Strategic Transformation in Japan’s SMEs, 1990–2008: Flexible Specialization, Industrial Restructuring, and Technological Change

The bursting of the “bubble economy” in 1989–1990 brought decades of challenge for Japanese Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs), which had assumed the role of subcontractor within production networks dominated by large companies. This article explores the impact of a rapidly altered business environment, due to economic crisis, the decline of relational subcontracting, and technological change, on the management and organization of firms. It provides a needed historical account of Japanese SMEs striving to avoid “hollowing out,” and detailed case studies explain what gaining greater independence as a flexible specialist meant in practice. A focus on the immediate advantages of computerized tools could not bring about the intended strategic objectives, whereas the systemizing of new and existing resources in skills and equipment enabled sustainable competitive differentiation in production and products. The case studies map out the internal competence transformations of SMEs over time, and indicate the value of historical approaches to exploring strategic and organizational change.

Industrial Legacies and Germany’s Specialization in Customization

This chapter traces how entrants from legacy industries in Germany used public resources originally intended to support technological innovation in traditional sectors such as machine tools and automobile supplies. It explains why, even in new sectors such as wind and solar, German firms reproduced historical patterns of flexible specialization, customization, and small-batch production. The chapter begins with a discussion of industrial origins of Germany’s wind and solar firms, focusing in particular on machine tools, automation, and automotive sectors. It then outlines the learning process that firms navigated in pivoting from their existing industries into new industrial sectors. The second half of the chapter focuses on the two key resources that enabled these developments: collaboration with China and domestic institutional legacies.

The People’s Network: Soft Management with Satellite Business Television

Chapter 5 (keyword: narrowcasting) explores the development of private satellite networks to manage distributed workforces in the context of globalization and a “cultural turn” in popular management theories. The late 1980s saw the proliferation of industry-focused subscription channels (e.g., geared toward insurers) and internal “networks” housed by a single company (e.g., Hewlett Packard). Two case studies (Johnson Controls and Steelcase) show how businesses used television to target worker identity in a bid to usurp other modes of affiliation (the nation, class) within the unstable employment environment of the 1980s and 1990s. This is the other side of the multichannel era: the creative deployment of employees as niche audiences. At the same time that post-national consumer identities became lucrative as a means of gathering and selling audiences on the diverse products of flexible specialization, proper cultural management of worker identity supported companies’ profit-maximization strategies (often based in cuts to employees’ material welfare).

A Preliminary Exploratory Study on the Implications of Specialization of Labor at the Workplace: The Case of Production Managers in Lebanon, their attitude towards Specialization of Labor and the Consequences of the Implementation of Specialization at the Workplace

“Specialization is for insects,diversification is for humans”.Horizontal division of labor is based on specialization of work. The basic assumption underlying horizontal division of labor is that by making each worker’s task specialized, more work can be produced with the same effort through increased efficiency and quality.However, no known studies in Lebanon were conducted to investigatethe implications of specialization of labor at the workplace.This survey studied the attitude of the production managers in Lebanon towards the specialization of labor, in general, and the consequences of the implementation of specialization at the workplace, in particular. An exploratory survey was conducted using a 17–item questionnairewith 20production managers.It was concludedthat the attitude of the production managers in Lebanon toward the specialization of labor, in general, and the consequences of the implementation of specialization at the workplace, in particular, cannot be considered completely positive; specialization offers advantages and disadvantages for both the management and the labor. Moreover, production managers are hesitant to implement specialization concept in an unpredictable environment like Lebanon; they recommend a flexible specialization.

Unions, the Skills Agenda, and Workforce Development

This chapter explores the relationship between unions and skills at the workplace. We argue that the significance of the skills agenda is broadly concomitant with a shift in the labour process beyond mass production into newer trajectories, variously described as post-Fordism, post-industrialism, flexible specialization and new production concepts. Unions are increasingly equating their members’ learning (and skills) as much as with enhancing their employability as with broader emancipation or entry into a trade. Through focusing on the contrasting cases of the UK and Sweden we show how the recent pursuit of the skills agenda has gone hand in hand with a strategic reorientation of unions, in response to more challenging bargaining environments and a declining membership base. We also argue that different approaches by unions to skills can be explained not only by national and sectoral factors but also by agency and voice mechanisms.

CHANGE MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES RELATED TO THE GLOBAL ENVIRONMENT COMPLEXITY

The changes in organizations appear as a reaction to the organizational environment changes. In order to manage these changes successfully, the managers need to anticipate and design alternative strategies by preparing different options. Nevertheless, the complexity of the global environment forces the managers to adopt strategies for their organizations that are facilitating the creation of new strategic competences and competitive advantages to face the environmental rapid changes. In this context, this paper is aiming to illustrate the main directions the change management may consider to change the organization strategies in order to harmonize them to the external environment, such as: integration versus externalization, flexible specialization and flexible organization, standardization versus adaptation, market segmentation, relationship building and maintaining and communication integration. However, the new strategies are based on a changed attitude of the managers towards the competitive advantage that is dynamic and focused on creation rather then to operations.