Tsuyoshi Tsuru

Cell Production and Workplace Innovation in Japan: Toward a New Model for Japanese Manufacturing?

This article investigates the current trend toward cell production and other workplace innovations in Japan using a large-scale sampling survey of manufacturing firms and in-depth interviews with four leading electrical and electronic establishments. The quantitative analysis reveals the correlation between the use of cell production and the ratio of female to male workers and production strategy variables, as well as the positive effect of cell production on operating profit rates and ordinary profit rates. The case studies reveal the following points: First, processes and organizations have been decentralized to the degree that individual workshops move toward taking primary responsibility for customer relations, production decisions, and delivery. Corporate headquarters increasingly play a coordinating rather than decision-making role. Second, firms have steadily implemented make-to-order systems by tightening links to suppliers and customers and developing new inventory and cost-control systems. Third, firms have started to implement more performance-based personnel practices. However, considerable variance among firms is observed in complementary changes, particularly personnel innovations.

Incentives and gaming in a nonlinear compensation scheme: Evidence from North American auto dealership transaction data

Purpose – Under a discontinuous and nonlinear compensation scheme, which is prevalent among car dealerships, the amount of a salesperson’s expected daily commission depends primarily on his position in the pay schedule on the day he makes a sale. Salespeople thus vary their efforts and adopt a different pricing strategy week by week, or even day by day. The purpose of this paper is to examine the incentive effect of such a nonlinear scheme and provide the evidence that salespeople’s behavior is consistent with the theory. Design/methodology/approach – The authors conduct regression analyses using the transaction data provided by two North American auto dealerships. The authors construct a daily measure of varying incentive intensity and evaluate its impact on the distribution of individual daily sales and the dealership’s gross profit rate. Findings – The authors find that the daily measure of varying incentive intensity has a positive effect on the distribution of individual daily sales and a negative im...