Epilogue
Expectations
Before traveling to England in January and February of 1995, I
hypothesized that the interrelated phenomena of the 'British disease' and the
'Japanization' of British industry
would evidence a significant shift in British thinking about management, not only in
industry, but at the level of public education as well. Such a phenomenon apparently
occurred in Scott County, Kentucky where the Toyota plant directors sent 'local
leadership, including the school superintendent and other school officials to Japan to
expose them to the Japanese [management] system.' The returning local officials
stated:
Based on these experiences, the school system is
now implementing new teaching approaches
emphasizing group work stills over individual
effort. [The school superintendent] lamented
the traditional emphasis on individualized
learning (i.e. the fact that in jherican schools
group activity is labelled 'cheating').[176]
Although the precise context of this trip to Japan would
have to be researched in more detail, on my first 'reading, this case exposed fundamental
epistemic and pedagogic roots interacting in the cross-cultural trade between Japan and
America in the late twentieth century. The school superintendent's lament over
America's 'traditional emphasis on individualized learning' and his implementation of the 'new teaching approaches emphasizing group work stills over individual
effort' exemplified the kind of rethinking of pedagogy that would have to occur on a wide
scale in Britain if a substantial change in industrial relations and related institutions
were in the making.
Britain's preference for the term, 'Japanization,' and other Japanese terms like kaizen,
jidoka, and kanban, rather than
American equivalents, led me to believe that potential for such a shift existed.
Since extensive Japanese direct investment in Britain had followed its long-term economic
slowdown and industrial crisis in the 1970s (diagnosed as the British disease) , England
appeared to be fertile ground for more classic examples of 'cultural brokerage.'
The
examples were not as forthcoming as I had expected.
Appearances
The appropriation of the Japanese
model to cure the British disease took a number of unexpected forms. Japanization
became an ideological vehicle for managers and Conservative officials to justify reforms
that were not possible using the American model alone. For decades,
American 'Human Resource Management' (HAM) included many benevolent, participative
practices, but these proven-efficient methods were not acceptable until the appropriation
of the Japanese model. The acceptability of Japanization, as management and labor had
idea1ized it,
corresponded with Margaret Thatcher's union legislation and helped initiate
structural changes in the workplace. These changes appeared to fracture
nineteenth-century assumptions and attitudes regarding the ' inherent antagonism' between
'labor' and 'capital.'
There seemed to be proof of a new industrial relations. Union membership
rates declined substantially between 1980 and 1990, productivity went up, strikes went
down, and management's attitude toward the role of unions became more positive. Many
creative unions were even reasserting themselves in a more managerial role on the
production line in cohort with upper-level management. One cell leader's comment that '
[workers] actually know who the managing director is now . . . he is
actually trying to comunicate,' highlighted some of the efforts that were being made
during this period to bridge the once mutually-exclusive spaces of
labor and management. B.C. Roberts, emeritus professor at the London School of
Economics, was already writing in 1989 that 'after such enormous gains, it would be
extraordinarily
perverse if the British public were to be willing to return to the discredited model of
the past.'[177]
Apparent successes in the West with parts of the Japanese model had even convinced
the late Ishikawa Kaoru in the mid-l98Os to change his view that TQM could only be transferred to historically Confucian countries. [178] Ishikawa concluded that the successful adaption of TQM in
Western countries had proven to him that there were universal human qualities at work in
the process. (Considering the Anglo-American origins of SPC it seemed that this
realization was a little belated.) Nevertheless, it is easy to see how someone might
continue explaining many
of the difficulties of implementing TQM along cultural stereotypes. My initial
independent-study proposal as an undergraduate student, 'to find out how the Japanese
maintained the cooperative spirit despite the competitive tendencies of modern economics,
' revealed my bias that cooperation was not a modern characteristic. My Western Protestant
upbringing may have influenced my ranking of these social attributes--individual rights
over cooperative responsibilities.
Rather than deduce the variations and difficulties British industry had in adapting
the Japanese model to cultural explanations, this thesis chose to look at institutional
trends since the First Industrial Revolution as they were interpreted by the
diagnosticians of the British disease. The institutional critique of the 'British
disease,' especially regarding education, was useful because it showed where some of the
impetus for reform originated, and it showed some of the organizational dynamics under the surface of the new industrial relations
involved in the process of adapting the Japanese model
in Britain. To cast these dynamics into high relief, the thesis reviewed the development
of comparable institutions and their operations in Japan.
Realities: continuity and the 'contest'
These explorations revealed that
underneath the productivity improvements of the TQM/JIT cellular manufacturing designs,
no-strike agreements, the shakedown of union membership and more cooperative images,
traditional British (and American) patterns of management education, and delegation of
authority and responsibility predominated. The education reforms of Margaret
Thatcher and her successor John Major viewed public schools not as a socializing force as
Labour had briefly in the l960s, and as Japan had historically, but rather as a business
venture in need of 'market forces' and in need of more prompting by the government to be
more accountable to the needs of industry.
The reformers forged the new relations between education and industry along
traditional nineteenth century utilitarian lines, to educate more qualified specialists
for industry. One could interpret the reform of putting businessmen and industrialists on
the new university grant appropriation committee as a break from past trends in education
which ranked literary studies above technical studies; Oxford and Cambridge subsequently
established MBA programs, but the tradition of entrusting managerial authority
to specialists rather than a generally educated
work force remained the predominant trend. This continuity, under the surface of
industrial relations, helps to explain why managers had difficulty diffusing their
prerogatives to
line workers and why workers had the most difficulty initiating continuous improvement (kaizen).
This continuity may also help to explain why cooperation and production
improvements depended on strong and adaptable unions as in the case at Flowpak. At Servo,
where the union was virtually powerless, workers received no new authority or
responsibility and were being 'deskilled' by management's introduction of new computer
numerically controlled (CNC) machine tools. 'Breaches in working class morality,'
therefore would have to be made to adapt to the 'firm as community' model, but sustaining
the traditional moral
spaces, especially labor's, was also essential to deter management's monopoly of control.
The diagnosticians of the British disease, then, influenced the reformers only as
far as their claims that management had become technically incompetent. While the
popular image of the Japanese 'firm as community' and the new product-centered cellular
manufacturing configurations paralyzed and overrode many unions, conservative reformers
pursued the American management education model and dismantled the Comprehensive schools
in the name of 'total quality management' (TQM). This was the opinion of
the principle of Woodbrook Vale High School in Loughborough who said that "TQM
is conservative propaganda to break the
schools away from local control in the name of 'self management.' "[179]
A participant in the Japanization debate might interpret these comments as
suggestive of another example of 'mediated Japanization II ' because Conservative
reformers appeared to have a 'hidden agenda' to dismantle and control Labour's
comprehensive schools. But the reformers'
interpretation and application of the Japanese TOM model in this manner does not
necessarily implicate their motives. The British choice to define parents as
customers, force the school books open to them, and include them on budgeting decisions so
the school would be more responsive to the 'market' is within the spirit of the TOM
customer focus and open books policy, even though the Japanese did not view their schools
as responsive to parents in the 'market'
(except perhaps to future parents in the world economy).
Conservative British interpretation of TOM reflected less a 'hidden agenda' than a
constructive interpretation based on traditional British ideals manifest in their
intellectual and institutional histories. Improvements in industrial relations relative to
the strike-ridden decades of the British disease lessened the degree of
social crisis that had prompted George Cyril Allen in 1977 to suggest a Japanese
model for education reform. Major reforms took place, but they proceeded along traditional
lines to adapt TQM in a new way. Britain's creative adaption of the Japanese model for
education and further adaptions of it in the workplace was even comparable to Japan's
adaption of Deming's SPC in that both synchretized aspects of the incoming model with
preexisting organizational tendencies.[180] The longevity of Britain's adaption,
however, depends on whether or not the quality schools will be able respond to market
demands. The research had proven otherwise for similar reforms initiated in France and
Scotland during the early-198Os.
One might conclude, then, as Ronald Dore did in a recent article titled
"Japanese Capitalism, Anglo-Saxon Capitalism: How Will the Darwinian contest Turn
Out?," that the phenomena of competing economies since societies have begun to
industrialize has been "not a battle between
states, but between institutions, between systems
of organization." [181] The models, or images, of these 'institutions'
and 'systems of organization, ' took different forms in each period of industrialization,
when particular combinations of society, technology, and education proved to be more
efficient than preceding combinations. Their formulations at the centers of production
efficiency during these periods, however, would have long lasting ramifications for the
center's future adaptability to the changing socio-industrial requirements in the world
economy.
Patterns: shifting centers
Since the First Industrial Revolution, the
'battle . . . between systems of organization' in the 'Darwinian Contest, ' has not
resulted in clear winners and losers, as if institutions were fixed, or predetermined
variables. Such assumptions were erroneously made by American and
Soviet leadership during the Cold War regarding their competing economic systems. The
pattern of the 'British disease' and the 'Japanization' of British industry showed that
there have been a series of shifting centers, or lights, of creative influence whereby
countries participating in the world economy have appropriated divergent models they
perceived to fit their preexisting
traditions. While these countries adapted and transformed the foreign image, or
model, into something uniquely their own, the country at the center,
basking in its own image of
significance, reinforced those institutions (especially educational) believed to be
responsible for its superior productivity. Since the First Industrial Revolution
there has been a continuous layering of social-industrial adaption and transformation
until new centers of productivity arose
to project new images. This pattern of creativity at the periphery and relative stasis at
the center is consistent with other historical patterns whereby political-economic and
religious institutions have been interpreted differently in peripheral regions and become
transformed in the process.[182]
While Britain reinforced its institutions as the Workshop of the World, America and
Germany adapted and transformed British models. It is no wonder that Germany coined the
term 'British disease' as they watched with dismay, their teacher become entrenched in the
institutions and methods of the preceding period. Similar observations have been made by
peripheral countries regarding China's less creative periods of the dynastic cycle.
America quickly became the next center of influence after elaborating on classical
British economic theory to meet its own managerial requirements of an expansive infrastructure and a multi-ethnic work force. After the Second World War,
America and the Soviet union (which had
adapted America's prewar model of scientific management) projected their respective models
for development around the world and institutionalized them in their own countries. But
interpretation of the images they cast continued to vary.
While America reinforced its mainstream production methods in business schools and
MBA programs. Japan transformed the lesser known image of production and management taught
by W. Edwards Deming. When this transformation succeeded in outperforming the
preceeding
systems of production, and the West began reflecting affirmative images back to Japan in
the late 1970s and early 1980s, official Japanese leadership responded accordingly.
Prime Minister Nakasone proposed reforms, primarily educational, to initiate a new
'age of culture' (bunka no jidai). H.D. Harootunian (1989)
viewed these reforms as a response to the West's idealization of Japanese management:
This [official reform] means 'imp1anting' in the
folk the superiority of specific cultural values.
Yet, on closer inspection, it becomes apparent
that the values this program seeks to instill are
derived from a managerial experience which now
promises to displace, if not eliminate outright,
the possibility of social surplus, manifest in
democracy and its necessary valorization of human
rights.[183]
Although this historian's
western individualist bias is obvious, his critique supports the contention of this
thesis that the 'total quality management' (TQM) system extends from the lower-secondary
schools to the workplace, where there was often no alternative space for representation.
A review of the developments since this reform should provide a backdrop for a
parting view of the 'British disease' and the 'Japanization' of British industry.
While the reforms as late as 1992 had apparently succeeded in nurturing more
cooperation among students, as (reflected by the diminishing number of bullying, or ijimeru,
incidents) , the number of 'school refusers, ' had tripled.[184] Similar statistics on Japanese
multinational corporations (Japanese and Western-run) showed that the number of core, or
regular full-time workers had diminished during the late-1980s and early-1990s while the
number of part-time, marginalized workers grew. These developments highlight an important
problem, or contradiction, in the Japanese production system: its tendency not to provide
alternative spaces for representation outside of the 'firm as comunity, ' 'total quality
management' system.
Because many Westerners tend to view developments in history
as one 'mode' of production displacing another, it is likely that many will continue to be
mesmerized by the Japanese model. After the break up of the Soviet union, an author went
as far as to call Japanese methods 'Humanistic Capitalism' and the new 'World Model.'[185] While Japanese
concepts and applications such as the 'firm as comunity' and continuous improvement (kaizen)
may have offered some epistemological relief to traditional Anglo-American conceptions of
the labor/management dichotomy in a zero-sum game, they have not offered a blanket
solution to every social malady within industrial production. In many cases, British
adaption of cellular manufacturing design facilitated more authority and responsibility to
workers, thereby expanding skill requirements and lessening their monotony and potential
'alienation' toward the product and
firm. Total emphasis on the firm (from the school to the workplace), however, could
result in even more volatile forms of alienation in society at large for those who, either
did not meet the 'empathetic' criteria of the firm, or saw no alternative other than to be
loyal to it.
Since the 'battle . . . between systems of organization' is not a matter of one
system 'wining out'
over another, though, new adaptions and transformations would continue among countries peripheral to the center, while the central country would have fewer images for creative
adaption, and suffer more and more from the adverse effects of the contradictions in its
own system. In Britain, the creativity should continue, especially in rural, or previously
non-industrial regions like northern Scotland, northeastern England, and southern Wales
where Japanese investment has tended to cluster. Indeed, the choice of numerous
multinational corporations, not only Japanese-based, to locate in isolated areas without
prior industrial histories underscores the significance of entrenched institutions and
systems of organization established during previous patterns of industrialization.
FOOTNOTES
[176] Kennedy and Florida 1993: 293-4.[back to text]
[177] B.C. Roberts, "Trade Unions, " in The Thatcher Effect, Dennis Kavanagh and Anthony Seldom et.all , (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), pp.76-8.[back to text]
[178] Ishikawa 1985: 6; 31.[back to text]
[179] Interview by the author 12 February 1995 at Woodbrook Vale High School, Loughborough, Leicestershire England.[back to text]
[180] For an interesting analysis of
the effect of organizational sets in early Meiji Japan affecting the modification and
transformation of Western 'models, ' see Eleanor Westney, Imitation and
Innovation: The Transfer of Western Organizational Patterns to Meiji Japan (Cambridge:
Cambridge U.P., 1987).[back to text]
[181] Dore's article is included in Nigel Campbell and Fred Burton et.al., Japanese Multinationals: Strategies and Management in the Global Kaisha (London: Routledge, 1994).[back to text]
[182] For a concise, readable account of the transmission and transformation of world religions in the premodern period, see Jerry Bentley, Old World Encounters, (Oxford: Oxford U.P. , 1993).[back to text]
[183] H.D. Harootunian, "visible Discourses, Invisible Ideologies, " in Miyoshi and Harootunian et.al., Postmodernism and Japan (Duram: Duke U.P., 1989) , p.79.[back to text]
[184] According to a
Japan Ministry of Education (Mombusho) report, the number of
'school refusers' in primary and junior high schools has nearly quadrupled from 3,679 and
l3,
536 respectively in 1980 to 13,710 and 58,421 in 1992. At the same time the number of
incidents of bullying (ijimeru) declined from a high of 155,066
in 1985 to 13,632 in 1992. Cited in an
article by Okamura Tatsuo titled 'I've Already Given up: Control, Resistance, and Death in
the Japanese School System,' in Japan-Asia Quarterly Review 25(1) 1994: 30-35.[back to text]
[185] This utopian version of the Japanese 'model' is described in Robert Ozaki, Human Capitalism: The Japanese Enterprise System as a World Model (NewYork: Penguin, 199l).[back to text]