Richard Cooney

Is 'lean' a universal production system? Batch production in the automotive industry

This paper sets out to test the claim made in the lean production literature that the lean production system is universally applicable. The proponents of the lean production model insist that it will supersede both mass production and specialised batch production; but this paper argues that, whilst lean production practices have been adopted and adapted by many producers, batch production has an enduring value from both a work design and a manufacturing process design perspective. The paper reviews the evidence for the persistence of batch production and of craft work methods in both luxury vehicle manufacture and specialty component manufacture and highlights the conditions under which batch production remains viable.

Empowered self‐management and the design of work teams

This paper explores the theoretical implications of empowered self‐management as a teamwork design concept. It explores the multiple definitions of empowerment and self‐management that have been used in the design of work teams and it attempts to locate empowered self‐management within the relevant traditions of work design. The paper provides a critical appraisal of empowered self‐management as a team design concept arguing that its unique contribution to the work design literature, has been the development of concepts that focus upon task enlargement as the basis of enhanced role accountabilities within teams. Empowered self‐management as a team design concept has little to say about employee or group autonomy but in fact reflects the design of teams to provide for the normative self‐regulation of employees within management directed systems of control.

Teamwork and Total Quality Management: A Durable Partnership

This paper examines the durability of teamwork within firms by looking at the relationship between the evolution of quality management programmes and the development of teamwork. Four case studies of Australian manufacturing firms with a long experience of teamwork are presented. The paper reports that firms use a great variety of teamwork practices and that they develop ensembles of teamwork practices, which become institutionalised within the firm. The paper advances the proposition that the observed durability of teamwork is underpinned by the institutional stretch of ensembles of teamwork practices. The ability of management to rearrange ensembles to accommodate new management initiatives and new management practices is critical to the durability of teamwork.

The contingencies of partnership: Experiences from the training reform agenda in Australian manufacturing

This paper examines the development of an antecedent model of social partnership, the social “accord” employed by the Labor Government in Australia during the period 1983‐1996. The specific focus of the paper is upon the implementation of the Training Reform Agenda (TRA) in Australian manufacturing. The TRA was designed to provide for the upskilling of existing employees and the enhanced vocational preparation of new employees. This was a joint objective of government, business and union policy and one designed to encourage the growth of high‐wage, high‐skill industries. The achievement of this objective was, however, limited. Social partnership, in the case of the TRA, proved to be a way of legitimating a work change process which delivered greater gains to employers than it did to unions and employees. The partnerships formed under the aegis of the TRA had a limited lifespan and represented a contingent form of relationship between the partners, rather than a seachange in relations.

Shaping the Other Maintaining Expert Managerial Status in a Complex Change Management Program

This article examines the micro politics of organizational change by presenting the results of a long-term case study of complex technological change in an automotive manufacturing firm. The article focuses on the political contest around the generation of legitimate knowledge within the change program. The article discusses managerial strategies of knowledge appropriation and employee strategies of resistance to such appropriation. The article follows the evolving managerial accounts of change and highlights the way in which managers developed pragmatic accounts of change in response to the concerns of the employees, accounts that left intact their claims to be change experts in control of the change process.

Group Training Companies and the Inter-firm Provision of Training in Australia

Abstract This paper examines the significance of the inter-firm provision of entry-level vocational education and training in Australia by studying a key group of interfirm providers, namely, group training companies. The nature of group training schemes is discussed with reference to two case studies, and two different kinds of group training companies are identified. The paper then goes on to argue that group training companies in Australia have developed a unique model of training provision, one that reduces the costs and the risks for employers of the employment relationship associated with contracts of training. Group training companies do this by directly employing trainees on behalf of employers thus establishing a market-based, contingent employment relationship between the trainee and the host employer. The paper concludes with a discussion of the risks entailed in this type of training provision if it is merely seen as an effective way of providing labour market programs while the broader skill formation function of group training companies is overlooked and ignored.

Interfirm Cooperation in Training: Group Training in the UK and Australia

This article examines employer cooperation in the provision of training in the UK and Australia. These countries both have market-based training systems where it might be thought there is little cooperative behaviour. Cooperative interfirm arrangements are, however, shown to be important, especially for the supply of intermediate level skills. The article compares the development of one of the most signficant forms of cooperative training, group training. Some striking differences exist between the two countries, in terms of the actual employment and direct training of apprentices. In both countries, the arrangements are heavily dependent upon government funding.

Occupational licensing in intermediate-skill occupations: The case of drivers in the land transport industry

This article examines the outcomes of occupational licensing in a set of large, intermediate-skill occupations in the land transport industry. The article explores the significance of licensing systems in these occupations and finds that land transport drivers are licensed for conformance and that conformance licensing systems are very different from those of the high-skill licensing systems extant in the professions. Conformance licensing places little emphasis upon the development of skill and expertise, and the regulatory institutions of the occupation have no role in skill development. Occupations licensed for conformance are regulated by heterogeneous, external institutions that are concerned with the enforcement of minimum task standards of performance to avoid harm and loss. Conformance licensing does not create an occupational monopoly and there is little evidence of high returns to licence-holders in conformance occupations.

Workplace training in a deregulated training system: Experiences from Australia’s automotive industry

Vocational education and training (VET) in Australia has been widely deregulated as the country has moved to an employer-led VET system. This deregulated system has seen a growing emphasis on more job-specific and firm-specific forms of training. This article explores these developments by examining the training of frontline team leaders in Australia’s automotive industry. The article finds that the automotive companies in Australia have pulled back on their commitment to broad-based skill development at work and that the training they provide is tending to become more job-specific and firm-specific, as they seek to implement standardized global production systems.

Moral shocks and small wins: Encouraging firms based in liberal societies to behave integratively towards former prisoners

In this article, we contend that employers’ willingness to provide former prisoners with integrative forms of employment is related to the extent to which liberal societies abstract, idealise and prioritise the interests of the self over the interests of society. Using the United States of America as a critical case to illustrate this argument, we unite the neoinstitutional sociology of organisations with Weick’s small wins approach to problem solving to show how an especially individualistic embodiment of liberalism contributes to the construction of a social and institutional reality that discourages firms from behaving integratively towards former prisoners. In so doing, we produce a conceptual framework that points to ways by which the scarcity of integrative firms within individualist liberal societies might be addressed.