BOOK REVIEWS
| Published date | 01 December 1994 |
| Date | 01 December 1994 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8543.1994.tb01053.x |
British Journal
of
Industrial Relations
32:4
Dec
1994 ooo7-1080 $3.00
BOOK
REVIEWS
The New American Workplace
by Eileen Appelbaum and Rosemary Batt. Basil
Blackwell, Oxford,
1994,
ix
+
287
pp..
€45.
The authors
of
this book argue that, in contrast to past efforts, a much broader
constituency is now in support
of
workplace change, including management,
employees, unions and government agencies. They show that American workplace
change is differentially influenced
by
the Swedish socio-technical systems approach,
the Japanese concept
of
lean production, the Italian form
of
flexible specialization,
the German form
of
diversified quality production and the American human
resource (HR) model. (R. Florida and
M.
Kenney (in
California Management
Review,
33(1), 1990)
had previously argued that the European models were
not
underlying the
US
success stories
of
Route
128
or
Silicon Valley, and were generally
probably not particularly relevant for US workplace innovation. Judging by the
bibliography in the work under review, this paper would seem to be unknown to
Appelbaum and Batt.)
The authors provide an extensive overview over the available survey evidence,
including national-level surveys, non-representative surveys and qualitative case
studies. In an appendix, they provide a summary
of
nearly
200
case studies
of
workplace change in US companies.
While previous literature had largely assumed that innovation in the American
workplace was stimulated by the Japanese example
of
lean production, Appelbaum
and Batt point out that it
is
not one specific approach that is being adopted. Rather,
they find it necessary to distinguish between an American version
of
team
production
and an American version
of
lean
production. Within these, a variety
of
workplace
innovations have occurred, combining innovations in reward systems, participation,
skill training, information-sharing and job security, to mention only some
of
the
human resource policies covered. They also discuss the role
of
parallel structures
such as quality circles
or
problem-solving teams, and structures that change the
existing hierarchy such as semi-autonomous teams.
As part
of
their findings, they suggest a distinction between three types
of
firms:
(1)
high-performance organizations with high average blue-collar wages and
a
high
proportion
of
skilled employees;
(2)
high-performance organizations with quality
management and lean production techniques; and
(3)
low-performance organiza-
tions which spend less
on
training and use fewer quality management and lean
production techniques.
Although the authors are aware that considerable room for manouvre exists at
firm level for management to push through changes, an obstacle persists in that ‘the
institutional framework
of
the United States was developed to support the old,
mass-production system
. .
.
’
(p.
147).
Other barriers for US firms exist in the form
600
British
Journal
of
Industrial Relations
of
‘managerial opportunism’ (p.
151),
the high up-front costs ‘in money, manage-
ment time, and time spent in training by workers’ (p.
157)
and the strangeness
of
sharing decision-making with employees.
On occasion, the book reveals its rather static underlying framework, when
the authors state that ‘Each
of
the alternative production systems has a distinct
competitive advantage over mass production under current competitive conditions
in world markets’ (p.
50).
We
know from Sorge’s neo-contingency approach (in
Organization Studies, 12(2), 1991)
that models of organizing can provide competi-
tive advantage only to specific sectors, and that generalizations across sectors are as
courageous as they are speculative. On a similar note, the authors’ claim that the
US
system
of
corporate governance, with its accompanying ‘focus on short-term
performance and the rise
of
the market for corporate control inhibit the shift to
high-performance work systems’ (p.
167),
is not particularly new; nor is any more
new evidence provided to establish such a causal link.
Therefore, the authors’ conclusion in the final chapter that a more thorough
process of innovation by diffusing high-performance work systems throughout
US
industry ‘requires an interrelated set
of
public policies
.
. .
’
(p.
161)
will remain
unconvincing for at least some readers
-
especially as the authors seem strongly to
embrace the German model, which is described as an attractive path for
US
industry to move towards, a stakeholder model
of
corporate governance. Again,
the cross-sectoral nature
of
this claim makes it rather unconvincing, given that,
particularly in the service sector, which features heavily in the authors’ sample,
US
companies would compare very favourably indeed with their German counterparts.
Porter’s analysis (in
Harvard Business Review,
September
1992)
is clearly more
useful here, given that he analyses advantages
and disadvantages
-
which often
vary heavily between sectors
-
of
the
US,
German and Japanese system
of
corporate governance, respectively.
FRANK MUELLEU
Aston University
Working under Different Rules
edited by Richard B. Freeman. Russell Sage, New
From Uniformity to Divergence
by Pradeep Kumar. IRC Press, Kingston, Ontario,
York
1994,
vii
+
264
pp.,
$26.
1993,
ix
+
195
pp.,
$24.95
paper.
The
USA
is working under rules
so
different from those of other advanced
countries (apparently since the
197Os,
but emphatically during the ‘dirty dozen’
Reaganmush years) that skill differentials have widened, income inequality has
increased, private-sector deunionization has spread, training in the workplace has
become inadequate, and the living standards among ‘low wage Americans in the
early
1990s’
has fallen relative to that
of
‘virtually all other advanced countries’
(Working under Different Rules,
pp.
224-6).
This account
of
economic and social
woe is the distilled wisdom
of
seven reports and ten authors. Similar dolorous
findings emanate from a companion NBER publication,
Small Differences That
Matter (1993),
which compares the
USA
and Canada. If emigrants from outer
space were considering the countries
of
the planet Earth for a new home, surely
these findings would discourage them from seeking admission to the
USA.
Meanwhile, illegal earthlings in search
of
better lives, but unaware
of
either
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