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Wonders whether companies actually have employees best interests at heart across physical, mental and spiritual spheres. Posits that most organizations ignore their workforce – not even, in many cases, describing workers as assets! Describes many studies to back up this claim in theis work based on the 2002 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference, in Cardiff, Wales.

The period since the mid 1970s has seen dramatic changes in the economies of the industrialized nations with the vast majority of OECD countries experiencing a reduction in growth of industrial production and a marked reversal in employment trends in the industrial sector (Rowthorn and Glyn, 1990). This process of “deindustrialization” has attracted the attention of academics and commentators from a variety of disciplines and been variously heralded as evidence of the advent of “post‐industrial” society (Bell, 1974), “post‐Fordism” (Piore and Sabel, 1984), “disorgan‐ized capitalism” (Lash and Urry, 1987), and the “postmodern world” (Clegg, 1990). These authors have described discontinuous shifts in the pattern of industrial society with broad changes in regimes of accumulation and regulation which involve socio‐cultural and political as well as economic change. Economists have described the failure of Keynesian economic policies in the West to sustain rapid growth and high employment as the “end of the golden age of capitalism” (Marglin and Schor, 1990).

The purpose of this paper is to evidence the emergence of new forms of work organisation which if observed could be seen as consistent with the concept of the “learning factory”. This is attempted through reporting the views of those workers engaged in team based operations and reflects upon the emerging role of first‐line and team‐based supervisors. The implications of such developments are then considered from the perspective of the current HR plant managers.

This paper reports on a study of 18 US and UK automotive component suppliers. The information gathered included questionnaire data detailing management practices and giving plant level performance measures. The paper draws primarily on data gathered from interviews conducted with workers, team leaders and managers, including HR managers.

While the majority of plants may be some way from a “learning factory” model there is evidence of changing practices, structures and expectations in each that are in varying ways broadly consistent with elements of this approach. As a consequence of the prioritisation for increases in devolution of responsibility to other employees, the traditional role of the HR manager was seen to be evolving which to a number of managers was creating difficulties.

This paper contributes to the growing evidence of the devolvement of traditional “managerial” responsibilities to lower levels within increasingly “lean” manufacturing organisations. It also comments on the evolving role of HR managers in contemporary manufacturing.

This paper reports some preliminary findings from a research project on the management of problem solving and continuous improvement in UK and US first tier automotive component manufacturers. It draws on organizational theory to interpret emerging structures, relationships and roles in the light of recent work on the “learning factory” model of manufacturing. There is considerable evidence of shifting patterns of roles and responsibilities, especially for operators, front‐line managers and a new cadre of continuous improvement specialists, but only limited evidence of knowledge transfer across organizational boundaries. Overall the findings suggest that there are various routes toward the learning factory and that ultimately this model of operations is likely to have numerous practical incarnations.

In recent years certain writers have put forward the notion that a distinctive and definite change has occurred in the way in which employees are managed (Beer et al, 1985; Guest, 1987; Poole, 1991; Sisson, 1991). The term or concept of Human Resource Management (HRM) has been used to describe these changes and has fuelled a spirited debate among academics and practitioners. This debate has centred on the distinctiveness of HRM and in particular whether, and in what ways, it is different to its predecessor, so called Personnel Management. This debate has considered the extent to which HRM has theoretical validity as a concept with predictive capabilities and/or the extent to which it represents a model with internally consistent features and dimensions. Others have suggested it is perhaps better understood as a map or a bracketing ‘catch all’ concept for a cluster of related management practices or approaches (Legge, 1989; Noon, 1992). The related debate has concerned the attempt by writers and commentators to establish empirically whether definitive changes have in fact taken place. Apart from case studies of exemplar (usually American and Japanese) organizations, wider survey and case material of UK based brownfield operations has tended to suggest limited adoption of HRM although Storey's (1992) recent collection of case material suggests that the wider adoption of HRM is underway.

Examines innovation, labour and human resource management in contemporary manufacturing. Case study data are presented from automotive plants in the USA and the UK. Reports on the human resource practices in use and considers the relationship with the plants’ manufacturing and innovation activities. In particular, focuses on current developments in the roles of employees and their training and development implications.

Reports the findings of a study into manufacturing performance and practice in 71 auto components plants in eight countries. Documents the performance differences between plants in different countries, and tests the extent to which lean production principles explain variations in performance. As a group, European plants trailed the USA and Japan on productivity and quality. Measures of process discipline and control most consistently discriminated between the high and low‐performing plants. There was no clear link between performance and patterns of work organization or human resource policy.

The concept of an “organizing model” of trade unionism has shaped union strategies for revitalization in a number of countries in recent years. This article examines the transfer of “organizing unionism” to the UK in two ways. It presents findings from a survey of unions to identify the extent to which the organizing model is influencing national recruitment policy and presents case studies of three union campaigns which have drawn upon the organizing model, in an attempt to assess its strengths and weaknesses in a UK context. The survey results indicate only limited take‐up of the organizing model, though there is a group of vanguard unions which have embraced it with enthusiasm. The case studies demonstrate some success in applying the model, though identify employer resistance and internal opposition as significant constraints.

This paper reports the findings of a study into 12 UK and nine Japanese automotive component plants. Compared to the UK plants, the Japanese plants showed a 60 per cent superiority on productivity and a 9:1 superiority in quality. Detailed examination of work structures on the shopfloor revealed that UK plants devolve more responsibility to operators for activities such as quality monitoring and improvement, work allocation and work pace determination than the Japanese plants do. This implies that key aspects of the Japanese model may have been misrepresented in the Japanization debate.