Japanese Production Practices & Human Relations in Administration
Japanese Organizational Practices
Selectively emulate Japanese organizational practices: flexible work rules, just-in-time delivery systems, teamwork, a move away from vertical integration toward the extensive use of subcontracted inputs (outsourcing).
Post-Fordist Reorganization vs. the Japanese Model
The reorganization adopted the cost-cutting measures of lean production, but it did not adopt the employment security provisions. Workers, therefore, did not have the incentive to cooperate with employers.
Why Japan Avoided Fordist Production
Why didn’t Japan’s automobile industry adopt the Fordist style of production?
Because Japan experienced a mass upsurge of labor militancy at the end of W.W. II (prior to the take-off of the Japanese automobile industry), the automobile producers chose to depart in significant ways from the Fordist style of mass production. Japan automobile producers established a multilayered subcontracting system that simultaneously allowed them to guarantee employment to a core labor force, while obtaining low-cost inputs and flexibility from the lower rungs of the supply network. This combination allowed Japan to escape the kind of labor unrest experienced by all the other major producers.
Humanistic Approach to Administration
The rise of the human relations school was a reaction to:
- Dehumanization of work
- Rigorous scientific methods
- Submission to workers
- The postulates of the classical Taylor mechanism
- Fayol formalism
Elton Mayo
Human beings cannot be studied as an isolated unit.
Main factors affecting its efficiency: repetitive movements, fatigue, disadvantages of the material context of working.
Human rationality leads them to calculate how much satisfaction they can get with minimal effort.
Hawthorne Experiment
1. Lighting Effects
Target: Study the effect of lighting on worker efficiency.
Experiment: An observation group with variable light and a control group with constant light intensity. All perform the same task.
Result: Both groups showed the same level of efficiency.
Conclusion: The differences in the physical context do not affect, at least directly, the level of production. Therefore, the variation in the efficiency of workers is not, as Taylorism believed, linked to the material conditions of production. The mechanistic theory does not work in the context of production.
2. Social Conditions of Work
Target: To analyze the effect of changes in the social conditions of work seeking to explain fatigue and monotony of workers.
Experience: Observation group (6 workers) and a control group consisting of the remaining workers. There was a common supervisor for both.
The observation group was, first, given a flexible payment system and schedules. In addition, they were given information and participation in the production process and the organization of their work. Finally, the supervisor participated in work activities as a member of the team.
Result:
- More positive feelings about work
- Did not feel pressured
- Social development group
- Felt involved in the work
- Without fear of supervisor
- Avoided monotony
- Leadership emerged
Conclusion:
A more challenging social context, as well as the feeling of being in control of production processes, reduced the subjective feeling of tiredness. Workers were more motivated, and this had an effect on their efficiency. In short, the social conditions of work do have a positive effect on efficiency.