Inside the Ford‐UAW Transformation: Pivotal Events in Valuing Work and Delivering Results, by Joel Cutcher‐Gershenfeld, Dan Brooks and Martin Mulloy. MIT Press, London, 2015, 408 pp., ISBN: 9780262029162, £20.95, hardback.
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/bjir.12205 |
| Date | 01 December 2016 |
| Published date | 01 December 2016 |
Book Reviews 875
From a management perspective, the study oers lessons about engaging with
information sharing practices using both instrumental and institutional approaches.
Moreover, the study also oers an insight to both the ideological and practical
implications of using management-directed eorts compared with collaborative
(between workers and managers) eorts of transforming organizations, in particular
worker co-operatives. Essentially, the book remains true to its cause, which is that of
establishing the contradictions of employee involvement in organizational change by
examining transformation in an Indian industrial co-operative case study and then
highlighting the lessons learnt from it for theory and practice.
The book contributes to better understanding and theorizing employeeinvolvement
in organizational transformation, demonstrating that there is no hard science at play
since the dynamics of people, groups and society are involved. Another important
contribution of the book is its account of the struggles and opportunities of workers
organizing in a capitalist economy and the changing nature of industrial worker co-
operativesin modern day India. This again may interest readers in developingcountries
that havea history of industrial relations and co-operatives and where globalization is
reshaping economies and altering professional collectivism.
This book will interest both students and academics alike who are interested in
matters of industrial relations and modern day organizational change issues. It is
also a useful text for researchers interested in designing and conducting case-based
qualitative studies.The book showcases the shifting boundaries of labour collectivism
and worker organization in a growing economy with implication for how employee
involvement can influence organizationalchange.
ALLY R. MEMON
Kingston Business School, Kingston University
Inside the Ford-UAW Transformation: Pivotal Events in Valuing Work and Delivering
Results, by Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld, Dan Brooks and Martin Mulloy. MIT
Press, London, 2015, 408 pp., ISBN: 9780262029162, £20.95, hardback.
The impact of economic change on the global automotive industry since the start of the
twenty-first century has been well documented in both academic research and popular
media sources. The enormous loss of automotive jobs in western countries such as
the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada has also been a terrible personal
experience for hundreds of thousands of displaced workers in automotive assembly,
parts manufacturing and allied industries. The automotive industry, including how
people are employed in it, has markedly changed in the past two decades. This is
particularly true of the years since 2008. Inside the Ford-UAWTransformation: Pivotal
Events in Valuing Work and Delivering Results is ostensibly about the eorts of one
firm — Ford Motor Company — to change their internal organizational culture
in order to compete in the contemporary auto industry. It is both a revealing and
troubling book.
Industries are often described in somewhatmonolithic terms, but events of past eight
years have especially shown that there is considerable variation between the firms in
the global automotive industry. Some firms have substantial overseasoperations, such
as Ford and Volkswagen, while others like Renault are more dependent on markets
that are closer to their home countries. This account of Ford’s internal relations with
the United Auto Workers (UAW) union was written by three people: one from the
C
2016 John Wiley& Sons Ltd.
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