The Managerial Limits to Japanization: A Manufacturing Case Study

Abstract

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.

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