The Industrial Organisation, the Social Organisation of Work and Workers in the Automobile Industry

这个项目的目的是弄清楚日本汽车工业在四个阶段发生了什么变化，首先是生产系统，其次是公司和公司间组织，第三是工人的生活和社会意识，第四是劳资关系。20世纪90年代，日本汽车制造商所处的环境是全球经济竞争日趋激烈，汽车生产安排趋于全球化，国内汽车市场趋于成熟。日本汽车制造商的巨大竞争优势是能够完成改善，在车间层面不断改进。随着日本汽车企业所处环境的急剧变化，不仅是研发（R&D），还包括生产和销售等所有企业层面的主要目标也在发生变化。以前，日本的汽车产量年年增长，只有极少数例外。但是，现在它每年都在上下变化。日本汽车企业为适应汽车产量停滞或减少的新趋势，正在努力建立更灵活的生产体系。“对工人和环境友好的汽车工厂”的新生产理念是上述汽车生产和市场新形势下从研发到生产和销售全面合理化的措施之一。20世纪90年代，日本主要汽车制造商继续改善汽车工厂的环境条件，在装配线上引入自动化机器，并根据“完成过程”的新概念重组装配线的社会工作组织。

The aim of this projects is to make clear what changes are now taking place in the Japanese automobile industry at four phases, firstly the production system, secondly corporate and inter-corporate organisation, thirdly workers' life and social consciousness and fourthly the industrial relations.In the 1990's Japanese automobile makers are situated in conditions where global economic competition is becoming more and more severe, the arrangement of car production becomes global and the domestic car market reaches mature situation. The great advantage of competitiveness of Japanese car makers was the ability to complete Kaizen, to improve continuously at shop floor level. As environment of Japanese car makers are changing rapidly, they are moving their main target from the shop floor level to all corporate levels of not only R&D but also production and car sales. Before, the volume of car production in Japan grew straight year after year with a very small exception. But, now it changes up and down year by year. Japanese car makers have tried to make more flexible production system to keep up with the new trend of a stagnation or a decrease of car production volume.The new production concept of 'car plant friendly to workers and environment' is one of the measures of the total rationalization from R&D to production and sales in the new situation of car production and market mentioned above. Major Japanese car makers in the 1990's continue to improve environmemtal conditions of car plant, to introduce automatic machines into assembly line, and to restructure their social organisation of work in assembly line according to new concept of 'completed process'.