Japanese corporations in the United States and the United kingdom
Yakamiya’s Research
The studies done on the United Kingdom by Takamiya Makoto and Malcolm Trevor are foremost. Their research overlaps and forms two groups. The first is Takamiya’s project in late 1970s, in which Trevor participated. The other is the research primarily done by Trevor in the early 1980s, after Takamiya’s untimely death.
Takamiya’s pioneering work commands attention for its methodology. He studied four U.K.-based television assembly plants: two Japanese, one American, and one British. To shed light on national differences, he made the conditions as similar as possible. The study involved, first, a questionnaire of 1000 employees at the four plants, for which he achieved the impressive response rate of 70 percent; second, interviews with around 200 employees, form managers to machine operation; and third, observations of workshop practices and the gathering of documents.
Takamiya’s other observations were conventional wisdom later refuted by Trevo. Takamiya sought to account for the smooth adjustment between division on the basis of employees moving between divisions at the Japanese plants. Trevor showed that this was not unique to Japan. He also showed that there was nothing particularly Japanese about a one-factory, one-union system; it was common at new factories, of U.K and U.S. firms
Trevor’s Work