Management Research News: Volume 20 Issue 2/3
Table of contents
Manufacturing Matters: Organization and Employee Relations in Modern Manufacturing
Rick Delbridge, Jim LoweThe period since the mid 1970s has seen dramatic changes in the economies of the industrialized nations with the vast majority of OECD countries experiencing a reduction in growth…
Section One Workplace Reform: Teams in Australia's Automotive Industry: Characteristics and Future Challenges
P. Erwin, B. Parks, K. Knapp, N. IeronimoAustralia's $10 billion automotive industry faces an uncertain future in the global market place of the late 20th Century. A dramatic increase in international trade, accompanied…
Globalization and Workplace Change: A Case Study in the Aluminium Industry
Martyn Wright, Paul EdwardsHow globalization is shaping workplace change is increasingly debated. Much discussion has focused upon the forms of work organization, such as teamworking, which appear to be…
Workplace Trade Union Response to TQM and Teamworking
Graham Godfrey, Adrian Wilkinson, Mick MarchingtonUnions are rarely mentioned in the writings of the quality gurus, and the industrial relations aspects of TQM can often be neglected by employers. However, because TQM involves…
The Challenge of the Product Focused Cells. Changing Patterns of Management Control in a Changing Manufacturing Environment
Mahmoud Ezzamel, Hugh Willmott, Frank WorthingtonDuring the past decade, one of the major thrusts of change in manufacturing industry has been the alignment of manufacturing methods to rapidly changing and turbulent market…
Manufacturing Industrial Relations?
Paul Stewart, Miguel Martinez LucioThe aim of this paper is to review the social and political role of labour within the evolution of new production regimes and, in particular, teamworking. It draws on various…
The Manufacturing of Management Strategy: Workplace Innovation and Employment Relations in the Scottish Spirits Industry
Abigail Marks, Patricia Findlay, James Hine, Paul Thompson, Alan McKinlayThe paper focuses on the formation and implementation of new manufacturing strategies in two UK drinks conglomerates ‐ United Distillers (UD) and Allied Distillers (ADL)…
The “Greening” of “Brown Field” Sites
Tim Strangleman, Ian RobertsThis paper seeks to explore the impact of new forms and organisation of work on a medium sized engineering company on Tyneside. It will involve an analysis of the way management…
Autonomous Strategies and the Re‐configuration of Manufacturing Systems: The Case of the Turn‐around of the East Lancashire Paper Mill 1990–1995
D. MacGregor, T.J. CoffeyThis paper considers the role of the reconfiguration of manufacturing systems in the turnaround of the East Lancashire Paper Mill Co. Ltd. from its loss making position in 1990 to…
Section Two Changing Roles and Skills in the ‘New’: Developments in Human Resource Management in Manufacturing in Modern Britain
Michael Poole, Glenville JenkinsThe central aims of this paper are to address: (1) whether or not approaches to human resource management in manufacturing industry in Britain differ from those obtaining in other…
Leadership in the Front Line: The changing nature of supervision in UK manufacturing
Ivor ParryAs a researcher on a three year EPRSC funded project on teamworking in manufacturing at the Change Management Research Centre, Sheffield Hallam University, the writer's particular…
Whatever Did Happen to the Likely Lads? Middle Management Under Lean and Mean Production
Terry Driscoll, Jonathan MorrisAccording to management pundits, an organisational transformation has occurred during the past decade. The bureaucratic, hierarchical organisation is no longer appropriate to meet…
Organisational Skill Formation Processes in Small‐and Medium‐sized Engineering Companies: A Welsh‐German Comparison
Antje Cockrill, Peter ScottThe proposed paper represents early findings from a major research project entitled “Training for Multi‐skilling: a comparison of British and German experience,” which is financed…
New Training Requirements in the Automotive Industry a Partnership Solution
Mike RawlinsonThe paper examines the development of a training centre focused on the automotive sector in Wales. An Automotive Training Centre is being set up by Ford in partnership with the…
The Effect of Workplace Training on Staff Flexibility and Product Reliability in an Electronic Component Production Company
Alan DowlerThe investment in training and development within British industrial and commercial organisations is often the subject of debate.
Section Three Transnational Organizations and The International Dimension: The Problematical Management of Labour and Workplace Relations: A Study of a Cluster of Japanese Manufacturing Transplants
Tony Elger, Chris SmithA major theme of much of the literature on Japanese transplants concerns the construction of employer hegemony on the basis of stringent selection, employee involvement and team…
The Japanese Manufacturing Sector in the UK: A Performance Appraisal
Michael J. Peel, Max MundayThe development of the Japanese transplant manufacturing sector in the UK economy has been relatively rapid. In 1981, 17 Japanese manufacturing enterprises in the UK employed just…
Japanese‐Style Manufacturing Methods and the Process of Organisational Change
Richard MittonBy the mid‐1990's it is becoming apparent that production techniques such as Just‐in‐Time, Total Quality Management and Continuous Improvement and human resource/industrial…
Multinationals, Labour Management and the Process of Diffusion: Evidence from Three British MNCs
Tony EdwardsMuch of the literature on Multinational Companies (MNCs) and Human Resource Management (HRM) is concerned with the extent to which such companies diffuse practices developed in…
Industrial Relations and the New Orthodoxy?: A Comparison of Irish and US Manufacturing Companies
Thomas Turner, Daryl Dart, Patrick GunnigleThe prolonged economic crisis in Ireland of the 1950s forced a reassessment of national economic policy, a move towards Free Trade and the adoption of an outward looking policy…
Transitory JIT at Proton Cars, Malaysia
Mike Simpson, Geoff Sykes, Adini AbdullahIn September 1963 the Federal Government of Malaysia announced its intention to encourage the establishment of an automobile industry. It was felt that car manufacture would…
Manufacturing Reform and the State: The Case of the Chinese Steel Industry
Jackie Sheehan, John Hassard, Paul Forrester, Jon Morris, Robin Porter, Xiao YuxinIn 1979 the decision was taken to develop a Contract Responsibility System experiment as part of China's economic reform programme, and the system was eventually applied in 85% of…
The Global Manufacturer in Local Contexts: Power Engineering and Manufacturing Survival in the Former USSR
Malcolm R. HillWestern accounts of the industrial infrastructure of the former USSR have been frequently couched in terms of outmoded product design, particularly in the consumer goods sector;…
Contrasts Between Nation‐Specific Traditions in Manufacturing: Evidence on Building a Finnish Paper Mill to East Germany
Juha Laurila, Katri GyursanszkyThere is ample evidence for the claim that solving generic management problems needs accommodation to the specific national and institutional context. For example, forest industry…
Section Four Supply Chains and Inter‐Organizational Roles: Between a Rock and a Hard Place? Medium‐Sized Firms in Manufacturing Supply Chains
Mike Bresnen, Carolyn FowlerThe question of whether or not we are witnessing a profound transformation in the nature of relations between industrial buyers and their suppliers towards more collaborative ways…
‘Faking it’ in Supply Chain Relationships
Nigel Caldwell, Simon DownSupply chain management has been defined as ‘the concept of strategically co‐ordinating supply chains made up of businesses owned and run by different people, each with his or her…
The Resource‐Based View: Using Strategy Unor‐thodoxy to Identify Uniqueness
Brahim HerbaneWhilst the automotive industry celebrates its centenary, in this same period relationships between manufacturing organisations and their component suppliers have experienced a sea…
Improving Supply Chain Performance: A Tool for Diagnosing and Correcting Performance Deficiencies
Adrian Morris, George Conway, John MaguireSince 1994 the Supplier Development Team (SDT) of the University of Sunderland has been managing an EU/DTI funded project aimed at raising the level of performance of SME…
Flexible Specialisation in the Clothing and Garment Industry
Bob LowsonThis paper provides a preliminary opportunity to report the findings of an empirical research study. The work details new management strategies, different methods of organisation…
Section Five Future Developments: Does Manufacturing Matter?
Michael Kitson, Jonathan MichieThere has been considerable debate over the causes and consequences of ‘deindustrialisation’. The relative decline of manufacturing, and particularly of manufacturing employment…
Mature Firms in the UK Mid‐Corporate Sector: Linking Innovation, Technology and Corporate Strategies
Ossie Jones, Nelson TangSchumpeter (1943) linked innovation to the creation of a dynamic economy: ‘The fundamental impulse that sets and keeps the capitalist engine in motion comes from the new consumer…
Are The British Bad at Flexible Manufacturing?
Stephen Ackroyd, Stephen J. ProcterAlthough the argument will review a good deal of contemporary and historical research data, it is not to be thought of as an empirical undertaking. It is mainly an exercise in…
Engineering Our Future Again: Towards a Long Term Strategy for Manufacturing and Management in the United Kingdom
Wendy L. Currie, Ian A. Glover, Paul J. TraceyThis paper will offer answers or partial answers to the following three questions. How important should manufacturing be for the United Kingdom (UK)? If it is relatively…
The Political Economy of Manufacturing Change in the Regions
Andy Pike, John TomaneyThe paper examines the anatomy of manufacturing change in the regions by focusing on the political economy of restructuring in the North East region. The broad context of change…
The Evolving European Works Councils: Some Early Evidence
Syd Weston, Miguel Martinez LucioThere has long been an interest in consultative processes and in raising the level of social dialogue within European companies ever since the Vredeling proposals of the early…
The Dimensions of Lean Manufacturing
John Bicheno, Tony Millman, Silverio OstrowskiDuring the 1980s and 1990s there were numerous exhortations from politicians, academics, consultants, managers and the media for companies to become “leaner and fitter” as a…
Power, Responsibility, Leadership and Learning: New Thinking for the New Millennium
Bruce LloydFew subjects have taken up more space in the past 30 years than those related to the whole question of leadership. What is it? How is it developed? And few subjects are more…