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The third quarter of the twentieth century was a golden age for
labor in the advanced industrial countries, characterized by rising
incomes, relatively egalitarian wage structures, and reasonable
levels of job security. The subsequent quarter-century has seen
less positive performance along a number of these dimensions. This
period has instead been marked by rapid globalization of economic
activity that has brought increased insecurity to workers. The
contributors to this volume, prominent scholars from the United
States, Europe, and Japan, distinguish four explanations for this
historic shift. These include 1) rapid development of new
technologies; 2) global competition for both business and labor; 3)
deregulation of industry with more reliance on markets; and 4)
increased immigration of workers, especially unskilled workers,
from developing countries. In addition to analyzing the causes of
these trends, the contributors also investigate important
consequences, ranging from changes in collective bargaining and
employment relations to family formation decisions and
incarceration policy.
That women have entered the work force in large numbers is a
well-known economic development, but many questions remain about
the effects of this dramatic shift. Have women been truly
integrated into the labor market? How have they fared in the
competition for fair wages and professional jobs? What has happened
to the American family and its standard of living?
In Work and Pay in the United States and Japan, authors Clair
Brown, Yoshifumi Nakata, Michael Reich, and Lloyd Ulman provide an
integrated and detailed analysis of the components of firm human
resources systems in the US and Japan. Drawing on data obtained
from fieldwork in comparable establishments in these two countries,
as well as from national sources, this work examines the
relationship between company practices and national economic
institutions.
The authors address a number of key questions about
employer-employee relations. How have major Japanese manufacturing
companies been able to convert the assurance of "lifetime"
employment security into a source of superior employee efficiency
and adaptability, when job and income security have been feared as
a source of "shirking" and wage inflation in the US? How have
higher economic and real wage growth rates been associated with
greater equality in earned income distribution in Japan, when the
incentive role of income inequality to worker effort and savings
has been stressed in the US? How could Japanese emphasis on
employment security in the firm be reconciled with greater price
stability and lower unemployment than in the US? This work analyzes
elements such as employee training and involvement programs, wage
behavior as an incentive system and an alternate channel of
savings, and synchronous wage determination (shunto) at work in the
Japanese economy that provide for such successes.
The book also explores the costs that have been associated with
these Japanese accomplishments, as well as who must bear them. In
particular, it examines how Japanese women compare less favorably
with American women in terms of opportunities for work, pay, and
promotion; the higher hours of working time for men in Japan than
in the US; and the constraints on mobility for Japanese workers. It
also poses the question of whether Japanese unions are weaker than
their American counterparts, or just more sensible and far-sighted.
Finally, this \ork examines the outlook for these distinctive
Japanese institutions and practices in a period of slower growth
and economic "maturity."
Based on a research project carried out in both countries, the
book concludes with the lessons that each country can learn much
from the employment practices of the other. Work and Pay in the
United States and Japan will be essential reading for students,
professors, and all professionals involved with employment systems
and employer-employee relations.
How the chip industry has responded to a series of crises over the
past twenty-five years, often reinventing itself and shifting the
basis for global competitive advantage. For decades the
semiconductor industry has been a driver of global economic growth
and social change. Semiconductors, particularly the microchips
essential to most electronic devices, have transformed computing,
communications, entertainment, and industry. In Chips and Change,
Clair Brown and Greg Linden trace the industry over more than
twenty years through eight technical and competitive crises that
forced it to adapt in order to continue its exponential rate of
improved chip performance. The industry's changes have in turn
shifted the basis on which firms hold or gain global competitive
advantage. These eight interrelated crises do not have tidy
beginnings and ends. Most, in fact, are still ongoing, often in
altered form. The U.S. semiconductor industry's fear that it would
be overtaken by Japan in the 1980s, for example, foreshadows
current concerns over the new global competitors China and India.
The intersecting crises of rising costs for both design and
manufacturing are compounded by consumer pressure for lower prices.
Other crises discussed in the book include the industry's steady
march toward the limits of physics, the fierce competition that
keeps its profits modest even as development costs soar, and the
global search for engineering talent. Other high-tech industries
face crises of their own, and the semiconductor industry has much
to teach about how industries are transformed in response to such
powerful forces as technological change, shifting product markets,
and globalization. Chips and Change also offers insights into how
chip firms have developed, defended, and, in some cases, lost
global competitive advantage.
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