This paper draws on case-study research on four Japanese transplants in one locality to trace the evolving and unsettled relationship between company policies and labour market conditions. It shows that managements continue to face problems of recruiting and retaining labour in this greenfield and nonunion setting, as worker dissatisfactions are expressed more through 'exit' than 'voice'. It then analyses the variety of ways in which managers have sought to build a 'mandate' to manage, and the scope and limits of management hegemony within these workplaces. Finally, it suggests that differences in management policies reflect differencies in ownership patterns, corporate histories and roles within intra-and inter-firm divisions of labour.

This article discusses the implications of technical change and flexibility initiatives for the character of work reorganisation in British manufacturing during the last decade. It assesses rival interpretations, some of which discern major transformations and others which emphasise considerable continuity. It argues, against both these interpretations, that work reorganisation has often been piecemeal, bargained, contradictory and incremental, but has nevertheless tended to involve enhanced managerial prerogatives and diminished worker and union leverage. Despite appreciable diversity, involving a spectrum of relatively modest and more radical innovations, the dominant pattern of change has involved task enlargement and reductions in the porosity of labour, with a bias towards work intensification.

This paper draws from on-going research on labour-management relations in transnational companies within a new town in the English Midlands, Telford Smith, 1998a, 1998b;Smith and Elger, 1998). The paper examines the issue of labour turnover and the management of labour retention using two contrasting case examples from Japanese TNCs. The paper seeks to contextualize management decision-making with regard to labour turnover through a political economy and firm-level analysis. At the macro-level we highlight a shift from using wages (Fordism) and strong internal labour markets (bureaucracy) as labour retention mechanisms, towards an inter-firm collusion on wages, non-poaching and union-avoidance. At the micro-level these strategies are matched with firm-level HRM policies of careful labour selection, company paternalism, segmentation of the labour force into temporary and permanent group and accommodation to higher levels of labour turnover to balance product demand and labour supply. TNCs in our research site, Telford, dominate manufacturing employment, representing 60 per cent of all manufacturing jobs. This is similar to other sites of new jobs growth in the UK, for example Swindon where 66 per cent of manufacturing jobs are with TNCs and other new sites of TNC manufacturing investment. The findings are therefore applicable to other areas in which TNC employment has been dominant in manufacturing.

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This book uses research on Japanese firms in the UK to contribute to broader debate about the role of international firms in reconstructing contemporary work and employment relations. Japanese manufacturing subsidiaries in Britain have often been portrayed as carriers of Japanese best practice models of work organization and employment relations. This research challenges this view on the basis of intensive comparative workplace case studies of several Japanese manufacturing plants in Britain. It develops an analysis of system, society, and dominance effects to identify the competing pressures upon such firms, and argues that factory managers have to negotiate the implications of these cross pressures. Thus, the analysis focuses on the ways in which Japanese and British managers have sought to construct distinctive production and employment regimes in the light of their particular branch plant mandates and competencies, the evolving character of management-worker relations within factories, and the varied product and labour market conditions they face. It also explores the scope and bases of consent and dissent among employees working in these modern workplaces. On this basis, it highlights the constraints as well as the opportunities facing managers of such greenfield workplaces, the uncertainties that arise from intractable features of capitalist employment relations, and the ways in which employment and production regimes are adapted and remade in specific corporate and local contexts. Finally, it assesses the strengths and weaknesses of three competing contemporary images of international subsidiaries, as transplants, as hybrids, and as branch plants.