Format:
1 online resource (281 pages)
Edition:
1st ed.
ISBN:
9780195072778
,
9780195360974
Content:
With the expansion of global competition through international trade agreements and heightened rivalry between firms in the domestic market, it is easy to understand why a firm would seek to compete by lowering the wages paid to labor. Yet, this strategy is troubled not only by the efforts of other firms pursuing cheaper labor costs, but also by the failure to adopt better ways of organizing work. New products are copied within a short time after introduction. What is difficult to imitate is the organizing of work--as applied to the factory floor, to the corporation, and to relations among firms and other institutions. This book explores detailed case studies of individual firms, country comparisons, and historical patterns of diffusion. The authors emphasize that the speed by which a firm adopts and integrates new technologies and ways of organizing must be understood in the context of the strength of the regional and national network of firms and institutions. The chapters in the book are written by world-renowned scholars--including Giovanni Dosi, Horst Kern, Michael Schumann, and Eleanor D. Westner--and represent major schools of thought from Germany, France, the U.S., Japan, and the United Kingdom. The studies are international in nature and include in-depth analyses of software systems, automobile manufacturing (e.g. the Toyota Production System), and the machine tool industry
Note:
Intro -- Contents -- Contributors -- Introduction -- I: Organizing of Work and Technology: Comparisons of Country Patterns -- 1. Large Firms, Small Firms, and the Governance of Flexible Specialization: The Case of Baden Württemberg and Socialized Risk -- 2. Country Patterns in R& -- D Organization: The United States and Japan -- 3. Work Organization in Japan and the United States -- 4. The Societal Effect in the Strategies of French and West German Machine-Tool Manufacturers -- II: New Technologies and New Patterns of Organizing -- 5. Rationalization and Work in German Industry -- 6. National and Company Differences in Organizing Production Work in the Car Industry -- 7. New Technology and the Organization of Work: British and Japanese Factories -- 8. The Shaping of Software Systems in Manufacturing: The Implementation of Network Technologies in British Industries -- 9. A French-style Sociotechnical Learning Process: The Robotization of Automobile Body Shops -- III: Diffusion of New Ways of Organizing -- 10. The Diffusion of American Organizing Principles to Europe -- 11. The Governance of Japanese and U.S. Manufacturing Affiliates in the U.K.: Some Country-specific Differences -- 12. Supplying the Toyota Production System: Intercorporate Organizational Evolution and Supplier Subsystems -- IV: Concluding Notes -- 13. National Specificities and the Context of Change: The Coevolution of Organization and Technology -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W.
Additional Edition:
Print version Kogut, Bruce Country Competitiveness Cary : Oxford University Press, Incorporated,c1993 ISBN 9780195072778
Language:
English
Keywords:
Electronic books
URL:
FULL
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