on a sample of 312 Japanese manufacturers operating in the domestic environment, reveal the existence of links between appropriate strategy and HRM policies in predicting performance, providing strong support for the proposition of contingency fit from SHRM theory. The findings are used to discuss how Japanese manufacturers can align their HRM policies with business strategies to increase manufacturing performance. Limitations of the study and directions for future research are also considered.     

Foreign remedies for local difficulties: the case of three Scottish manufacturing firms

Literature on Japanese transplant manufacturing firms in the automotive sector often emphasise the importance placed on attitude as opposed to skills in the hiring decisions for line workers. In this paper, a case study of one second-tier components supplier for a major Japanese automotive assembler in the Midwestern United States provides the opinions of senior managers and human resource associates regarding recruitment and selection practices. In-depth interviews, carried out over a two-week period in August 2000, are used to develop an understanding of the recruitment and selection process for line workers as well as to investigate the desired skills and value of previous Japanese experience. Results of the case study analysis are compared with two models from the literature: (1) a model of recruitment and selection at Japanese automotive-related firms in Japan and (2) a model of recruitment and selection at Japanese transplant automotive-related firms abroad. Deviations from the two models point not to a new paradigm of ‘second-generation’ Japanese transplants – those that have moved into regions quite familiar with Japanese firms and related management and production methods – but rather to overall weaknesses in the stereotypical models. Managerial opinions within the case study firm place limited value on familiarity with a Japanese environment, considering such experience secondary to attitudes and work ethics that are in line with the philosophy of the case study firm.     

The who,why and where of Japanese manufacturing investment in the UK

This paper analyses the recent growth of Japanese manufacturing investment in the UK, focusing upon the type of companies that are being created.     

美国振兴先进制造业的政策措施及启示

从20世纪70年代开始,美国制造业的大批量生产模式开始走下坡路。日本经济的兴起,以丰田汽车为代表的日本汽车工业新的生产和管理模式的成功,向世界表明大批量生产的威力已到了尽头。为振兴先进制造业,美国分别从技术、财政、信息网络、教育、企业运作模式、企业联盟等方面制定了一系列政策与计划,对其进行支持。美国所采取的这些政策措施,对于我国在“十一五”规划中如何更有效促进先进制造业的发展,具有重要的启示。