Suchergebnisse

A review essay on books by: Tony Elger & Chris Smith (Eds), Global Japanization? The Transnational Transformation of the Labour Process (London: Routledge, 1994); & Hugh Williamson, Coping with the Miracle: Japan's Unions Explore International Relations (Pluto Press, 1994 [see listings in IRPS No. 85]). It is suggested that the ongoing debate over Japanese economic policies & models suffers from an inadequate differentiation on the part of scholars of their political & theoretical agendas. The political agenda is broken down between management types who see Japan's flexible production system as a positive step forward & working-class types who see it as an intensification of the labor process. The Elger & Smith volume is situated squarely on the worker side of this divide. The theoretical agenda is separated into those who emphasize the cultural distinctiveness of the Japanese model & those who point to an underlying, universal logic of global competition. Williamson's study of Japanese labor unions is portrayed as a somewhat dry, heavily detailed documentation of Japan's National Union Confederation Rengo & its offshoot, the Japan International Labor Foundation. In Williamson's study, these unions appear as inordinately submissive to their parent companies. 15 References. D. M. Smith