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Examines the Japanese management philosophy in organizations, and develops a 15‐item, four‐factor (family orientation and loyalty, open communication, team approach, and manager knowledge) Japanese organizational culture scale (JOCS). Investigates the differences in JOCS and other work‐related variables between 156 non‐unionized employees of one Japanese‐owned automobile plant and 144 unionized employees of one US‐owned automobile plant in the USA. There were no differences in income and education. Employees in the Japanese‐owned plant had higher scores for family orientation and loyalty, open communication, team approach, manager knowledge, organizational commitment, organization‐based self‐esteem, organizational instrumentality, intrinsic satisfaction, and extrinsic satisfaction than those in the US‐owned plant. Results are discussed in light of organizational culture and enhancing quality and productivity in the global competitive market.

This study aims to describe how a work team adapted to its fluctuated and severe environment by changing from “lean” to “over-lean” mode. To do this, the author investigated the relations among productivity, the vertical division of labor, and group leaders' behavior in a Japanese automobile assembly plant.

The authors conducted field study at an assembly plant for five months. They collected three plant-level data to investigate the capability of its shop floor: transition of production volume; transition of the number of workers; and productivity. And they collected two types of workforce data: skill map and work shift. Moreover, they videotaped the behavior of group leaders on several days and analyzed them through a time study.

The work team of this study achieved high productivity even in its tough environment. However, the authors' time study of group leaders showed that the group leaders, who usually engage in some management activities outside of the production line, did many tasks within the line. This indicates the team had a weakness toward the change of team members. Changing to this over-lean mode enabled the team to survive in a short-run, but maintaining the mode has a weakness in enhancing long-term competitiveness.

This study proposes a balance between the two modes is required for organizations if they are to survive their severe and fluctuating environments.

A management system which has been used in Japan's Toyota Motor Company for many years is described. The system is applicable to the assembled goods industry and is widely used in such circumstances in that country. It extends well beyond production and inventory control and incorporates a number of features of a decidedly Japanese nature. Dominant among these is just‐in‐time production which is examined at some length. Also described is Kanban, and several of its elements, which is an essential aspect of just‐in‐time production.

Explores the operations of US and Japanese electronics manufacturers in South‐East Asia from two perspectives. Uses views from a small number of company headquarters in North America and Japan to build two general strategies for commodity electronics manufacturing in the South‐East Asia region. The result of the US strategy would be to retain core technologies at the home base, while the stated Japanese strategy is to transfer technologies rapidly to offshore sites. Tests these disparate strategies against operational realities in a large study of the manufacturing technology level and R&D capability of electronics manufacturing sites in South‐East Asia. Site observations suggest that there is much commonality between the operational configurations and approaches.

The purpose of this study is to contribute to the existing knowledge about the process of achieving Lean Manufacturing (LM) success.

This study uses interpretive structural modeling and captures the opinions of a group of LM experts from a world-class Japanese automobile manufacturer, to map the interrelationships among potential determinants of LM success. This study further uses the data from a survey of 122 leading automobile part manufacturers by performing structural equation modeling to empirically test the research model proposed.

Management support and commitment, financial resources availability, information technology competence for LM, human resources management, production process simplicity, supportive culture and supply chain-wide integration are the key determinants that directly or indirectly determine the level of achievement of LM success.

The determinants of LM success as experienced by Asian automobile manufacturers might be different from determinants of LM success as experienced by Western automobile manufacturers. An interesting direction for future research would be to capture the experts’ inputs from Western automobile manufacturers to complement the findings of this study.

The practical contribution of this study lays in the development of linkages among various LM success determinants. Utility of the proposed interpretive structural modeling and structural equation modeling methodologies imposing order, direction and significance of the relationships among elements of LM success assumes considerable value to the decision-makers and LM practitioners.

Building on opinions of a group of LM experts and a case study of leading auto part manufacturers, the present study strives to model the success of LM, a topic that has received little attention to date.

The multilingual MNC provides a promising territory for enhancing the dialogue between organization theory and International Business. We draw parallels between research on the multinational corporation and that on the multilingual corporation. Our review shows that the changing conceptualizations of the MNC toward a network model have carved space for language-sensitive research in International Business. We scrutinize this stream of research from the viewpoint of three organization theory lenses: the role of language in organizational design and architecture, in identity building and culture, and in organizational political systems, and comment on future research.

In this, the second part of a two‐part paper (Part I, Personnel Review, Summer 1977, pp 21–34) a survey of instances of work system design (WSD) experiments will be continued. As described in the Introduction to Part I, cases chosen for inclusion report the economic and human results of actual physical or structural innovations in a set or series of human tasks which, taken together, form some meaningful technical whole. The term ‘experiment’ is used in both Part I and II to refer loosely to change or manipulation of actual work activities, and not necessarily to well controlled laboratory experiments. In fact, most cases reported here are ‘natural’ and very few are carefully controlled.

Aims to examine within the theoretical construct of absorptive capacity several forms of host country national (HCN) learning, leading to improved productivity in the foreign operation, and ultimately yielding more effective knowledge generation and flow throughout the multinational corporation (MNC).

Used open‐ended exploratory field interviews with 51 host country human resource and middle managers in 49 different MNC foreign subsidiaries with headquarters in six different countries. Learning needs in three major employee levels of operative, supervisory/middle management, and upper management were examined. Notes from the interviews were recorded by hand and combined and analyzed for evidence of potentially beneficial forms of HCN learning using procedures of domain and theme analysis in taxonomy development.

A total of 12 categories of potentially beneficial forms of HCN learning were identified and discussed relative to their contributions to increased absorptive capacity. These forms of learning included such areas as new employee orientation and entry job skills, MNC predominant language, MNC home country cross‐cultural awareness, supervision and technical operations management skills, expatriate coaching and liaison skills, and MNC strategy and culture.

Provides helpful insights on absorptive capacity to promote further theory development, as well as practical guidance for future HCN training to enhance the effective transfer of management knowledge and practice.

Past research in international management has had a predominant focus on expatriates, failing to identify important contributions that can be made by host country nationals to promote the effective transfer of knowledge throughout the multinational organization.

The term “flexibility” is extensively used in manufacturing literature and yet very loosely defined. Sometimes it is used to characterise a manufacturer′s strategic intention and other times to characterise the manufacturer′s processes and infrastructure. The terms “strategic flexibility” and “operational flexibility” are introduced to distinguish these two uses. Six different categories of activity are examined that a manufacturer may undertake to enhance its operational flexibility and it is pointed out that machine and equipment configuration – often considered to be the key to manufacturing flexibility by factory automation enthusiasts – is just one of these six categories. It is also pointed out that such activities can be found not only on the factory floor, but everywhere in the manufacturer′s value chain. It is argued that these activities will not only enhance the manufacturer′s operational flexibility, but also enhance its productivity as well and therefore will benefit all manufacturing enterprises, regardless of their strategic intentions.

The purpose of this chapter is to offer new justification for multiskilling practices such as job rotation and extensive training for broad skills and explain why there appear to exist complementarity between multiskilling and the delegation of decision authority to workers.

By developing a new model of incomplete contracting where workers make noncontractable investments in multiple skills, we obtain the key insight that worker investments in firm-specific human capital become strategic substitutes when their skills overlap each other.

The “skill substitution effect” analyzed in this chapter induces the following three major results, unless specialization offers a substantial technological advantage: (1) workers' incentives to invest in firm-specific human capital tend to be stronger; (2) the optimal level of delegation is typically higher; and (3) firms' ex post profits tend to be higher with multiskilling than with specialization.

The novel implication of the chapter is that multiskilling may be desirable from a firm's viewpoint even if there are no technological or informational task complementarities among the combined skills, which have been believed to be primary reasons for multiskilling in prior works.