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.     

Risk aversion, generalized correlation and investment in manufacturing capacities

This study analyzes the relationship between product demand correlation and risk on the investment in dedicated and flexible manufacturing capacities. It is proved that for a risk averse (or risk neutral) decision-maker, increased generalized correlation between output demands reduces the values of both dedicated and flexible manufacturing investments for all multivariate distributions. It is shown that no such monotonic relationship generally exists for the capacities themselves because of an economic tradeoff between risk and return. It is also proved that increased generalized correlation reduces the value of flexible capacity relative to dedicated capacity for the risk-neutral decision maker. However, contrary to the extant literature, flexible capacity is still shown to be potentially valuable even if product demands are perfectly positively correlated. Finally, it is shown that increases in the risk of product demand, holding correlation (of product demand) constant, reduces the value of the investment in manufacturing capacities when output demands are either jointly normal or independent.     

The UK corporate tax reform and business investment decisions

The 1984 Finance Act made fundamental changes to the UK corporate tax system. Evidence from a detailed study of sixty past investment decisions is used to assess the likely effects of the shift from a high-tax, high-allowance system to a system of low taxes and allowances. This suggests that 100% allowances have had little impact on the scale of investment since 1979, reflecting limited taxable capacity and the importance of market considerations in investment decisions. Timing effects were more common, especially among small firms sampled. The post-tax cost of capital will fall for some firms but few appeared to use strict cost of capital criteria in assessing investments.     

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.     

Market size and seasonalities: The case of the UK investment trust industry

The particular characteristics of the UK mutual funds industry provide ideal ground for examining the pertinence of the ‘Small-size effect’ and the ‘tax-loss-selling’ hypothesis. The evidence indicates the presence of a modest-size premium for smaller investment trusts, but, rather surprisingly, size in general does not appear to be a determining factor of market performance. Moreover, in spite of some variation in the rates of return around the turn of the tax year, the evidence as a whole does not unambiguously support the tax-loss-selling hypothesis. However, there is ground to believe that the overall poor performance of the UK investment trust industry could be due to the tax regimen governing the industry's operations during the period 1965–80.     

Pricing behaviour in UK manufacturing and service industries

This paper reports the findings related to pricing behaviour of 1775 manufacturing and service firms. Its objectives were to examine the nature of pricing objectives at differing stages of market evolution and for companies of differing size and to examine the association between pricing objectives and performance. Princing objectives were found to vary with stages of market evolution and firm size. Both positive and negative relationships between pricing objectives and performance were revealed.     

国际分工格局下的中国制造业与外资引入

文章首先概述了中国制造业的发展特征,在中国制造业日益纳入国际分工的格局下,对制造业的比较优势进行了实证分析,在此基础上明确分析了中国制造业"世界制造中心"的定位和国际竞争力,最后阐述了制造业在对外开放中外资引入的选择性吸收策略。     

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.     

Labour management during recessions: Japanese manufacturing enterprises in the 1990s

In the first half of the 1990s Japan experienced a prolonged recession. How have Japanese firms reacted to the changed economic context? Using identical surveys administered in 1991 and 1995 this article examines changes in labour management and strategy and concludes, despite some significant modifications, that the basic configuration of Japanese labour management has remained intact.     

Entrepreneurial attitudes to venture capital investment realization: evidence from the UK and France

This paper discusses the comparative influences on attitudes of entrepreneurs towards exit from venture capital backed investments in the UK and France and presents survey evidence relating to the attitudes towards exit of a sample of venture-backed entrepreneurs in the two countries. The study identifies statistically significant differences in attitudes to realization both within and between the two countries, both in relation to preferences for different options and the reasons for preferring one rather than another.     

An empirical analysis of linear aggregation problems: The case of investment behavior in Japanese firms

Some economists have analysed empirically linear aggregation problems from various view-points and get results which seem to justify the use of aggregated data. However, some were based on only one experiment. Using more experiments we shall analyse empirically two important aggregation problems for the case of the investment behavior of firms. In contrast to earlier studies, our results indicate that the aggregation biases of macroparameters are rather large and the explanatory power of the macroequations is not necessarily higher than that of a sum of microequations.     

Agglomeration economies in urban manufacturing industries: A case of Japanese cities

The effects of urban agglomeration economies on productivities in two-digit manufacturing industries is estimated using the cross section data of Japanese cities in 1979. Urbanization and localization economies, which are major forms of urban agglomeration economies, are explicitly separated. The estimates of these economies vary considerably among industries. Light industries receive more productive advantages from urbanization economies than from localization economies, but heavy industries experience these economies more from localization economies than from urbanization economies.     

Seniority,experience, and wages in the UK

This paper uses BHPS data to investigate the relative importance of seniority and experience in determining male wages in the UK labor market. Using both the Altonji and Shakotko instrumental variable and the Topel two-step estimation approaches, I find that for all male workers, tenure plays a modest role, increasing wages by about 1% each year over the first 10 years on the job. General labor market experience has a larger role, so that after 30 years wages have increased by about 60%. Individual and job match heterogeneity are important, and should be carefully modeled when estimating wage equations for the British labor market. These results are remarkably similar to the most recent evidence about these relationships in the US labor market. After extending the standard model to include industry and occupation experience, the estimated impact of job seniority becomes negligible for nonunion workers. Instead, the wages of nonunion workers rise because of the accumulation of general and sector-specific experience. The wages of union workers are still found to increase with job seniority over the first ten years with their employer, suggesting that if seniority matters for wages it is only for union workers.     

投资中国：国际资本进行时

当全球零售行业老大沃尔玛即将斥巨资收购中国零售企业好又多的最新消息通过媒体高调释放出来之后，当世界最大的信息工业跨国公司IBM日前宣布将其全球采购总部从纽约移师到中国深圳的声音清晰落地时．先前投射到中国政府一系列外资管理新规上的所有质疑和批评都消弭无声，中国成为未来全球资本降落的理想市场也日渐明朗。     

The housing market and the monetary transmission mechanism in the UK, in and out of EMU

This paper, prepared for the No Campaign, uses the OEF Global Macroeconometric Model to assess the impact of the housing market on the UK's convergence with the Eurozone. The OEF Model provides the ideal framework for such analysis, as it incorporates a detailed system for forecasting UK house prices, transactions, mortgage borrowing and their interaction with consumer spending and the wider economy, within the context of a model of the Eurozone economy. Our analysis suggests that, if the government were to wish to take the UK into EMU, action to reduce the impact of changes in interest rates on the housing market would be beneficial in improving the UK's economic stability.