Rick Delbridge

Most businesses face the choice of either competing on the 'low road' of cost, or the 'high road' of innovation and value. Much the same goes for national economies and the UK is no exception. But how do businesses - and the people who manage them - go beyond the policy prescription and the easy exhortation to make that shift, to manage change and go well beyond business as usual? This ground-breaking book - the combined insight of some of the best minds in management, grouped together in the Advanced Institute of Management Research - does just that. It presents a clear and crisp analysis of the context and the challenge; and offers managers a range of ideas on how to develop the competences, practices and values that can make a difference. It is essential reading for policy makers, analysts, academics, and managers to be who want to make a different future.

Most businesses face the choice of either competing on the 'low road' of cost, or the 'high road' of innovation and value. Much the same goes for national economies and the UK is no exception. But how do businesses - and the people who manage them - go beyond the policy prescription and the easy exhortation to make that shift, to manage change and go well beyond business as usual? This ground-breaking book - the combined insight of some of the best minds in management, grouped together in the Advanced Institute of Management Research - does just that. It presents a clear and crisp analysis of the context and the challenge; and offers managers a range of ideas on how to develop the competences, practices and values that can make a difference. It is essential reading for policy makers, analysts, academics, and managers to be who want to make a different future.

Much is stated and written about the new world of work but how much do we know about the contemporary workplace? What influence have Japanese management techniques (Just-in-Time Production and Total Quality Management, for example) had on the way work is organized in `transplants', and more broadly in other firms and sectors? Have the systems and mechanisms of control changed radically in recent years, or are they much the same as they have always been? Rick Delbridge sought an answer to these questions at first hand by working on the shopfloor in a Japanese consumer electronics transplant and a European automotive components supplier in order to witness and experience life on the line in contemporary manufacturing. His book is in a long tradition of ethnographic research in industrial sociology and management/labour studies. Not only does he offer rich empirical data on the lived reality of work and a management practice that may share little in common with that found in the textbooks; he also raises a number of important issues about the best ways to understand the complex and changing nature of work. The book will be essential reading for those wishing to understand the reality of the contemporary workplace, the diffusion of Japanese management practices, and the various influences brought to bear on the organization of work.

Much is stated and written about the new world of work but how much do we know about the contemporary workplace? What influence have Japanese management techniques (Just-in-Time Production and Total Quality Management, for example) had on the way work is organized in `transplants', and more broadly in other firms and sectors? Have the systems and mechanisms of control changed radically in recent years, or are they much the same as they have always been? Rick Delbridge sought an answer to these questions at first hand by working on the shopfloor in a Japanese consumer electronics transplant and a European automotive components supplier in order to witness and experience life on the line in contemporary manufacturing. His book is in a long tradition of ethnographic research in industrial sociology and management/labour studies. Not only does he offer rich empirical data on the lived reality of work and a management practice that may share little in common with that found in the textbooks; he also raises a number of important issues about the best ways to understand the complex and changing nature of work. The book will be essential reading for those wishing to understand the reality of the contemporary workplace, the diffusion of Japanese management practices, and the various influences brought to bear on the organization of work.