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Bad Work Practices and Good Management Practices: The Consequences of the Extension of Managerial Control in British and Japanese Manufacturing since 1950

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 December 2011

John Williams ,
Colin Haslam  and
Karel Williams
John Williams
Affiliation:
John Williams is professor in the Department of Economics and Agricultural Economics atthe University of Wales, Aberystwyth.
Colin Haslam
Affiliation:
Karel Williams is senior lecturer.
Karel Williams
Affiliation:
Colin Haslam is principal lecturer in business studies at East London Polytechnic.
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Extract

Although the existing academic literature on management practices contrasts national styles, it does not pose or answer key questions about the effectiveness of different approaches. Industrial relations specialists and engineers both offer highly specialized work that provides little detailed analysis of the productivity and profit results of changes in production techniques or of the interaction between the two. The applied economics literature on profit and productivity is equally unhelpful, because it relates differences of output to general differences in factor input, rather than to the detailed organization of production. This article provides some tentative answers to new questions about the efficacy of different approaches to production management, and it contributes to the ongoing debate about whether the significance of the “labor problem” has been over-rated in Britain.

Type
Articles
Information
Business History Review , Volume 64 , Issue 4 , Winter 1990 , pp. 657 - 688
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1990

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References

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