Adaptation and Competition: Worker/Management Dynamics in a Japanese Auto Parts Company in the United States

• In Event: 256 - Section on Organizations, Occupations and Work Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 12. Overwork and Work Schedule Control

Abstract

Japanese automobile production plants in the United States have drawn a significant amount of attention due mostly to the success of the lean production model, or the Toyota Production System of the 1990s. Yet some have criticized the Toyota Production System, or the lean production model, as exploitative since it requires that employees engage in constant overwork with little autonomy and mandates absolute conformity to management. However, there have been few empirical studies of management-labor relations and organizational issues related to this model. Thus, there is little understanding of how the organizational labor customs relate to the quality and safety of the automobiles that are being produced. Based on my ethnographic observations at a Japanese auto parts company in Kentucky, this paper explores the workplace dynamics between Japanese management and American workers in the plant, focusing on the relationship between the profit and performance pressures of the firm and the responses of the management and plant workers. The paper also examines how the plant workers and the managers responded to or resisted aspects of the workplace culture, including profit-making pressures and the overwork custom, and assesses the impact on the quality and safety of the plant's products.

Author

• Kumiko Nemoto, Kyoto University