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Posits that quality circles (QCs) are a form of employee involvement (EI) which failed due to inconsistent support from management and because they were unable to cope with the realities of organizational power. The QC programme in Land‐Rover flourished during most of the 1990s and is atypical of the national trend where programmes have tended to be short‐lived. States, theoretically, that QCs in Land‐Rover are similar to other programmes in so far as they depend on management support and do not fundamentally challenge the managerial prerogative. Most QC programmes in the UK commenced as an EI initiative, but soon raised issues of participative management which contributed to the brevity of their popularity. The comparative longevity of QCs in Land‐Rover suggests a greater capacity in the company for participative management, although this was unexploited over the long‐term because of the prevailing managerial ideology and its overriding emphasis on economic rationality. Investigates the evidence from the employee perspective.

Total quality management does improve organizational performance and remains the most viable long‐term business strategy around. These were the findings of a recent report entitled “TQM: Forging a Need or Falling Behind?”, commissioned by Development Dimensions International of Pittsburgh, the Quality & Productivity Management Association of Schaumburg, Illinois, and Industry Week, which were based on interviews with 6,500 people in 84 organizations. However, on considering the various elements which help or hinder TQM implementation, training emerged as the one successful theme in successful programmes.

Examines how; in the past ten years, Rover Group has shifted from a publicly owned motor manufacturer, the butt of many jokes, into private ownership under British Aerospace plc in 1988, and then to BMW ownership in 1994. The company’s quality journey started in 1987, and a good measure of its effectiveness is that the company, worth £150 million when sold to BAe, multiplied its value by more than five times before being sold to BMW for £800 million in 1994 ‐ the same year in which the company was an inaugural winner of the UK Quality Award. Outlines much of the thinking and the processes that provide the waystations along that road to that award.

It has never been more important for schools and employers to work together. Indeed, collaboration between education and industry is one of the great success stories of the 1980s in Britain, with more active partnerships than ever before. The background to partnership suggests a variety of motives amongst employers, including a concern to protect future manpower supply. However, the emerging vision of lifelong learning provides a new focus for education partnership activity that is being pioneered by the Rover Group, Britain’s largest motor manufacturer. The company has introduced a number of distinctive approaches to supporting the work‐related curriculum including partnership centres at its major plants and school‐based facilities, the so‐called “Rover rooms”, in the surrounding catchment areas. Quality in work experience has been a major concern for the Rover Group and, in addition to the company’s annual award scheme, initiatives such as learning agreements for pupils have been introduced to raise standards and ensure the quality of learning outcomes.

Proposes five prerequisites for a successful long‐term quality programme. Illustrates them through an imaginary coat‐of‐arms motif. Examines leadership, the cost of implementing TQM, the drive towards customer satisfaction, continous improvement and total involvement. Uses Rover Group as a successful example of these ideas.

This paper examines the product engineering relationships between a vehicle manufacturer and six key suppliers which contribute to the final design of products. The interaction of design information between each supplier and customer is termed a design chain. The paper presents findings of the engineering design relationship between these companies and compares the different project management approaches used. Various mechanisms are used to coordinate these inter‐firm design operations. The paper emphasises a need for customers to differentiate between suppliers, based on their respective design contributions, in order to develop effective and appropriate coordination for the exchange of design and development information. The paper concludes that suppliers need to focus their project management skills on their customers’ processes to assist effective coordination, and finds that suppliers are promoting the use of guest engineers as one mechanism to deliver early participation.

This article reviews Honda’s strategy to localize operations, organization and employment relations at Honda of the UK Manufacturing (HUM). The management literature describes Honda as an unusually un‐bureaucratic company where individual initiative thrives. However, the production system and organization of work at HUM were found to be very tightly controlled, with little variety of work and individual initiative constrained within strict bounds. This may reflect the relative youth of the plant and the company’s strategy to embed its production system thoroughly before permitting change, or it may suggest that production work at Honda does not fit the usual characterization of the company in the literature. Local management has been given freedom to adapt certain aspects of the organization and employment relations framework to fit the British environment, but with no impact on the direct transfer of the production system.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the interrelation of reputation with corporate performance in a crisis and consider the factors that make up the balance between strong recovery, bare survival and failure. The emphasis is on corporate communication and corporate governance.

The current debate on reputation and the validity of the term reputation management is reviewed and cases studies from Australia and the UK are examined.

The paper finds that, in the case studies, poor management, unethical practices, a lack of engagement with customers and other stakeholders, indifferent or aggressive performances by CEOs and lack of preparedness for crisis communication severely or terminally affected the organisations. It identifies a new reputational factor of predictability and considers why some organisations survive a crisis that has strong negative ethical dimensions while others fail.

This paper scrutinises existing concepts of reputation and reputation management and finds that they are not able to predict recovery, survival or failure of organisations. A new definition of reputation is put forward and the factor of predictability is emphasised in proposals for new applied theory.

A comprehensive understanding of the operation as a whole, involving operators and their internal customers, is essential to control a production environment. The author has developed a new technique for identifying each customer/ supplier relationship.