James Rinehart

This study of CAMI Automotive, a unionized joint venture between General Motors and Suzuki, is the most comprehensive ever undertaken of a lean production plant. James Rinehart, Christopher Huxley, and David Robertson address a topic that has inspired fierce debate in industrial relations, sociology, labor studies, and human resource management. Heralded as a model of lean production when it opened in 1989, CAMI promised workers something different from traditional plants—a humane environment, empowerment, and cooperative labor-management relations. However, the enthusiasm workers felt during the orientation and early phases of production steadily declined, as did their involvement in participatory activities. Workers came to describe CAMI as "just another car factory." Union challenges and shopfloor resistance to key elements of the lean system grew, capped by a five-week strike in 1992. The authors attribute workers' disillusionment to lean production itself rather than to North American managers' inadequate implementation.

This insightful look at American education explores difficult but realistic solutions to the education dilemma. Focusing on parent/student choice and the privatization/deregulation of public schools, Rinehart and Lee suggest that the lack of these two vital ingredients is the root cause of poor school performance. Any reform effort within the government-controlled education monopoly will inevitably fail because the present system ignores basic laws of human behavior--people want to operate in their own best interest and value most that over which they have direct control. The authors set out to prove that increased choice and unencumbered competition among schools result in dramatic educational improvement. Writing for the professional educator and the general reader, Rinehart and Lee view the American educational system from a provocative and new perspective.The book reveals many of the current problems with public schools and explores different types of choice systems. Rinehart and Lee achieve three main goals. They first demonstrate that public school systems consistently fail because of their failure to adhere to certain fundamental laws of human behavior. Second, they make a case that the current reform movement in education will fail or fall short of expectations. Finally, they propose challenging, realistic solutions that focus on educational choice and privatization of public schools. The authors point out that as a rule the more choice, the better. American Education and the Dynamics of Choice maintains that all public schools should be sold and parents should be given vouchers by the government permitting them to enroll their children in any private school they wish.