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Successive reorganization of production of work in the French car industry has led to a particular productive matrix. This productive matrix is very effective and has made gains of between 5 and 12% per year possible. The components of the matrix are tight flow, teamwork and competencies model and integration of production in the outspread firm. The matrix can be understood as a subsection of the post-Fordist model of capital accumulation. The question is put whether this matrix can overcome the contradictions between workers and employers and keep the French car manufacturers in profit over the long term.

Purpose – This chapter aims to explore and discuss how women paid and unpaid labor in weaving is positioned in the flexible production chain in the context of local development.

Methodology/approach – It is based on a research11Report on Effects and Results of the Relationships between Manufacturers and Local Weavers on the Local Social Structure: Cases of Mugla/Yesilyurt, Istanbul/Sile and Kastamonu in collaboration with Asuman Turkun-Erendil and supported by Mugla University Research Projects Unit, 2006 (unpublished project report). study, using mainly oral history methods, of three weaving centers in Anatolia in their attempts to achieve local development through the restructuring of their traditional craft.

Findings – This study shows how a flexible production process is organized in ways in which women's labor is almost always positioned as cheap and insecure. In this process, through production of hegemonic discourses, symbolic capital of secure women's work is drastically decreased and that of the production activity itself (weaving) is increased. It also discusses how the state as the main carrier of symbolic violence, plays an important role in expansion of flexible production and informality directly (with its policies applied in its own enterprises) or indirectly (with its policies in general).

Originality/value of paper – By focusing on the mechanisms through women's labor is kept cheap or unpaid in the organization of the entire production process and also on the relationships between women's labor and the state in local development context, critical points for future discussion and policy-making are raised.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the impact that slow growth in staple food productivity can have on the process of structural change and, more importantly, on the development of labor intensive industry.

A theory of a semi-open economy is developed to analyze the role of staple food productivity on structural change. A case study is used to illustrate the workings of the model.

Slow growth in food staple productivity will mean that even when labor is physically abundant, it will not be economically cheap. Thus it will be extremely difficult to promote the expansion of labor intensive manufacturing. The key to rapid structural change is rapid growth in food staple productivity.

Investment in raising agricultural productivity is critical in the development of labor intensive manufacturing.

Rapid growth can occur without leading to structural change. The bulk of the population remains locked in the rural sector.

The food sector is shown to be largely non-tradable. As a result solving the food problem domestically is crucial for structural change and economic development. Labor intensive manufacturing needs relatively cheap labor. For labor to be cheap, agricultural productivity (food staples) must rise rapidly.

In this paper, we shall be examining worker involvement in decision making, mostly at shop‐floor level, in a number of British business organisations. The study takes into account the perceptions of both managers' and shop stewards' influence respectively over decision making, and asks whether the level of direct influence of employees appears consistently lower than that of indirect participation via their representatives, either through informal (mainly shop steward) mechanisms or the official channels.

The ideas expressed in this work are based on those put into practice at the Okuma Corporation of Japan, one of the world′s leading machine tool manufacturers. In common with many other large organizations, Okuma Corporation has to meet the new challenges posed by globalization, keener domestic and international competition, shorter business cycles and an increasingly volatile environment. Intelligent corporate strategy (ICS), as practised at Okuma, is a unified theory of strategic corporate management based on five levels of win‐win relationships for profit/market share, namely: ,1. Loyalty from customers (value for money) – right focus., 2. Commitment from workers (meeting hierarchy of needs) – right attitude., 3. Co‐operation from suppliers (expanding and reliable business) – right connections., 4. Co‐operation from distributors (expanding and reliable business) – right channels., 5. Respect from competitors (setting standards for business excellence) – right strategies. The aim is to create values for all stakeholders. This holistic people‐oriented approach recognizes that, although the world is increasingly driven by high technology, it continues to be influenced and managed by people (customers, workers, suppliers, distributors, competitors). The philosophical core of ICS is action learning and teamwork based on principle‐centred relationships of sincerity, trust and integrity. In the real world, these are the roots of success in relationships and in the bottom‐line results of business. ICS is, in essence, relationship management for synergy. It is based on the premiss that domestic and international commerce is a positive sum game: in the long run everyone wins. Finally, ICS is a paradigm for manufacturing companies coping with change and uncertainty in their search for profit/market share. Time‐honoured values give definition to corporate character; circumstances change, values remain. Poor business operations generally result from human frailty. ICS is predicated on the belief that the quality of human relationships determines the bottom‐line results. ICS attempts to make manifest and explicit the intangible psychological factors for value‐added partnerships. ICS is a dynamic, living, and heuristic‐learning model. There is intelligence in the corporate strategy because it applies commonsense, wisdom, creative systems thinking and synergy to ensure longevity in its corporate life for sustainable competitive advantage.

Purpose – This chapter illustrates how agent-based modeling (ABM) simulations may be incorporated into future emerging market research so as to build and strengthen existing and new theory. The area of strategy and organizations has used cellular automata, NK landscapes, and network simulations, but international business has rarely entertained their use. This is a loss for the area because emerging markets are rapidly growing and changing while research lags behind. Emerging markets are extremely complex environments best studied using simulations as complementary to existing research tools.

Design/methodology/approach – This chapter divides emerging market studies into three main areas including (1) foreign direct investment, (2) governance structures, and (3) international trade exporting. Through a discussion of the existing research in each of these areas, research opportunities applying ABM are identified. Illustrations allow explanation of the three agent-based simulation methods, as mentioned, based on previous ABM research in strategy and demonstrate how ABM may be applied to future emerging market studies.

Findings – A main insight is that ABM could lead to the rapid catch-up and improvement of emerging market research, especially when data for empirical work is limited, nonexistent, or prohibitively expensive to gather. ABM does not replace empirical work, but past research can be clarified and early theory developed so that if data becomes available, empirical work can be sharp and quickly realized having strong theoretical guidance.

Originality/value – This work, aimed at emerging market researchers, uniquely highlights why and how simulation tools are required and may be used in emerging market research.

Evidence suggests that unorganized manufacturing units are extremely credit-starved. The purpose of this paper is to study the effect of such credit unavailability for small firms, and to see if it has altered the erstwhile production organization in a way which has led to the withdrawal of the small firms from both input and output market, leading to increased production outsourcing between the formal and informal firms.

Based on data collected from two textile clusters in Maharashtra, India, the study shows that credit unavailability has led small firms to increasingly work for bigger firms as outsourced units. The paper uses a measure of technology and productivity to undertake logistic regression and sub-sample regressions to confirm production reorganization resulting from credit unavailability. This would provide additional insights for standard measures of intra-country intra-industry trade

The exclusion of the unorganized production units from the formal lending process has, over the years, led to a reorganization of the existing production structure, whereby the small firms are forced to work for bigger formal firms on piece-rate basis. To circumvent their credit issues, the small unorganized sector firms have increasingly started to work for bigger firms as outsourced units.

This is an original research work. The paper fulfils the identified need of addressing how the plaguing social issue of financial exclusion of unorganized firms has led to production reorganization.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate what role particular new management devices play in the development of the news profession in an organizational setting shifting to new technologies.

This is studied through of observations of work practices in the newsroom and through documentary research and qualitative interviews with managers, editors, and other professionals.

It is shown that management devices such as the news table and the news concept are central to the reorganization of news work, as they realize managers’ strategies, just like they produce new practices and power relationships. It is shown that the devices produce increased collaboration among journalists and interaction between managers and output journalists, that mundane work and power is delegated to technological devices and that news products are increasingly standardized.

The wider implications of these findings seem to be a change in the journalistic profession: TV news journalism is becoming less individualistic and more collective and professionalism becomes a matter of understanding and realizing the news organization’s strategy, rather than following a more individual agenda.

The paper’s originality lies in showing that profession and management are not opposed to each other, but can be seen as a continuum on which journalistic and managerial tasks become intertwined. This is in contrast to previous research on news work. Furthermore, the paper’s focus on devices opens up for conceptualizing power in the newsroom as distributed across a network of people and things, rather executed by managers alone.

Presents the idea that the “Aubry” law context, which concerns the reorganization of working time, constitutes an encouragement to decentralize the collective negotiation. Introduced in June 1998, this mechanism represents an opportunity to observe innovative negotiation modes and the construct of organizations’ models. These models aim to associate the principles of Taylorism with the increasing need for flexibility. Through negotiation cases, the authors observe the manner in which the social partners build satisfactory compromises regarding work and the organization of working time. Such processes show the ability of employees to participate in organizational constructs and their creativity. The empirical observations illustrate the debate on the renewal of the Taylorian approach for organizations. Historically, in France, the action of trade union organizations has been deeply rooted in the protest against the Taylorian model; today the union movement constitutes, in our understanding, one phase of professional relations in the reshaping process of the Taylorian model of organization.