Japanese Management Techniques and British Workers

Analyzing the impact of Japanese-style management techniques such as lean production, teamworking, kaizen (continuous improvement) and business unionism of factory workers, this text investigates different facets of the organization of the labour process and employment relations within 15 Japanese transplants in South Wales. There is an emphasis on the impact of the restructuring of workplace relations on both individual groups of workers and collective labour organization. The text provides an insight into the reality of factory life in the 1990s by incorporating descriptions of shop-floor observations, quantitive data and revealing comments from different grades of shop-floor workers, office workers and management.