Description
Nearly every country which produces cars views the automobile industry as strategically important because of its direct economic significance and because it serves as a bell-weather for innovation in employment conditions. In this text, industrial relations scholars from 11 countries consider the state of the industry worldwide. They are particularly interested in assessing whether the loudly heralded model of lean production initiated by Toyota has become pervasive. The contributors focus on employment practices: the way work is organized; how workers and managers interact; the way worker representatives respond to lean production strategies; and the nature of the adaptation and innovation process itself. Global competition and changing technological possibilities are pressuring other industries to transform their employment practices and the automobile industry may be an important harbinger of what is to come. The contributors to the volume are; Paul Adler; Greg J. Bamber; Goran Grulin; Arnaldo Camuffo; Jose Roberto Ferro; Afonso Correia Fleury; Maria Tereza Fleury; Philip Hirschsohn; John Holmes; Mitsuo Ishida; Ulrich Jurgens; Thomas A. Kochan; Pradeep Kumar; Russell D. Lansbury; John Paul MacDuffie; Stefan Micelli; Tommy Nilsson; Young-Bum Park; Frits Pil; Siegfried Roth; Saul Rubinstein; Harry Scarbrough; Michael Terry; and Guiseppe Volpato.
