The Japanisation of British industry? Instances from a high growth area

Here the authors make two arguments, Japanese industry is characterised by distinctive practices, but these predominate in only certain ‘leading edge’ sectors and were introduced mainly to ensure labour supply. Second, Britain's managers are increasingly outside the internal labour markets of large corporations. In this respect British firms are not becoming ‘Japanese’.     

Similarities and differences in employee motivation viewed by Korean and Japanese executives: empirical study on employee motivation management of Japanese-affiliated companies in Korea

This study examines similarities and differences in employee motivation management between Korean and Japanese executives of Japanese-affiliated companies in Korea, based on questionnaire surveys. The respondents' views of employee motivation factors were analysed, by contrast with motivational factors and hygiene factors (maintenance factors) developed by Herzberg. The survey results reveal that both Korean and Japanese executives realize the importance of employee motivation management, and that Japanese executives have a stronger awareness of it than Korean executives. Both recognize it for the sake of high corporate performance, employee job satisfaction and customer satisfaction. Seeing motivation factors: the majority of Korean and Japanese executives regard ‘wage and bonus increases’ as a strong motivational factor; ‘employment stability’ is recognized as a motivational factor by Korean executives; and ‘clarifying company policy and job objectives’ is the most important motivational factor to Japanese executives. Their views of these three factors are not consistent with Herzberg's theory. We also found a recognition gap between Korean and Japanese executives: ‘esteem and praise for job performance’ is a hygiene factor to Korean executives but a motivational factor to Japanese executives.     

Organisation vs. culture: Japanese automotive transplants in the US

It has long been argued that the Japanese production organization is culture-bound and therefore not transferable to other countries. This article examines seven major Japanese automobile assembly plants and over 270 Japanese automotive parts suppliers in the US. The successful transfer of Japanese work and production organization in these ‘transplants’ suggests that Japanese production practices are organizational forms which can be uncoupled from Japanese culture and transferred to other countries.     

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.     

Employment and wage practices of Japanese firms in the Philippines: convergence with Filipino-Chinese and Western-owned firms

In foreign-owned Philippine firms, human resource approaches and practices tend to converge. Japanese-owned firms localize their human resource practices by emphasizing local standards and practices in compensation, hiring, recruitment, job assignments and the like. On the other hand, Western-owned firms tend to adopt well-known Japanese style practices. Filipino-Chinese-owned firms tend to be traditional, emphasizing both informal and hierarchical control mechanisms which put a premium upon loyalty and trust, through familistic, informal but hierarchical control mechanisms. As the owners of these firms pass on control to the next generation, they tend to hire professional managers. These managers include younger generation Filipino-Chinese educated abroad. They are torn between the rational, and traditional norms and practices insisted upon by their Confucian-oriented elders, and the demands of a competitive and ever-changing technology and economy.

It is quite meaningless to attach adjectives like ‘Japanese’, ‘Filipino-Chinese’ or ‘Western’ to universal concepts like industrial relations and human resource approaches - the search for the best approach in work relations is beyond the issue of convergence or divergence.     

JAPANESE AND BRITISH MANAGERIAL COLLEAGUES—HOW THEY VIEW EACH OTHER

The mutual perceptions were obtained of 113 Japanese and 100 British managers working in the London offices of 18 Japanese companies. Eighteen semantic differential items were used to permit each respondent to report his auto stereotype of his own nationality of manager, his hetero stereotype of the other nationality, and his meta stereotype (his opinion as to how they would assess his own group). The degree of agreement between the auto stereotype of each group and the hetero stereotype held of it by the other group is discussed, and the accuracy of the meta stereotypes is examined. It is also shown that the 18 semantic items can be reduced to 3 principal components which, after rotation, are consistent in meaning between the two nationalities. The three rotated factors are interpretable as ‘approval’, ‘open style’ and ‘functional’. The factors permit a more concise comparison of the stereotypes.     

Theoretical implications from the case of performance-based human resource management practices in Japan: management fashion,institutionalization and strategic human resource management perspectives

In Japan, a new type of human resource management (HRM) practices called ‘performance-based HRM practices’ (seika-shugi in Japanese) emerged in the 1990s, and has been adopted by many Japanese firms. In this paper, I illustrate how these type of practices emerged as a management fashion, diffused across a large number of Japanese firms, and became institutionalized in the Japanese business context; and discuss the relationship between performance-based HRM practices and firm performance. This illustration is used to develop a theoretical framework to better understand the relationship between HRM practices and firm performance by integrating theories of management fashions, institutionalization and strategic HRM. Suggestions for future research are also discussed.     

Success factors for continuous supply chain process improvement: evidence from Japanese manufacturers

This study explores how firms can realise ‘continuous’ supply chain process improvement. Specifically, this study proposes the success factors of routinised activities (also called ‘repeated activities’) in the supply chain process improvement. Eight Japanese manufacturers are selected for the case studies. These firms are selected based on their supply chain process operation capabilities. From the case studies, we find that the planning of supply chain process improvement depends on the existing stage of the firm’s Supply Chain Management reform. In addition, even firms with high scores for supply chain process operation capabilities do not have supply chain performance systems. Furthermore, quite surprisingly, many Japanese manufacturers tend to improve their supply chain processes in the absence of such systems.     

The Managerial Limits to Japanization: A Manufacturing Case Study

Geoffrey Broad, who is Lecturer in Comparative Industrial Relations in the Department of Business and Management Studies, University of Salford, reports on his detailed longitudinal study of the views of British and Japanese managers introducing a ‘high-involvement management’(HIM) strategy in a Japanese electronics plant in Wales. He suggest that the formal arrangements for activating such a strategy – extensive information sharing, team briefing, consultation and quality improvement teams – raised fundamental issues for power sharing and control between the two groups, as well as having significant implications for shop floor relations. In particular, the employee involvement actively encouraged by Japanese managers contrasted markedly with the preferred ‘traditional’ prerogatives of the British managers. In the circumstances, he challenges the popular stereotype of ‘Japanisation’ and points to a range of implications for management development in such initiatives.     

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.     

Multinational Companies and Human Resource Management: an Overview of Research Issues1

Anthony Ferner, who is Principal Research Fellow in the Industrial Relations Research Unit at the University of Warwick, uses a wide range of literature and recent empirical research to examine the consequences for HRM of central facets of multinational companies – corporate structure and strategy, country of operation and country of origin. How, for example, do they impact on the degree of cross-national coordination of human resource policies? Are there distinct ‘national’ cultures that infuse these policies? How does ‘corporate culture’ interact with national management cultures of ‘host’ countries? In considering the implications of the discussion for a future research agenda, he emphasises the need to redress the overwhelming concentration in the existing literature on US and Japanese companies.     

Whither the Japanese employment system? The position of the Japan Employers’ Federation

This article analyses a policy of the Japanese Employers’ Federation regarding the ‘desired direction’ of the Japanese employment system. The analysis shows that the Federation in a number of respects advocates radical change, but also that the overall position regarding the relationship between continuity and change is of an ambiguous or unresolved character.     

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’.     

The Dollar, the Oil Price and Policy Divergence

There is currently a clear divergence of policy between the United States, Japan and Germany. With the US in recession and concern growing over the severity of the slump, interest rates have been cut in a move to revive the economy. In contrast Japan and Germany are both experiencing strong growth and monetary policy remains tight to combat inflation. This divergence was seen most clearly when the Federal Reserve Board lowered its discount rate to 6 per cent on 1 February, the day after the Bundesbank had raised its Lombard rate to 9 per cent. With G7 increasingly concerned about domestic factors, less emphasis is placed upon stable exchange rates and as a result the dollar is at an all-time low. The last two G7 communiqués have stressed ‘stability oriented monetary policies’, an ambiguous phrase which fails to define ‘stability’ either in terms of exchange rates, inflation or growth. Thus both the German and Japanese policy of high interest rates to reduce inflation and low US interest rates aimed at stimulating the economy can be termed as ‘stability oriented’. This analysis focuses on these divergent policy responses in two alternative scenarios to the world forecast we presented last month. The first scenario considers what might happen if the Federal Reserve Board were to stimulate the US economy by further cuts in interest rates, whilst Japanese and German rates were unchanged in the face of inflationary pressures. This case may be relevant if the recent US loosening of monetary policy is not sufficient to encourage growth because of a ‘credit crunch’, so that a more expansionary policy is required by the Fed. As a consequence, policy diverges further and the dollar weakens. The second scenario focuses upon a reduction in inflationary pressures in Japan and Germany brought about by an oil price fall. In this case we assume that US policy is already loose enough to avoid a prolonged recession, but that German and Japanese monetary policy is relaxed as inflationary forces recede. In this case policies converge. Each scenario thus concentrates on one of !he two features which are causing the policy divergence amongst G3 countries: recession in the US, inflation in Germany and Japan.     

Worlds colliding: the translation of modern management practices within a UK based subsidiary of a Korean-owned MNC

This paper explores the factors that served to dislodge an espoused strategy of quality management with ‘soft’ HRM within a British subsidiary of a Korean owned multinational company. Accounts from British and Korean managers revealed competing sets of tensions at three levels: external organizational, intra-organizational, and internal workplace. The case is important for a number of reasons. First, research on UK based subsidiaries tends to have focused upon American and Japanese owned companies, with less evidence from MNCs from later industrialized economies. Second, evidence suggests that MNCs from Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore have been experimenting with Western influenced high-performance work systems – but there is less evidence about how these are actually translated into the workplace. Third, there is a growing literature that suggests that the transfer of management practices in MNCs can be partly understood as a ‘negotiated process’, and disagreements may emerge between organisational actors in respect of the meaning and function of such practices. This article offers further support for this contention and offers insights into how these processes affected day-to-day management of the workplace and undermined the espoused strategy.     

Introduction: New Labour,the new public management and changing forms of human resource management

The existence of distinctive and durable business systems has been a well-researched feature of the ‘varieties of capitalism’ literature. Organizational practices of firms belonging to and operating in these business systems reflect institutional logics that are unique to each particular system. However, the last decade has seen a large growth in cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&;A), including acquisitions by firms from one business system of firms from another. A model is presented, utilizing an institutional framework and focusing on the acquisition of Japanese companies by foreign firms, to analyse and predict the trajectory of organizational change in such cases.     

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.     

Talk,trust and information flow: work relationships between Japanese expatriate and host national employees in Indonesia

This paper broadens the understanding of work relationships between expatriate and host national employees in transnational organisations/corporations, who have tended to be investigated separately. By exploring interpersonal interactions between expatriate and host national employees, this paper highlights the importance of their relationships in the implementation of organisational activities. With a focus on both Japanese expatriate and host national employees in a Japanese organisation in Indonesia, this ethnographic study examines the ways in which they worked in unfamiliar circumstances, managed differences and provided essential support for each other. Their transnational connections, characterised by what Granovetter calls ‘the strength of weak ties’, function to diffuse information and knowledge effectively. I argue the significance of ‘talk’, particularly small talk, as an initial action that supports such information flow and builds trust. This paper attempts to demonstrate the vital roles of expatriate and host national employees as mediators, by using network analysis as a framework. Finally, I conclude that both expatriate and host national employees, the latter often seen merely as backseat players, are in fact keys to the successful activities of transnational organisations/corporations.     

Global managers and Japanese multinationals: internationalization and management in Japanese financial institutions

The paper examines the internationalization of Japanese banks in the 1980s and 1990s and the experiences of managers within them. These banks underwent a vast expansion in international activities in the 1980s, followed by an equally rapid contraction in the 1990s. Building on a series of interviews conducted in London and Tokyo in the period 1999-2001, the paper examines how this impacted on the careers and expectations of both Japanese and non-Japanese managers. The paper argues that the organizations have been fundamentally changed by these experiences and have become in varying ways ‘transnational social spaces’. The idea of multinationals as transnational social spaces is developed as a general way of linking flows (of people, practices and ideas) inside the firm to broader processes in the development of global political economy.     

The role of primary processing in the supply risks of critical metals

This study seeks to understand the role of primary processing, i.e. the first post-mining stage, in supply risk, by means of a case study on three critical metals (neodymium, cobalt, and platinum) in the context of Japan. Applying the ‘footprint’ concept with a multiregional input–output model, we have quantified the direct and indirect vulnerability of the Japanese economy to such risks. Considering the supply risks associated with primary processors, we find that Japanese final consumers are exposed to relatively higher supply risks for neodymium as compared with cobalt and platinum. Our study shows that the primary processing stage of a metal’s supply chain may contribute significantly to the overall supply risks, suggesting that this stage should be taken into due account in understanding and mitigating supply-chain vulnerability through, e.g. supplier diversification and alternative material development.