Oxford Handbook of Human Resource Management

(Steven Felgate) #1

manufacturing model. A recent international empirical study of the auto and
telecommunications industries by Katz and Darbishire ( 2000 ) suggested there
were four common patterns of work practices that were found to be spreading
across the countries studied (Australia, Germany, Italy, Japan, Sweden, the UK, and
USA). These were denoted by the authors as ‘low wage,’ ‘HRM’, ‘Japanese oriented,’
and ‘joint team based.’
Low-wage workplace practices, according to Katz and Darbishire ( 2000 )aVord
management considerable discretion and are associated with relatively high degrees
of informality of process. Control is exercised through direct hierarchical relations,
wages tend to be low, and there is a strong anti-trade union orientation on the part
of management. Labor turnover tends to be high in such organizations but such
a pattern of employment relations may prove viable in industries where competi-
tion is based upon low cost rather than high levels of quality or innovation. The
position taken in this chapter is that such workplaces are likely to struggle to
survive in mature economies where labor and operating costs are relatively high
and susceptible to international competition. There is wider evidence, however,
that these practices may be characteristic of labor-intensive manufacturing
operations in low-wage economies such as China (Taylor 2001 ) and Malaysia
(Wilkinson et al. 2001 ) as part of the internal and international division of labor
in manufacturing multinationals.
The distinction drawn by Katz and Darbishire ( 2000 ) between HRM and
Japanese-oriented workplace practices can be interpreted as two variations on
lean manufacturing—the original or ideal-typical Japanese version and the version
implemented by many manufacturers in the USA—in a number of regards. Both
carry an emphasis on top-down corporate communication, have team-based work
organization which is managed rather than self-directed, generally comparatively
good levels of contingent pay, and expectations around employment stability and
career development. The key distinctions are between the individualized nature
of rewards and career development and management’s anti-union (or union
substitution) stance in the HRM pattern in contrast with the organizational career
path and enterprise unionism found in the Japanese-oriented pattern.
Given our interest in how manufacturers can meet the challenge of innovativeness,
creativity, and higher value added, and the evidence that lean manufacturing often
fails to deliver this in practice, the joint team-based pattern seems particularly relevant.
Under this approach, Katz and Darbishire ( 2000 )Wnd joint decision-making, semi-
autonomous work groups taking a wider range of responsibilities than is typically
found under lean manufacturing (and thus fewer supervisors), high pay and contin-
gent ‘pay-for-knowledge,’ and a management commitment to union and employee
involvement. This has considerable resonance with the ‘Scandinavian’ model of team-
based production which has routinely been contrasted with lean manufacturing. This
distinction has been rehearsed at length elsewhere (for example, Sandberg 1995 )and
returns us to the challenge of creating ‘learning factories.’


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