Productive Efficiency and the Employment Relationship – The Case of Quality Circles

The argument in this article is put from the standpoint that employers continually need to exercise control in order to realise the capacity of employees at work. One technique for achieving this is the quality circle, a mechanism which is often celebrated in much of the managerial literature. Based on research in a US‐owned company in the vehicle industry, a number of the assumptions which underpin the activity of quality circles are unearthed; in particular, whether employees will automatically be willing to contribute their ideas in the context of inequality in the employment relationship is questioned.