Section Three Transnational Organizations and The International Dimension: The Problematical Management of Labour and Workplace Relations: A Study of a Cluster of Japanese Manufacturing Transplants Available to Purchase

A major theme of much of the literature on Japanese transplants concerns the construction of employer hegemony on the basis of stringent selection, employee involvement and team‐ working. Many of the more critical contributions to this literature emphasise the tightness of work schedules and the narrow confines of worker initiative, but they nevertheless emphasise the capacity of management to engineer worker compliance and co‐operation, through a sophisticated mix of communications, surveillance and performance monitoring (Morgan and Sayer, 1988; Garrahan and Stewart, 1992; Sewell and Wilkinson, 1992; Graham, 1995). This paper deploys data from current research on a cluster of Japanese manufacturing ‘transplants’ in the Midlands to assess these arguments and to develop a rather different analysis of the problematical management of labour within such workplaces.