Japanese Management Techniques and British Workers

Analyses the impact of 'Japanese-style' management techniques such as lean production, teamworking, kaizen ('continuous improvement') and business unionism on factory workers. Investigates different facets of the organization of the labour process and employment relations within fifteen Japanese transplants in South Wales, and systematically analyses the political process of emulation in a British brownfield plant. Emphasises in particular the impact of the restructuring of workplace relations on both individual groups of workers and Collective labour organization. Provides a penetrating insight into the reality of factory life in the 1990s, by incorporating descriptions of shop-floor observations, comprehensive quantitive data and revealing comments from different grades of shop-floor workers, office workers and management.