Work and Employment Relations in the Smaller Component Subcontractors: Distinctive Pressures and Contrasting Trajectories
Work and Employment Relations in the Smaller Component Subcontractors: Distinctive Pressures and Contrasting Trajectories
This chapter analyses the evolution of management policies and work and employment relations in two smaller Japanese sub-contractors. Both firms were tightly constrained by customer-supplier relations, possessed limited managerial resources to support innovative production and employment policies, and faced problems in the recruitment, retention, and control of labour. Such circumstances prompted a selective and opportunistic adoption and adaptation of parent company management techniques, characterized in one case by the substantial autonomy of local management, but in the other by a fractious process of conflict within management. Japanese-inspired employment practices were less evident than a resort to the familiar tactics of labour regulation in other small enterprises, mixing elements of paternalism, formalization, informal mutuality, insecurity, and threat. The chapter addresses similarities and differences between the two factories in both management micropolitics and employment relations, linking these to distinctive subsidiary mandates, ownership structures, and relations with customers and competitors.
Keywords: customer-supplier relations, formalization, informal mutuality, insecurity, management micropolitics, opportunistic adaptation, paternalism
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