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Full-Text Articles in Labor Relations
Management Whipsawing: The Staging Of Labor Competition Under Globalization, Ian Greer, Marco Hauptmeier
Management Whipsawing: The Staging Of Labor Competition Under Globalization, Ian Greer, Marco Hauptmeier
Ian Greer
The authors examine management whipsawing practices in the European auto industry based on more than 200 interviews and a comparison of three automakers. They identify four distinct ways in which managers stage competition between plants to extract labor concessions: informal, hegemonic, coercive, and rule-based whipsawing. Practices at the three auto firms differed from one another and changed over time because of two factors: structural whipsawing capacity and management labor relations strategy. In the context of economic globalization, whipsawing is an effective means for managers to extract concessions, to loosen national institutional constraints, and to diffuse employment practices internationally.
A Diversity Of New Work Organization: Human-Centered, Lean, And In-Between, Lowell Turner, Peter Auer
A Diversity Of New Work Organization: Human-Centered, Lean, And In-Between, Lowell Turner, Peter Auer
Lowell Turner
Lean production, from Toyota, is said to be paradigmatic for future production organization in the auto industry. This article challenges that view. Case studies at auto plants in the U.S., Germany, and Sweden show a wide diversity of developing new work organization. Not only are there differences across countries, there are also substantial and persistent variations across firms and even individual plants. No single model of production is yet emerging from this diversity. Although there are common elements such as team and group work, just-in-time delivery, and "total quality management", the actual shape of new work organization depends on a …