Reviewing the production systems debate and proposing a new method

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Reviewing the production systems debate and proposing a new method

journal or

publication title

Hyoron Shakaikagaku (Social Science Review)

number 108

page range 1‑38

year 2014‑03‑20

権利（英） The Association of Social Studies, Doshisha University

URL http://doi.org/10.14988/pa.2017.0000013435

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Summary: The aim of this article is to criticize the method of so-called production system debates and to propose a new method for this field of researches. This article is the by-product of the Ja- pan and Germany joint comparative research on Volks Wagen and Toyota’s human resource management.

The crucial defects of the previous debates, the author argues, are the fact that they have lacked the method to inquire into the work itself done at Japanese lean production. They haven’t had any insight into the fact that the total work of shop floor at Toyota is derived from performance management and controlled by it. They also have overlooked the individualized aspects of work as- signment, training and wages determination there. Either defects arise from the way of research by which the Western customary views or notions on the employment relations are straightforwardly applied to individualized Japanese employment relations, the author argues.

The method required is to observe and describe the tasks, the remunerations and employment relations based on and derived from the performance management at Toyota and then to apply the same method to find the difference and backdrops at VW.

Key words: Lean production, Employment Relations, Production system, Toyota

Contents 1. Preface 2. Previous Studies

2−1.Lean Work.(Babson ed. 1995) andThe Machine That Changed the World.(Womack et al. 1990) 2−2.Beyond Mass Production.(Kenney & Florida. 1993)

2−3.Teamwork in the Automobile Industry.(Durand et al ed. 1999) 2−4.One Best Way?(M. Freyssenet et al ed. 1998)

3. Our method

3−1. Our criticism and its theoretical implication

3−2. Method for observing the tasks, remuneration, and employment relations in lean production 3−3. Method for international comparisons

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†同志社大学社会学部教授

＊2013年12月6日受付，2013年12月6日掲載決定

論文

Reviewing the Production Systems Debate and Proposing a New Method

Mitsuo ISHIDA

^†

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1. Preface

The purpose of this paper is to elucidate our interests and viewpoints envisaged when we launched a comparative research study of the human resource management practices at Volk- swagen and Toyota assembly plants.

This research is part of the debate on the nature of production systems that began in earnest during the early 1980’s. Some might think there is nothing left to add to this debate when you examine the large number of research papers and books. One might believe that during the second decade of the 21^st century that many of the questions about the nature of production systems would have been settled. However, as strong as these feelings run, it is difficult to deny that just the opposite impression is true. The debate has clarified little of importance in spite of the enormous amount of research that has been conducted. The impression that the lengthy debate over the nature of production systems has created over time is one of ambiva- lence. On one hand, so much research has been done that there is no need for additional study. While on the other hand that despite the impressive amount of research, nothing important has been clarified.

We do not possess the time and patience to elaborate on the ambivalent impression by reviewing the previous studies thoroughly and exhaustively. We will proceed directly to the crucial points of the debate. It is difficult to explain the necessity of our research, which might seem somewhat too out dated to appeal to readers now, without first clarifying what the debate has left intact. We will offer the readers various insights from our somewhat belated research. We will also outline the method required by making explicit the obstacles that the previous researchers could not break through.

2. Previous Studies

There is no need to provide an overview of the debate as a whole. We will pick the salient points that are difficult for us to understand from amongst the books we studied. To make these points understandable to the reader, we have to cite many of the original sentences. We wish to thank you in advance for your patience.

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2−1.Lean Work. (Babson ed. 1995) andThe Machine That Changed the World. (Womack et al. 1990)

How to understand and interpret the Toyota Production System has become the central issue in the debate over the nature of production systems since the publication of Womack et al (1990). They characterized the Toyota Production System as ‘lean production’ and asserted it was a fundamentally different type of production system from the traditional mass production system also called Fordism.

Babson (1995) makes the following assertion about Womack and his colleagues (MIT researchers) that ‘lies at the heart of any debate concerning the impact of lean production on workers.’ (p.16) Their assertion is as it follows according to Babson’s summary.

‘In a truly lean-flexible plant, as the MIT researchers put it, “it is essential that every worker try very hard.” Asked to perform the same direct-labor tasks that characterize mass production, the worker in a lean plant must also continuously improve the process, rotate through jobs, and do such indirect tasks as inspection, repair, and minor maintenance. Workers will only take on such additional responsibilities if management meets its reciprocal obligation to provide job security and decent working conditions. If management fails in this regard, say the MIT researchers, workers will simply go through the motions, and “lean production will revert to mass production.”’ (p.16)

Babson criticizes this assertion as follows. ‘If, as the advocates of these new systems argue, there is a self-correcting “hidden hand” that obliges management to empower rather than exploit workers−on pain of losing the performance edge that lean-flexible production promises

−then unions are superfluous. But what if there is no such inherent equilibrium that brings

the interests of workers and managers into automatic alignment? Fear of unemployment or the peer pressure of company-dominated teams might actually push people beyond the effort norms that individual workers would otherwise choose. …These concerns trouble many trade unionists in North America and Europe.’ (pp.16−17)

On the other hand, he continues, ‘management is bedeviled by altogether different question.

For corporate leadership, it comes down to the proverbial bottom line: since the implementation of a lean-flexible production system requires a considerable up-front investment in training, time, and startup costs, what are the prospects that this system will really pay off for the company?’ You can’t get any clear understandings on this from the MIT researchers. (p.17)

These two books identify all of the fundamental questions for a lean production system, of which Toyota is deemed to be a model. First are the questions that address the tasks that the production workers perform. Second are the questions about the remuneration or benefits that

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the workers receive for performing and accepting the required tasks. Finally are the questions about how to understand the employment system under which those tasks and the remuneration are exchanged. Any of these questions are conceptually not about the production system per se, but concern the employment relations function and how it operates.

Tasks of the production workers

The first question raised by Babson regards the tasks of the production workers. The starting point of the debate begins from the recognition of the fact that the production workers in the lean production system must undertake not only ‘the same direct-labor tasks that characterize mass production’ but also they must ‘continuously improve the process, rotate through jobs, and do such indirect tasks as inspection, repair, and minor maintenance.’

Let us look at this starting point by returning back to Womack et al’s (1990) original description of the assembly plant.

They describe the following, ‘Ohno, who visited Detroit repeatedly just after the war, thought this whole system was rife with muda.…Back at Toyota City, Ohno began to experiment. The first step was to group workers into teams with a team leader rather than a foreman. The teams were given a set of assembly steps, their piece of the line, and told to work together on how best to perform the necessary operations. The team leader would do assembly tasks as well as coordinate the team, and, in particular, would fill in for an absent worker.… Ohno next gave the team the job of housekeeping, minor tool repair, and quality-inspection.

Finally, as the last step, after the teams were running smoothly, he set time aside periodically for the team to suggest ways collectively to improve the process. This continuous, incremental improvement process, kaizen in Japanese, took place in collaboration with the industrial engineers. …Ohno placed a code above every workstation and instructed workers to stop the whole assembly line immediately if a problem emerged that they couldn’t fix. …Production workers were taught to trace systematically every error back to its ultimate cause, then to devise a fix, so that it would never occur again.’ (pp.56−57)

Womack et al’s description continues to shed spotlight on the situation at the Takaoka assembly plant in 1986 when it realized Ohno’s original intentions. ‘…hardly anyone was in the aisles. …and practically every worker insight was actually adding value to the car. …Less than an hour’s worth of inventory was next to each worker.…each worker along the line can pull a cord just above the work station to stop the line if any problem is found.…but the line is almost never stopped, because problems are solved in advance and the same problem never occurs twice.…At Takaoka, we observed almost no rework area at all. …A final and striking

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difference with Framingham was the morale of the workforce. The work pace was clearly harder at Takaoka, and yet there was a sense of purposefulness, not simply of workers going through the motions with their minds elsewhere under the watchful eye of the foreman.’

(pp.79−80) The description continues to assert that the gross assembly hours per car are less and assembly defects per 100 cars are less than those at the General Motors plant in Framing- ham, Massachusetts. In other words, the productivity and quality are excellent at the ideal Toyota factory cited in the above passage.

Babson’s understanding that the production workers undertake not only ‘the same direct- labor tasks that characterize mass production’ but also ‘must continuously improve the process, rotate through jobs, and do such indirect tasks as inspection, repair, and minor maintenance’ is found to be correct as a summary of Womack et al (1990). Although these understandings remain to be researched further to determine whether they are correctly depicting the real working life at an assembly plant, we think there is a methodological problem. Without the method we claim, you cannot recognize the real situation just by observing the situation or by participating in the work yourself.⁽¹⁾

The reason why we claim this is an essential part of the production systems debate is that the argument about how to recognize the tasks that assembly production workers undertake in lean production is in utter confusion, though it forms the most important starting point for the debate.

Babson’s critique of the situation is quite legitimate. ‘It is not clear which elements of the

“lean factory” would be the more important if unbundled; nor is it always clear what exactly constitutes each of specific elements. Definition of “leanness” vary over time and from one observer to the next, each emphasizing a different mixture of organizational measures: from numbers of training hours and job classifications, to the amount of floor space devoted to re- pairs, to the numbers of workers trained in Statistical Process Control. Most advocates of lean- flexible production do at least agree on the primary role of work teams, but there is little elaboration or agreement on the details of team organization. Teams are frequently called

“self-directed,” yet the specific responsibilities and roles of team members are often left to imagination. Do workers elect their team leaders, chair their team meetings, control their budgets, and define their own schedules for relief, training, job rotation, vacation, personal leave, and other matters?’ (p.19)

How were Womack et al describing this crucial point that provided the beginning of the debate? They rightfully put the question to themselves. ‘What are the truly important organizational features of a lean plant−the specific aspects of plant operations that account for up to

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half of the overall performance difference among plants across the world?’ And they answer.

‘The truly lean plant has two key organizational features: It transfers the maximum number of tasks and responsibilities to those workers actually adding value to the car on the line and it has in place a system for detecting defects that quickly traces every problem, once discovered, to its ultimate cause.’ (pp.98−99) This answer is a pertinent one in general sense. But in the very stage of elaborating the right answer they suddenly go back to sporadic or an ad hoc depiction. ‘This, in turn, means teamwork among line workers and a simple but comprehensive information display system that makes it possible for everyone in the plant to respond quickly to problems and to understand the plant’s overall situation.…In a lean plant, such as Takaoka, all information−daily production targets, cars produced so far that day, equipment breakdown, personnel shortages, overtime requirements, and so forth−are displayed onandon boards that are visible from every work station. Every time anything goes wrong anywhere in the plant, any employee who knows how to help runs to lend a hand.’ (p.99) There is no logical and structural description to help understand team activity. All that is explained here is just teamwork and andon are important, and the actual tasks required of the production workers are concealed in a word so-called ‘teamwork.’ So they are forced to explain the contents of teamwork more or less concretely. ‘So in the end, it is the dynamic work team that emerges as the heart of the lean factory. Building these efficient teams is not simple. First, workers need to be taught a wide variety of skills-in fact, all the jobs in their work group so that tasks can be rotated and workers can fill in for each other. Workers then need to acquire many additional skills: simple machine repair, quality inspection, housekeeping, and materials ordering. Then they need encouragement to think actively, indeed proactively, so they can devise solutions before problems become serious.’ (p.99)

Babson’s claim that he cannot understand the tasks of the production workers and practical activities of a team in the lean production arises from the ambiguity of Womack et al’s original depiction. They assert that the key organizational feature of ‘the truly lean plant’ lies in

‘transferring the maximum number of tasks and responsibilities to those workers.’ We agree with this assertion. But, we believe they should have engaged in observation about how the process of arranging the maximum transfer of responsibilities worked in practice. While the transfer of responsibilities usually coincides with required objectives of the team, you need to observe how the objectives are decided. Womack et al never even question the formation of the objectives for the teams and instead are only interested in depicting conspicuously different scenery on the shop floor in lean production from the Fordist plants and continue to claim enormous skill formation is required to achieve the conspicuously ideal performance of the

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teams. Their approach lacks the consciousness of methodological deliberation required to describe the practices. Disregarding this, they safely describe only the ideal and sometimes imaginary shop floor scenes by spotlighting conspicuous tasks arbitrarily (While they say

‘Every time anything goes wrong anywhere in the plant, any employee who knows how to help runs to lend a hand,’ we just wonder how such a response is possible for the production workers who are working on the line with a short tact time.), and then they display the far reaching agenda of challenges facing the mass production plants (job rotation, simple machine repair, quality-checking, housekeeping, materials-ordering and problem solving) to emulate the lean factory. Displaying the remarkable difference of work practices between the lean factory and mass production plants that was made possible by an ad hoc and arbitrary observation, and showing the numerical proof of the big gap in the plant performance between them might have roused suspicion, fretfulness or repulsion against Japanese employment system in the mind of considerate number of foreigners involved in car manufacturing outside of Japan. No one who has participated in the production system debate has ever discerned that these misun- derstandings arise from defects in the method utilized by Womack et al (1990).

The main point of the debate about lean production lies in the lack of a systematic description of the tasks of the production workers and the specifics of how shop floor teams function.

In other words, the problem is about the method for the systematic perception of practices in a lean factory rather than just a lack of effort to find the practices. This reflects much more graphically upon the concern entertained by managers introduced by Babson. The concern is outlined in the following. ‘Since the implementation of a lean-flexible production system requires a considerable up-front investment in training, time, and startup costs, what are the prospects that this system will really pay off for the company?’ This is a reasonable apprehension for the managers responsible for the bottom line. In order to answer the question pre- cisely, it is necessary to observe the cost reduction measures. One needs to know how the target for cost reduction is attained through PDCA, how the training costs are integrated into the cost reduction measures, and what the production workers are responsible for in order to attain the targets.

During the ongoing debate about lean production, the notion of a method for the systematic observation of the lean factory has been notably absent. Instead, the debate has focused on criticizing the arbitrary description. We need to trace more of the literature in order to make this claim persuasive.

MacDuffie (1995) tried to have an in-depth look at the tasks of the production workers. The gist of his argument is contained in the following:

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There are three primary roles for workers in lean production systems. The first is physical labor (“doing” work), the second is cognitive input (“thinking” work), and the third is to be a member of a social entity (“team” work). The first “doing” work requires difficult and de- manding physical labor so that ‘the physical experience of “doing” work is not dramatically different in these two settings (lean production and mass production).’ (p.55) On the second

“thinking” work, for example, if we takeKaizen suggestions, though the fact is they ‘must be approved by engineers or managers,’ and so ‘worker ideas are not the dominant influence, the fact remains that workers are encouraged to contribute their ideas about improving their jobs.’

‘If one believes, as I do, that the fundamental core principle of Taylorism is the separation of conception and execution−of “thinking” work from “doing” work−the priority given to

“thinking” by workers stands Taylorism on its head.’ (p.56) In fact, the advocates for lean production ‘attribute the performance advantage of lean production, in part, to a production logic that makes the contributions of production workers central to a process of improvement based on ongoing problem-solving activities.’ (p.54) On the third item, “team” work, under production management with minimum inventories, MacDuffie states it is required that a co- operative relationship is secured ‘among work teams, among departments, among functional specialties, and among organizational levels.’ Lean production ‘makes a deliberate and explicit effort to organize the informal network in the production system to align employee interests as closely as possible with company goals.’ (p.57)

The lack of a method casts a shadow on this in-depth observation. While MacDuffie claims the priority put on “thinking” work is characteristic of lean production, there is no explicit description on the limit and scope of “thinking” work for production workers. There is no men- tion of how the teams are determined. On whether “thinking” work is allocated among team members and if so, how it is allocated. Also on how the targets of “thinking” work are determined and managed. Again, we make the same criticism, there is no systematic description on how ‘the contributions of production workers based on ongoing problem-solving activities’ is linked to the factory performance and whether the linkage takes the form of numerical control by management by objectives and if so, on how it is managed. We quite agree with Babson that we cannot have any feeling of understanding without such a description. It is quite natural and reasonable for managers to have the misgivings about ‘the prospects that this system will really pay off for the company.’

The description on “team” work appears to be more confused. As the meaning of the term

‘team’ is originally just the smallest unit of production workers’ organization, talking about team work without making “thinking” work explicit naturally leads to unnecessary confusion

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during the discussion.⁽²⁾ What MacDuffie wished to claim is lean production requires the collaboration of each organization and alignment of their activity with the company goals. This is a quite simple and general wish amongst any organization around the world. In order to make this claim the key to understanding lean production, it is necessary to find out how the tasks of the production workers are set in liaison with such other divisions as manufacturing technology, quality assurance, purchasing and product development. His explanation of this process is not clear. It is indeed agreeably true that Babson’s criticisms of the advocates for lean production who ‘do at least agree on the primary role of work teams’ that ‘the specific responsibilities and roles of team members are often left to imagination.’

Employment relations

The second fundamental question about lean production raised by Babson (1995) is employment relations. So many responsibilities are delegated to the shop floor in lean production that it is difficult to imagine them from the perspective of the Fordist production system. Many indirect tasks are added to the workers as well as the direct tasks of production. If it is true that the workers will accept such additional indirect tasks for any reason, even if the tasks are not clear enough, how to understand this fact constitutes another independent question. This question requires an understanding of the exchange relationship between providing labour services and receiving remuneration, so it should be called a question of employment relations.

The points in dispute must be sorted out. To begin with, Womack et al’s (1990) explanation is as follows. ‘Our studies of plants trying to adopt lean production reveal that workers respond only when there exists some sense of reciprocal obligation, a sense that management actually values skilled workers, will make sacrifice to retain them, and is willing to delegate responsibilities to them.’ (p.99) ‘To make this system work, of course, management must offer its full support to the factory work force and, when the auto markets slumps, make the sacri- fices to ensure job security…. It truly is a system of reciprocal obligation.’ (p.102) ‘So if management fails to lead and the work force feels that no reciprocal obligations are in force, it is quite predictable that lean production will revert to mass production.’ (p.103) In response, Babson (1995) makes the following criticism. ‘If, as the advocates of these new systems argue, there is a self-correcting “hidden hand” that obliges management to empower rather than exploit workers−on pain of losing the performance edge that lean-flexible production promises−then unions are superfluous.’ (p.16) This criticism arises from the belief that the employment relationship that is autonomously formed is not viable without trade unions. This belief leads to the prediction that ‘there is no such inherent equilibrium that brings the interests

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of workers and managers into automatic alignment’ (p.16) and leads finally to the apprehension that ‘fear of unemployment or the peer pressure of company-dominated teams might actually push people beyond the effort norms that individual workers would otherwise choose.’

(p.16) Those who entertain this sense of apprehension define lean production not as post- Fordism as the advocates suggest, but as neo-Fordism which means a production system em- bodying much more rigorous exploitative measures than traditional Fordism. This issue indeed

‘lies at the heart of any debate concerning the impact of lean production on workers.’ (p.16) The divergent point of the debate is whether you think employment relations under lean production gives rise to an ‘inherent equilibrium that brings the interests of workers and managers into automatic alignment’ or not. The following two reflections are needed to better understand this divergent point.

The first reflection required is about the process of gathering facts. We have suggested that the previous research is weak and fragile when providing a systematic description of the tasks of the production workers. Leaving this problem intact, it can safely be said that the required tasks of the production workers include such indirect tasks as kaizen, quality inspection, minor machine repair and other tasks besides on the line direct tasks. In order to observe the method that the management is utilizing to get daily consensus or acceptance from the workers to do such indirect tasks on the shop floor, we need to inquire very carefully into how these indirect tasks are allotted to each individual worker (task allocation or division of labour). We also need to observe the reverse side, how the necessary skill or competency to do the indirect tasks is built and formed and, as a result how the skill distribution or skill hierarchy is formed (skill formation). Finally, we need to know how remuneration is provided for the acceptance of the tasks with appropriate skill (the HRM and wage systems). What is needed here are in- depth observations of division of labour, skill formation, the HRM and wage systems. Just standing still at the divergent point outlined above and continuing the debate without these kinds of in-depth observations would naturally reduce the debate to an exchange of antagonis- tic ideological beliefs.

The second reflection is a theoretical problem. The in-depth observation suggested above would predict that serious questions or challenges would arise over the theory of employment relations. As the above suggestions allude, in-depth observation would make the following latent individual relationships apparent in the employment system: amongst the production workers on the assembly line, their skills are formed individually rather than as one collective mass. The tasks are allotted according to individually differentiated skill levels and individually differentiated wage rates are paid for different tasks accepted. In other words, employment

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relations that regulates the relationship between the labor services provided by workers and the remuneration for their services rendered is not formulated as collective regulation of labour exchange, but as a regulation of individual exchange of labour. Thus, we need to face an ex- ceedingly theoretical problem of the individualization of employment relations.

Therefore, Babson’s discernment was clear and lucid when he took notice of the word ‘reciprocal obligation’ in Womack et al (1990) and found in employment relations under lean production the existence of ‘a self-correcting “hidden hand”’ or ‘inherent equilibrium that brings the interests of workers and managers into automatic alignment.’ But it is unfortunate to say that he ended discussion on the question by arguing that ‘unions are superfluous’ ‘if there is self-correcting “hidden hand” and inherent equilibrium.’ We said above that the divergent point of the debate is whether or not you think employment relations under lean production gives rise to an ‘inherent equilibrium that brings the interests of workers and managers into automatic alignment’. Babson (1995) dismissed the patient reflection at this divergent point. The common understanding in US and Europe that the trade union is ‘an organization to sell labour collectively’⁽³⁾must have enabled him to dismiss this subtle reflection.

Can employment relations be viable without the union forming rules regulating the individual exchange of labour services and remuneration? Are there new roles for the trade union? Is there a role for the trade unions in promoting ‘inherent equilibrium’? Such a list of questions are dismissed by MacDuffie (1995)⁽⁴⁾

The historical background of the academic field of industrial relations has lost its luster as a result of the declining trend of union organization; therefore, the field tends to identify itself with human resource management or organizational behavior. There is no denying the fact that the academic field of the industrial relations has been negligent in analyzing individualized employment relations as its own proper academic subject. The divergent point of the production system debate is, in this sense, also an important divergent point for the destiny of the academic field of the industrial relations.

2−2.Beyond Mass Production. (Kenney & Florida. 1993)

This book is well known for having characterized Japanese production systems as

‘innovation-mediated production,’ the cornerstone of which, they claim, ‘lies in the harnessing of workers’ intelligence and knowledge of production.’ (p.15)⁽⁵⁾ The authors emphasize a historical view in explaining why a production system apparently different from Fordism is viable in Japan. The viability arises, they claim, from the labour and management compromise that reduced the class struggle after the end of the Second World War. They criticize Womack

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et al (1990) as follows. ‘This (Womack et al’s) view provides an accurate surface-level description of the operation of Japanese automobile factories, but…it fails to specify the underlying forces and relations−the historical trajectory, the balance of class forces, and the structural, organizational, and institutional patters−that underpin the new model of production organization in Japan and give it motion.’ (p.25)

While this view point is accurate in a general sense, it is noteworthy that the focus of the production system debate since the late 1980’s has shifted more to the practical challenge on how to operate a factory than just understanding its Japanese historical background. Despite the fact that we appreciate the background of lean production thanks to knowing what the authors call the historical class accord, meaning both management and labour accepted long- term employment and seniority pay as a norm, it is inevitable that their work will receive a less than favorable evaluation as the authors ‘seem to be describing an ideal type rather than an actual production system’ as Babson (1995) refers to this book, if it is unclear how to har- ness workers’ intelligence and knowledge. (p.14)

We are not suggesting that they should only describe the history, but describe more about the practices as well. What we discussed in section 2−1 above is that it is impossible to describe the practices properly without solving the methodological weakness that the academic field of industrial relations has embraced. In order to make readers appreciate this, it is unavoidable to trace the original sentences of the authors’ description and point out concretely the methodological weakness even an eminent researcher could not overcome. The following sentences after the citation wrapped in parenthesis are our criticism.

After explaining the historical background, Kenney & Florida (1993) describe the following practices. They focus their observation on team organization from the viewpoint of ‘the crucial role of intellectual labor at the point of production.’ (p.25) ‘With teams, work overlap and tasks can be assigned to groups of workers and then reallocated internally by team members.’

(p.36) (What composes the entire list of tasks assigned to a group is unclear.) They continue.

‘Through the use of teams, the pace of production can be changed by adding or removing workers, and management and team members can experiment with different configurations for completing specific tasks.’ (p.36) (The basic principle for a change in the pace of production is that the line speed is changed according to the production volumes needed to satisfy the number of the customer orders. This is true for both Fordist and lean production. There is no difference at all. The problem lies in how the change of line speed accrued from production volume changes should be embodied into altered number of assembly stations and altered workload of each station accordingly. Although the crucial observation point, therefore, lies in

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how the line balance is performed, their description sends us a totally mistaken message that teams are entrusted to decide the line speed by themselves.)

They further continue. ‘Teams also provide an internal source of motivation and of discipline for workers.’ (pp.36−37) (This description is upside-down. The proper way is to first expatiate the institutional framework of the enterprise or the factory as a whole for exercising motivational and disciplinary influence on the workers through the HRM and PDCA cycle arrangements and thereafter to look into the team’s role to bolster them up.) ‘Teams perform routine quality control, thereby undertaking much of the work that is performed by the quality-control departments of Fordist manufacturing.’ (p.37) Thus, ‘teams are the basic mechanism for achieving the functional integration of tasks, which stands at the heart of the Japanese model.’ (p.37) (Here again the description is upside-down. The natural way is to first expatiate how the responsibilities and targets are assigned among each of the functional departments and manufacturing departments to achieve the company goals. Next, we observe how the process and results of each department’s performance is monitored and thereafter we can clearly understand the unique role of the production teams.)

‘Team-based organization of work also resulted in the combination of task and resulting production efficiencies. Japanese workers are multiskilled and perform more than one job.

Workers also do most direct quality-control activity and preventive maintenance on the ma- chines, resulting in significantly lower rates of downtime.’ (p.37) (The productivity increase by the combination of tasks is achieved through staff reductions that are pursued by narrowly defined kaizen activity. This activity can only be understood by knowing the management control system under which the target for productivity increases are set at the manufacturing division as a whole and how the target is cascaded down to the supervisors as their performance objectives and the objectives are monitored periodically. Similarly, we can only understand multiskilling by observing the management control system under which the policy for promoting multiskilling is shared amongst senior management of the manufacturing division.

The numerically defined objectives are set at the factory level and the departmental managers formulate a multiskilling plan that is monitored at the factory level. With regard to the quality- control activity of production workers, it is essential to describe how the targets are set for them and how they are monitored. Concerning preventive maintenance, it is essential to understand the process for setting down time targets and how the responsibilities are allocated among each department of maintenance, manufacturing technology, and production for achieving them.) ‘The harnessing of workers’ intelligence and knowledge of production,’ which is the corner stone of their claim, being combined with ‘team-based organization of work,’ they

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come to the following conclusion. ‘Teams are the basic mechanism for moving decision making down to the shop floor and for tapping the intelligence of factory workers. The team is the mechanism through which workers solve production problems and innovate for management.’

(p.39)

Our criticisms, shown in the parenthesis, point out one simple thing. Whether you characterize the Toyota production system as ‘lean production,’ or ‘innovation-mediated production,’

our claim is against such a way of thinking, commonly seen in the debate, as ascribing its ultimate differences from Fordism to ‘the team’. The term ‘team’ does not convey any other meaning in the organizational term than the minimum unit of organization even in Japan. Here there is no mystery or secrecy. The challenge for researchers is not to show the conspicuous phenomena of the team working together, but to observe and depict the following points pre- cisely, paying special attention between the difference in Japanese factories and Fordist ones.

(a) What sorts of responsibilities are assigned to the team as the minimum organizatial unit?

(b) How are the performance targets set for them? (c) How is target setting coordinated between each of functional departments within the factory? (d) How are the targets monitored?

(e) Who is responsible for formulating countermeasures when actual performance falls short of the targets? (f) What kind of tasks are performed by production workers in accordance with the managerial control called PDCA? (g) How are tasks allocated among each member of the team? (h) What skills or competencies are required of each individual that correspond with the tasks that are allocated to the team? How are the teams formed? (i) How is the performance of the team as well as the performance and competency of each member evaluated and linked to their compensation? (j) How is the trade union involved in or objects to this series of affairs outlined above?

We claim that the tasks of production workers cannot be understood concretely and conceptually before we can understand the practices outlined in questions (a) through (f). We also claim that the compensation or HRM systems cannot be understood in-depth before we know the answers to the questions posed in (g) through (i). Finally, employment relations is the relationship that regulates the exchange of job tasks and remuneration governed by the substantive and procedural rules. We claim that employment relations cannot be understood until we understand the practices that the trade union is involved in the series of affairs that are posed in question (j).

It is quite apparent that our claims contain more theoretical criticism of the industrial relations theory or method since the 1980’s rather than pointing out just the weakness or scanti- ness of the fact-finding. What is meant in reality for the change, sometimes called as ‘from

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fordism to post-fordism’ or ‘from fordism to neo-fordism,’ is the change of the subject matter of this academic field from traditional collective bargaining of labour commodity to the new employment relations containing the individual exchange of labour commodity as its core element. The serious challenge for us is that the theory of industrial relations was inadequate in describing the changing character of the subject matter of its academic field. A series of questions listed above cannot be thought of without the consciousness of the need for new research into individualized employment relations. The failure to comprehend the need for a new method to examine individualized employment relations appears to have led the production system debate to the argument making the team organization that has no mystery or secrecy in itself unnecessarily mysterious instead of trying to conceive straightforwardly the nature of employment relations under lean production.

2−3.Teamwork in the Automobile Industry. (Durand et al ed. 1999)

The work of the research group called GERPISA⁽⁶⁾ has been characterized as ‘the regulation school’ and has organized a lot of researchers around the world since 1981.⁽⁷⁾ Their research output has been published extensively during the end of 1990’s, marking the time when the fever of the production system debate suddenly began to wane. Their work may well be thought to occupy the apex of the debates. While we have repeatedly claimed that the un- awareness of the need for devising a method for observing individualized employment relations has led to the mystification of the work that teams do, how can we be successful in de- mystifying the work done by a team?

Standing at the commanding heights that the authors can look through the rather bitter history of trial and error of the automobile companies in many countries that attempted to learn and introduce the lean production method during 1980’s and 90’s, they correctly noted the following: ‘The implementation of this single model (lean production system) came against the historical realities which characterize markets, producers, the role of the state, and the skills structure of employees. The result is a great diversity in the forms of adaptation and the new rules which have been introduced to face the uncertainties of the market.’ (p.2) It is a sincere attitude for the empirical social scientists to observe and depict the diversities as the reality unfolds in its unique way. But the authors cannot escape from the challenge of how to explain the identity of each country that gave rise to the diversity of results and further to explain the identity of lean production that has compelled each non-Japanese company to devise ‘a great diversity in the forms of adaptation and the new rules.’

In other words, the diversity cannot be explained without showing the method that eluci-

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dates the identity or uniqueness of employment relations at each company. The authors assert the employee relationship⁽⁸⁾ is composed of four components, such as work organization, hierarchical relations, payment systems, and trade union attitudes. They ‘assume that the four main components of this relationship achieve coherence so as to increase the efficiency of work, which in turn is itself reinforced, from the point of view of the employers, by maximum employee involvement, adequate skills levels and minimum labour costs.’ (p.6) But ‘finding and organizing coherence between these components, at an always provisional point of balance, is a long process during which the different logics confront one another without any of the actors seeing clearly the goal to be attained, because it is never really defined.’ (p.6) From this understanding, ‘the hypothesis is thus that the producer who achieves the greatest work efficiency on the basis of the establishment of coherence between the four components of the employee relationship is the one that will achieve the best overall results.’ (pp.6−7) We cannot deny the suspicion of whether the greatest efficiency will really result in the greatest profits for the company. We also have some doubts about whether the four main components are carefully scrutinized in reference to the theoretical conception that employment relations is an exchange of labour commodity.

Our question in this review has been to find insights into the structural conception of tasks, remuneration and resulting employment relations under lean production. The author’s claim

‘four components of the model converge towards one result: involvement in work, which is the condition for its efficiency.’ (p.27) This leads to the following remarkable description.

‘The question then is what is unique about employee involvement in lean production.…The answer is that it is a meritocratic system (the satei system), under which the best employees are rewarded through advancement and promotion.…(It) is based on a individual evaluation of employees by the manager immediately above them. …This procedure includes an evaluation of the objective results of the work provided, but above all it is an evaluation of the behaviour and attitudes of the employees and in particular of their conformity with the standards expected of them. …The results of the evaluation have a direct influence on wages and bo- nuses, which can be the equivalent of 4 to 6 month’s wage. But above all it is on the basis of these evaluations that workers can or cannot become team leaders and supervisors. …(And) remaining in a big company and pursuing a career in it has many advantage. Direct wages are 15 to 20% higher than those in smaller companies. …In other words, employees who have chosen to make a career in a big company have no choice in other respects; they must con- form to the expectations of management and must involve themselves in their work. This is why we designate as forced involvement the method of involving employees used in the big

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Japanese exporting companies.’ (pp.28−29)

It is a step forward that the authors talk about the remuneration system by focusing on the existence of the meritocratic evaluation in lean production. In fact, the meritocratic evaluation has been embedded in what is called seniority wages in Japan. Focusing on the implications of its existence is an excellent insight.

But some of the crucial points are disregarded. The first is about the relationship between the meritocratic remuneration system and the manpower structure of the organization. The second is considering the inter-relatedness amongst the tasks, the remuneration system containing meritocratic evaluation and the employment relations system.

The first point is about the meritocracy and its effect on the manpower structure. The evaluation attempts to assess each worker’s work practices and to determine their wage increase and bonus. The remuneration system in Japan has been exercising an incentive influence on the effort level that workers make in performing their job tasks by sending the message that if you work harder, you will be rewarded. Compared with the wage system commonly used in Fordist organizations that usually have no appraisals, we can assume this remuneration system has a function to make the effort level of workers higher for whatever kinds of job tasks are assigned. So it is quite right and important to find the remuneration system in lean production as having the function to buy higher efforts. But viewing this from a longer term, it means for workers to ‘make a career’ as the authors write in the book. When you examine Japanese personnel systems, you can easily find that they provide several employees’ grades with substan- tial pay differentials and each worker is promoted through these grades according to accumu- lated evaluation scores given annually. It is called up-grading that is categorically different from promotion, which means being assigned to a higher job post. While the number of vacant job openings limits promotion opportunities, the slots for up-grading workers are not defined by the numbers of vacant job posts, but by the management’s policy for motivating employees. Therefore, as the incentive function in the short term is being combined with up- grading in the mid and longer term, this remuneration system results in the ‘overpopulation’ in mid and higher grades by production workers. For production workers to be ‘making a career’

means that management has to accept such ‘overpopulation’ to a certain degree.

Having attained such comprehension of the remuneration system, we doubt if an organization can be called ‘lean’ to begin with, assuming it is rather fair to call it ‘fat’ instead. One of the deficiencies in the production system debate is a lack of such observation and interpretation that ‘lean production’ is ironically inclined to become ‘fat’ in essence.

This interpretation will lead us naturally to a different understanding of employment rela-

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tions in lean production. The system that presupposes ‘overpopulation’ in mid and higher grades for production workers’ hierarchy means the average workers’ pay is higher than that of Fordist factory if all other things are equal. Next, it leads us to another question; how we should interpret the fact that the enterprise unions with weaker bargaining power, as they are commonly believed, have enjoyed an employment system that ensures better pay levels than that of the Fordist regime with trade unions that possess stronger bargaining power. It might be pertinent to interpret that the stable utilization of the labour under the lean production, whether it is called ‘intensive labour’ or ‘intelligent work’ or ‘flexible work’ or others, has been made possible by such a generous reward system for the workers. This implies another example of the lack of the observation and interpretation that characterizes the production system debate.

The second point that is disregarded in Durand et al (1999) is about the shortcoming of reflection on the relationship between the meritocratic pay system, the employment system and the tasks required of production workers. The ‘satei’ system evaluates the work practices of each worker and determines the pay increase according to the evaluation score. This process results in individually different wages rates among the workers. This means the procedural rule for the determination of the wages must contain an unavoidable individualized procedure between supervisors and workers. Such a reward structure promotes change in the nature of employment relations from collectivism to individualism. As we argued above (in section 1−2) that the delinquency of the researchers of industrial relations in devising the method for inves- tigating into the individualized employment relations invited the decline and dissolution of this academic field, the authors finding the ‘satei’ system as a key factor for managing lean production meant they have faced the same challenge.

But they failed to face the challenge by just concluding the situation as ‘forced involvement.’ Why did they not continue to deliberate and deepen the arguments to reach the methodological challenge? It is true that the characterization of the essence of Japanese employment system as ‘forced involvement’ is not absolutely wrong. Kumazawa who is prominent as a man of acute discernment among Japanese scholars, makes an argument that roughly corre- sponds with their claim.⁽⁹⁾ But the question to be answered is how we should understand the facet of involvement or an element of agreements implied by the contradicting expression of enforced involvement. If you neglect this facet, you are sure to fall into a dull and monoto- nous understanding that lean production is a regime of such managerial despotism as workers succumb to all that the management wishes as they cannot change the employer. All that remains here is the unrealistic interpretation of employment relations in lean production that al-

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lows for no independence for the workers nor any role or function for the enterprise unions in Japan.

Is there any latent element of understanding of the ‘satei’ system that entices such an unrealistic interpretation so that they would not seek to take the trouble of facing the methodological challenges? In the citation above there is such a sentence. ‘This procedure includes an evaluation of the objective results of the work provided, but above all it is an evaluation of the behaviour and attitudes of the employees and in particular of their conformity with the standards expected of them.’ This understanding is not necessarily wrong. But why does the evaluation lead to increased productivity, it having only a weak relation with the tasks and having stronger one with the conformity to the norms of the team? In order to prove that it does result in increased productivity, it is necessary to make it explicit that the tasks themselves do not have a direct relation with productivity and instead the technical nature of the production system itself has the root causes to improve productivity by whatever the reason is, and then the workers’ conformity to the norms the production system requires of them realizes the fruits of productivity gains. Is this true? If the evaluation of the conformity to the norms that the pure technical nature of the production system demands predominates, there would be no room for the workers’ involvement other than the conformity to the norms. This would be a worthy interpretation of the regime of managerial despotism. Is this true?

This depends upon whether the meritocratic evaluation system has a weak relation with the contents of the work and thus the question gets ultimately ascribed to the original points of discussion on how to observe and depict the task structure of lean production. The authors depict them in the following way. The sentences in the parentheses are our criticisms.

‘The strength of lean production lies in its ability to ally reduction in labour costs and the satisfaction of the requirements of Just-in-Time and its vulnerability. This alliance is achieved through instruments such as collective responsibility, socialization of knowledge and know- how, greater interchangeability between workers, peer pressure, continuous increases in the pace of work and emergence of the ambivalent position of team leader, all of which derive from a concern to increase the productivity of work.’ (pp.21−22) (Though this description is too abstract to describe the tasks, it is remarkably apparent that the authors try to induce the required tasks from ‘the satisfaction of the requirements of Just-in-Time’ and overcoming ‘its vulnerability.’ In other words, their method is more inclined to emphasize the technical aspects in a sense that they try to explain the tasks necessitated from the production technology and its manufacturing arrangements. Can this method explain the indirect tasks even if it can explain the direct tasks? We agree there is no other way than evaluating conformity to the norms

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such as whether a worker possesses a diligent work ethic, if real tasks are only composed of direct production tasks. Though they claim ‘all derive from a concern to increase the productivity of work,’ we assert only upholding the stable operation of production system exempli- fied by Just-in-Time does not ensure increased productivity, but just ensures maintaining the level of productivity. In order to increase productivity, we would emphasize that management must devise policy management (Hoshin-management) and as a result, indirect tasks derived from it will emerge. If the authors had observed the practices in lean production more closely, the practices should have forced the authors to arrive at the conception that it is crucially important to depict ‘work organization’ in a closely connected way with the ‘hierarchical relations’ amongst what the authors call ‘four components of employee relationship.’)

Below the authors continue to describe the real practices underlying the abstracted character of labour shown above like ‘collective responsibility’ etc. Hence they must describe the tasks.

1. On ‘collective responsibility.’ ‘Any worker can stop the assembly line by pulling an emergency cord. …pulling the cord once means calling for the help of the team leader. It is only the latter who can pull it twice to stop the line in case of absolute necessity; the team leader must then give an account of why the stoppage was necessary.⁽¹⁰⁾’ To sustain this system ‘the team must be ‘welded together’.…The work team is expected to meet the challenge of achieving the quality and productivity objectives set for it. …This represents both the search for social integration common to any management and the ideological function of the notion of team,….’ (pp.22−23) (The authors describe the tasks as the worker on the line finds a defect and pulls the cord, and the team leader comes to repair them. But those tasks are not described in relation with how to achieve ‘the quality and productivity objectives,’ or in other words, they are not described in relation to the policy management (Hoshin-management). The authors appear to be impatient in describing the tasks linked with the need for the ideological function of the notion of a team. Though we need not deny the necessity of the ideological function, we assert it much more important to find the method to inquire into the relationship between the tasks and policy management that is underlying the ideology. We believe that the author’s lack of awareness for the need of an alternative method naturally led to the ideological observations.)

2. On socialisation of knowledge and know-how. ‘Teamwork promotes the development of multi-skilling, in the sense that each employee is capable of doing all the jobs in the team, and perhaps beyond it. The main results of job rotation and multi-skilling are that the knowledge and know-how of each employee are made public and shared, in order to keep up the pace of work.…Multi-skilling, with the standardisation of work which accompanies it, allows

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complete interchangeability between workers…. Interchangeability of course makes it easier to eliminate relief workers and means a significant economy in labour power.’ (pp.23−24) (It is true that multi-skilling is required and that it contributes to staffing reductions. But it is one sided observation that multi-skilling is interpreted without paying proper attention to the requirement of multi-skilling for building up stable and sustainable workforces to be able to perform all the tasks assigned to the shop floor organization. The authors’ view on shop floor organization is fragmented and fragile because they do not describe it in relation with the comprehensive landscape of all the tasks required, the division of labour, and skill formation.)

3. On peer pressure. ‘The regular flow of production requires cohesion within the group. It is therefore essential that workers have comparable levels of efficiency; otherwise the best will do the jobs of the least efficient, which is acceptable during a period of socialisation and ap- prenticeship but not thereafter. Thus, within the group a sort of average work standard is created, based on the work requirement derived from the pace of the line itself and from the numbers of employees assigned by management to a particular section of the line. This average work standard, constituted through this double form of coercion, is imposed on the group.

Its members are expected to ensure …that the work is not affected by failure of any member of the group to carry out a part of it. Hence the pressure of peers on the operator who is too often absent, too slow or who lacks good will. …Scrupulous respect of the standard, on the basis of the coercion imposed by Just-in-Time which exposes any imperfection, is the daily condition of team work, one of the foundation of lean production.’ (pp.24−25) (The authors, as we expected, restrict their observations to the tasks that are only required by the production system to produce a product. As far as the direct tasks are concerned, their observation is right. But the problem is that the whole structure of all the tasks cannot be explained by this method. How can the perpetual productivity increases be explained by the conformity to the production system only? What does the term kaizen mean then? How can the satei system be justified for workers doing such direct work only? How can you design tasks with such depth that we can call it a career?)

4. On the functions of the team leader. ‘By regulating the pace of work, Just-in-Time incor- porates the disciplinary role which was previously played by the supervisors in the Fordist team. Thus, from the point of view of the management of workers, the Just-in-Time principle is much superior to the traditional intervention of supervisors monitoring and controlling workers’ activity.’ (p.25) This ‘neutralisation’ or ‘naturalisation’ of the management of workers ‘permits a shortening of the management chain, thus reducing the number of indirect production jobs.’ (p.25) (This description is important because discussing the tasks of production

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workers in lean production forms the basis for a career covering the supervisory tasks. But their observation is quite wrong. The indirect production jobs cannot be reduced if many responsibilities are delegated to the shop floor. The targets for the shop floor are set and the workers need to be involved in the PDCA cycle activity to achieve the targets. Thus, their observation does not reach a coherent and mutually enforcing understanding of the fact that the meritocratic appraisal system results in a ‘fat’ organization by making careers possible. The misunderstanding or the failure arises from their viewpoint of limiting their observations to the direct tasks only.) ‘The function of team leader disperses throughout the team the tasks arising from the technical requirements imposed by just-in-time, and it secures external communica- tion while maintaining a strong internal social cohesion. It contributes to softening the con- straints and reducing awareness of the rigid discipline associated with Just-in-Time, through obtaining if need be employees’ consent to this discipline.…Teamwork, in turn, both satisfies the intrinsic requirements of Just-in-Time and, in a social context which is quite restrictive, makes discipline at work appear neutral, a product merely of technical necessities ‘naturalised’

by Just-in-Time. In this way, it is an inherent part of the new employee relationship and the new conditions for employee involvement.’ (p.27) (Here again the one sided way of limiting observation only to the direct tasks adversely affects the understanding of employment relations. They assert one-sidedly that the rigorous management of workers gets ‘neutralised,’ and the labour management antagonism will dissipate through peer pressure and through the suc- cess of management assimilating the technical necessities of Just-in-Time.)

While the citation is too long, it does prove that depicting the following 3 points has been very difficult in the debate over the nature of production systems. It also shows even a book standing at the summit of the debate failed in depicting them; summit in the sense that Durand et al (1999) was published during the time when the many trial and errors of emulation by automakers attempting to implement lean production were widely known since publication of Womack et al (1990).⁽¹¹⁾ The most difficult 3 areas to depict are: (a) What are all tasks required of the production workers? (b) What is the system of remuneration for production workers? (c) How is the union involved in those tasks and negotiating the remuneration?

Concerning the remuneration system (b) Durand et al (1999) is excellent at emphasizing the meritocratic satei system. It is an important view because without the satei system it is difficult to buy the individualized labour service and thus makes it difficult to gain the consent.

But the interpretation of the meritocratic system is wrong in two respects. The first error is that they overlook the resultant over-staffing at the middle and higher competency ranks of production workers. The meritocratic system contains the linkages to increased skill or compe-

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tency with the promotion to higher ranks. The finding should have forced the researchers to reflect on the irony that lean production necessitates ‘fat’ labour force structure through the meritocratic satei system. The finding should have also forced them to rethink and redefine the characteristics of employment relations in Japan because the finding means lean production needs a much more lenient remuneration system than the Fordist factory to attain the consent of the employees.

The second error is that they overlooked the individualized facets of employment relations that we believe constitute the current major topics of the employment relations across the world. They are inclined to interpret the criteria of satei as an evaluation of the conformity to the organizational norm, which blurs the individualistic character of evaluation. This error results from the lack of the understanding of the tasks of the production workers.

Thus, we need to return to the original problems of tasks (a). The gist of our criticism is against the way of thinking that the required tasks of shop floor are limited to the elements required only by production. While Womack et al (1990) succeeded in depicting the organizational characteristics of lean production as ‘transferring the maximum number of tasks and responsibilities to those workers,’ though this smacks of a fanciful observation, the views of the authors of Durand et al (1999) have receded remarkably from those of Womack et al (1990).⁽¹²⁾

In a word, Durand et al (1999) tried to demystify the work done by a team by removing from the observation the indirect tasks of the production workers necessitated from ‘transferring the maximum number of tasks and responsibilities to those workers.’ As this trial was to obviate the indirect tasks that lie at the center of the mystery, the mystery still remains to be solved now. Such an upshot of the research so favoured with having the evidence of ample practical experiences of factories and lots of able researchers across the world reminds us of the difficulty of the challenge.

2−4.One Best Way? (M. Freyssenet et al ed. 1998)

The innovation Durand et al (1999) tried to achieve was to have the viewpoint that ‘the producer who achieves the greatest work efficiency on the basis of the establishment of coherence between the four components of the employee relationship is the one that will achieve the best overall results.’ (pp.6−7) Judging from their aim, it is assumed to elucidate the diversity of car manufacturers based on their own efficiency according to the diversity rather than to inquire into the nature of lean production.

Durand et al (1999) was not successful in making use of this viewpoint. Since lean produc-

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tion is obliged to occupy the central focal point of observation as long as such physical criteria as efficiency or productivity is to be argued. They are inclined to assert that other diverse production systems are to be evaluated as ones short of lean production.

The pursuit of this direction is said to be more apparent and straightforwardly applied in M.

Freyssenet et al (1998), which is also one of the outputs of GERPISA. In this sense, it may safely be said what GERPISA has achieved was better expressed in this masterpiece. We will examine their methodology.

They begin with the following: ‘Has there been one, or have there been several successful industrial models in the period since the 1974 oil crisis, and, if so, which? …It is clear from the trajectories of the automobile manufacturers examined in this book that they have certainly pursued different profit strategies; some have emphasized volume, some product diversity, others quality, and so forth. Analysis of these strategies reveals that they in fact represent combi- nations of the five fundamental sources of company profits: scale effects, scope effects, quality, product innovation, and the reduction of costs at constant volume. Each strategy combines these sources of profit in precise proportion to make them structurally compatible. Accord- ingly, it appears to be impossible for a firm to simultaneously attain, and maintain over the long term, maximum volume, maximum diversity, perfect quality, permanent innovation, and the reduction of costs at constant volume. This finding stands in stark contrast to the asser- tions made inThe Machine that Changed the World (Womack et al. 1990), with its presenta- tion of ‘lean production’ as the optimal industrial model; that moreover, also apparently guar- antees the fulfillment of employees, the satisfaction of customers, and economic development worldwide!’ (p.8)

It is quite natural that this book, which was published in the late 1990’s when the authors could have enough time to deliberate on the reasons for the rapid penetration into the world market by the Japanese car manufacturers. They also could examine the attempts of other car manufacturers to emulate them and reflect on their bitter failures. They developed a stance re- garding lean production relatively and judging the failure not as being short of leanness. This new viewpoint is naturally realized not by an efficiency oriented view, but by a profit oriented one instead.

While this development in the debate is natural and pertinent, several points raised in our review remain to be solved. Have the authors evaded answering the intrinsic questions by rais- ing a new agenda? In fact, we have just seen that the research output of the same research group, Durand et al. (1999) is far from answering them. Accordingly, we must raise the question about whether the new and alternative point of view of diverse profit strategy contains a

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