Kevin McCormick

Educating for industrial research and development in Britain and Japan

ABSTRACT Drawing on a survey of almost 1000 research and development (R&D) staff working in large industrial corporations in Britain and Japan, this paper explores the impact of employment structures on the knowledge and skills learned in higher education, the way in which they are learned, and how industrial R&D staff expect them to be deployed through their careers. Distinguishing between a ‘market-oriented˚s system (Britain) and an ‘organisation-oriented˚s system (Japan) on the basis of the extent of employee mobility, the paper demonstrates that British scientists and engineers tend to expect to reach a variety of career milestones at much younger ages than their Japanese counterparts and on the basis of a narrower education and training. This pattern of ‘short termism˚s in career expectations and narrow vocationalism is interpreted as a product of contemporary employment structures and industrial priorities.

Putting Japanese management in its place

Paul Stewart (ed.) Beyond Japanese Management: The End of Modern Times? Frank Cass, Ilford, Essex, 1997. 224pp. £29.50 (hbk), £14.50 (pbk). Mark J. Scher, Japanese Interfirm Networks and their Main Banks. Macmillan, Basingstoke and London, 1996. xii + 164pp. £40.00. D. Hugh Whittaker, Small Firms in the Japanese Economy. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1997. xii + 238pp.

The Search for Corporatist Structures in British Higher Technological Education: the creation of the National Advisory Council on Education in Industry and Commerce (NACEIC) in 1948

Abstract The creation of the National Advisory Council on Education in Industry and Commerce in 1948 was an example of corporatist trends in British Technical education. Inspired by officials of the Central Governments education department to regulate the orderly development of higher technical education, NACEIC marked a form of interest representation where interests were recognised, legitimated and participated in the development and exercise of enhanced slate powers. Yet officials were so sensitive to the strength of existing pluralist forms of representation that only rudimentary ‘quasi‐corporatist’ institutions emerged. Using a case study of Official Records to show officials making decisions offers evidence of the significance of both economic developments and political concerns in corporatist developments. It confirms the basic weakness of corporatist developments in Britain in the lack of lower level corporate organisation, particularly among industrial employers.

Scientific Education, Girls’ Schools and the Industrial Fund: a research note

Abstract During the 1950s a group of major companies launched the Industrial Fund for the Advancement of Scientific Education in Schools to build and equip laboratories in independent and direct grant schools. The Industrial Fund remains as one of the most impressive industrial initiatives in school education. It is sometimes criticised for either neglect or parsimony towards girls’ schools. This research note provides a brief account of the initiation and operation of the Industrial Fund. Although the Industrial Fund did provide fewer resources for girls’ schools this outcome stemmed from using the same and not different criteria for boys’ and girls’ schools and reflected the state of schools at the outset of the Industrial Fund.