Activités des membres

Harley SHAIKEN was one of the conference presenters to "Labor and the Global Economy: Working in the Americas", organized by the Center for Labor Research and Education (November 21-22, 1996, Berkeley Marina). How do workers and their Unions survive in a rapidly changing global economy? What are the challenges labor faces and what are the solutions, tools and strategies to deal with the challenges? "Working in the Americas" has addressed these pivotal questions in a conference that opened a dialogue between labor leaders in the United States with labor leaders from other countries in the Americas. It is a joint effort between the University and Labor to explore and respond to new forms of cooperation and link the latest academic research with labor activities. Harley Shaiken discussed NAFTA in the trade sessions along with Altemir Tortelli from Brazil and Miguel Vega from Chile.

Mario Sergio SALERNO was invited to the seminar "Production Organization and Efficiency: the Role of Trade Unions", held in Minsk, Belorussia, on 18-20 November 1996. The seminar was organized by the Belorussian Automotive Workers Trade Union; he presented a conference on the introduction of new administrative and organizational practices in the Occident. The Union is preparing its members to the implantation of a Ford plant in Minsk, that would produce 30,000 Escorts/year.

Patrick FRIDENSON et Jean-Louis LOUBET ont chacun présenté une communication au colloque sur Georges Besse (ancien président de Péchiney puis de Renault) que l'Institut d'Histoire de l'Industrie a organisé à Paris le 19 novembre 1996. Celle de Jean-Louis Loubet portait sur la situation de Renault, telle que trouvée par Georges Besse à son arrivée en janvier 1985. Celle de Patrick Fridenson traitait du redressement de Renault durant la présidence de Georges Besse (janvier 1985 - novembre 1986). Les actes du colloque seront publiés par les Éditions Rive Droite en 1997.

Les membres publient...

Paul STEWART: Beyond Japanese Management: the End of Modern Times?, a special issue of Asia Pacific Business Review, Winter 1996, 250 pages.

Whither Japanese management? Lean production, the next frontier? These are the themes of this book which brings together the results from original research in the field of Japanese management. Since the beginning of the 1980s, a growing body of research and commentary has grown up around the theme of Japanese industrial success. Many researchers and practitioners have proffered the view that Japanese pre-eminence can be reduced to production relations, as if emulation was the way out of the competitivity crisis facing non-Japanese manufacturers. For some commentators, this has led to a shift away from the Japanese origins of Japanese management to a focus upon specifically technical factors in production. This in turn has promoted a view of Japan's success as deriving not from the country's social relations and culture but from a unique set of technical attributes which, given the proper conditions, can be adopted by any company, anywhere. Lean production is the epithet given to this account of Japanese pre-eminence and in many ways it amounts to a stripped-down version of the Japanese management paradigm. The authors presented here, in their various ways, set out to challenge the assumptions and prognoses of the Japanese management and lean production schools. The empirical focus of the book is the automotive industry because of its dominant place in world manufacturing and its role as a testing and learning zone for other industries and sectors.

The book brings together original studies of the development of Japanese and crucially, non-Japanese, management in the automotive industry from around the worid, including a total of nine country studies in the key production and consumption theatres - north and south America, Europe and Japan. This crucial text offers new perspectives for all those concerned with the impact of new management arrangements on both employees and management alike.

Laurence SAGLIETTO a présenté et soutenu, le 8 novembre 1996, sa thèse "Le transfert des spécificités organisationnelles des firmes japonaises dans les joint-ventures nippo-américaines implantées aux États-Unis" (le jury: Alain Chiavelli, Jacques Lebraty et Michel Rainelli, professeurs à l'Université de Nice-Sophia Antipolis, Gérard Koenig, professeur à l'Université de Paris XII, et Sabine Urban, professeur à l'Université de Strasbourg III). La joint-venture laisse émerger une dynamique moins conflictuelle grâce à la définition d'une communauté d'intérêts, à une structure d'échanges biculturels par excellence et au renforcement de l'équilibre contractuel. La "double interculturalité" au travers de la rencontre et de la confrontation de deux styles de management différents permet aux firmes de faire face aux enjeux commerciaux et manageriaux actuels La joint-venture apparaît comme un projet stratégique d'apprentissage intellectuel et comme un processus stimulateur d'innovations. Son comportement se situe dans ce cas au niveau de l'intelligence stratégique et non plus par référence à la matérialité de la technologie. L'objet du transfert est alors différent et avec lui "la boîte à outils traditionnelle" qui servait à l'étudier.

La joint-venture, en tant qu'entité créée ex nihilo, évite les transferts ponctuels de pratiques sans cohérence avec les pratiques en vigueur dans l'entreprise, ni aménagement de ces dernières. L'étude des joint-ventures a dévoilé qu'il existait divers degrés de transférabilité de l'adoption à l'adaptation et qu'ils pouvaient être nuancés (adoption partielle ou globale et adaptation faible ou forte).