The wages of affluence : labour and management in postwar Japan / Andrew Gordon.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Gordon, Andrew, 1952- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Industrial relations--Japan--History--20th century.

Industrial relations.

Labor policy--Japan--History--20th century.

Labor policy.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (283 pages)

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Massachusetts ; London, England : Harvard University Press, [1998]

Summary:

Andrew Gordon goes to the core of the Japanese enterprise system, the workplace, and reveals a complex history of contest and confrontation. The Japanese model produced a dynamic economy which owed as much to coercion as to happy consensus. Managerial hegemony was achieved only after a bitter struggle that undermined the democratic potential of postwar society. The book draws on examples across Japanese industry, but focuses in depth on iron and steel. This industry was at the center of the country's economic recovery and high-speed growth, a primary site of corporate managerial strategy and important labor union initiatives.Beginning with the Occupation reforms and their influence on the workplace, Gordon traces worker activism and protest in the 1950s and '60s, and how they gave way to management victory in the 1960s and '70s. He shows how working people had to compromise institutions of self-determination in pursuit of economic affluence. He illuminates the Japanese system with frequent references to other capitalist nations whose workplaces assumed very different shape, and looks to Japan's future, rebutting hasty predictions that Japanese industrial relations are about to be dramatically transformed in the American free-market image. Gordon argues that it is more likely that Japan will only modestly adjust the status quo that emerged through the turbulent postwar decades he chronicles here.

Contents:

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1. Japan Reborn

Chapter 2. Organizing the Steelworkers

Chapter 3. Restoring Managerial and State Authority

Chapter 4. Reinventing the Steel Mill

Chapter 5. Forging an Activist Union

Chapter 6. Breaking the Impasse

Chapter 7. Fabricating the Politics of Cooperation

Chapter 8. Mobilizing Total Commitment

Chapter 9. Managing Society for Business

Chapter 10. Japan's Third Way

Appendix: Figures

Notes

Works Cited

Index.

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780674037816

0674037812

OCLC:

1281987283