Strategies for Learning: Small-Group Activities in American, Japanese, and Swedish Industry - Softcover

Cole, Robert E.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0520073983 ISBN 13: 9780520073982

Verlag: University of California Press, 1991

Inhaltsangabe

How do firms become motivated to adopt small-group activities such as quality circles and self-managing teams? How do they acquire expertise in these activities? Noted sociologist and management expert Robert E. Cole addresses these issues through an examination of small-group activities in the United States, Japan and Sweden during the past twenty-five years.

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Robert E. Cole is Professor of Sociology and Business Administration at the University of California, Berkeley.

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Strategies for Learning: Small-Group Activities in American, Japanese, and Swedish Industry

By Robert E. Cole

University of California Press

Copyright © 1991 Robert E. Cole
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0520073983
Culture and the Emergence of Small-Group Activities

Over the past twenty-five years in the advanced market economies, and even among some of the command economies, a movement has grown for building small-group activities among lower-ranking production and office employees. The term small-group activities refers to workshop- or office-based groups that are given a greater opportunity to exercise direct control over everyday work decisions and the solving of workshop problems. In the United States the rise of quality circles (employee-involvement groups) and, of late, self-managing teams has come to symbolize this movement, which has been associated in varying degrees and ways with a broader effort to expand employee participation in managerial decision making. In many countries this movement arose as a response to a crisis in management confidence that in turn derived from the need to respond to a threat to or loss of a competitive ability. The idea was to find a more effective way to recruit and make better use of employees to achieve organizational goals while satisfying the needs of individual employees for control over their immediate work environment. There were significant national variations in this regard, and indeed such variations are central to this book's strategy of analysis.

In some nations powerful currents have sustained spring tide conditions. In others the ebb tide has come quickly, and only scattered debris is left to show small-group activities having been present. In still others a riptide churns the currents in opposite direc-

tions. These disturbed currents obscure underlying movements, which only the passage of time will clarify.

The task I set myself was to analyze and understand these different currents. I wanted to understand how these activities spread—diffused—in given nations. Why had they spread more rapidly in some countries than in others? What were the channels of diffusion? Through what mechanisms and with what effect? Analysis of these movements is more complex than might initially appear to be the case; a variety of environmental factors affect the course of development of small-group activities. Moreover, management commitment to these small-group activities often displays a faddish quality.

There are compelling practical reasons for focusing on small-group activities. The failure of American business to fully use its human assets inhibits growth in quality and productivity, thereby undermining national living standards. There is good reason to believe that some competitor nations make better use of their human assets, thereby developing a competitive edge in the fierce struggle for international markets. Small-group activities allow individual workers to share their knowledge and skills and to develop them in ways that enhance economic success. This helps not only to assure the firm's success but to ensure employment security as well.

A more recent line of reasoning stresses the impact of the new technologies of flexible manufacturing and microelectronics, combined with growing worldwide competition in price and quality. In practice this means heightened pressures to produce more custom-made high-quality products and services to meet more volatile and sophisticated customer tastes. These developments are said to lead to further payoffs for increased teamwork, employee discretion, and participation to get the most out of the technology and to better respond to customer demands.

Some advocates take a different tack, starting from the proposition that small-group activities give individuals significant participation in organizational decision making. This in turn is said to be a strong democratizing force that finally brings the benefits of politi-

cal democracy into the workplace. Notions of self-governance and self-determination underlie this perspective (see Dachler and Wilpert 1978:5). This claim contrasts with the neo-Marxist view that small-group activities are just one more management technique to control workers. The neo-Marxists see these evolving practices as part of a new corporatist strategy that, by fostering a sense of participation in the organization on the part of employees, destroys collective solidarity among workers and makes them vulnerable to a higher level of management control (Edwards 1979; Burawoy 1983).

Still another view stressing the participative aspects of small-group activities emanates from the moral arena. Secular humanitarian and religious leaders focus on the significance of participation for increasing the control of individual employees over their own lives and providing an outlet for their creative talents, thereby elevating individual dignity and self-respect. The draft of the bishops' pastoral letter "Catholic Social Teaching and the U.S. Economy" (National Catholic News Service 1984), for example, states that economic activity should be an expression of the distinctive dignity of human beings and that work should enable people to find a significant measure of self-realization and creativity in their labor.

Theories of human growth and development, with their stress on self-actualization, are a related perspective deriving from social science. Theorists working in this tradition talk about the "humanization of work" and tend to see participation as a key strategy for improving employee motivation and allowing individuals thereby to achieve their true potential. The focus tends to be on the individual's relation to the work task itself rather than on questioning the broad distribution of power and decisions.

There is now significant evidence to show that Japanese firms in particular have made better use of their human resources than have the Americans; this has significant consequences for living standards and the quality of life at work. Furthermore, by effectively conducting small-group activities, Japanese firms achieve a variety of economic benefits. These involve flexibility, speed, economizing on resources, and the execution of decisions based on accurate information (see Aoki 1987). Just as it is naive to think that small-group activity inevitably leads to self-actualization and democratization, it is unduly cynical to think that it is always a corporatist strategy designed to destroy the collective solidarity of workers.

What consequences small-group activities have is above all an empirical question. In focusing on the spread of small-group activities across firms and the role of national infrastructures in promoting this, I concentrate more on management than on workers' behavior. The preceding discussion is designed simply to show the reader that the content of what is being diffused is important.

What is the contribution of a comparison of different national experiences with small-group activities? First, it is clear that there are distinctive national approaches to small-group activities. The American model stresses direct, informal participation and provides relatively limited scope for those at the bottom of the organization to participate in decision making. This is strikingly different from the more formal representational approach to participation taken in continental European nations (see Dachler and...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: University of California Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 1991
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0520073983
• ISBN 13: 9780520073982
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 364
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar