Lean Production and the Discourse of Dissent

Abstract

In the spring of 1989, Chrysler and Mitsubishi Motors entered into a joint venture to build cars in Bloomington‐Normal, Illinois. A dozen years after “lean production” and “employee teams” were introduced, this paper revisits the initial expectations of workers. Through an employee survey it assesses how employee attitudes, shop‐floor behavior, and language have coalesced to create an oppositional discourse of dissent. At Mitsubishi there appears to be a fundamental contradiction between the discourse of production as spoken and the experiences of the workers working within that discourse. The workers have created their own way of talking about work life at Mitsubishi.

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