<p>Can managers learn from fads? That is the question Robert Cole addresses in this insightful book about the various factors supporting and inhibiting organizational learning. <br><br> A longtime student of the Japanese and American quality movements, Cole focuses on the response of American industry to the challenge posed in the early 1980s by high quality goods from Japan. While most American managers view this challenge as slowly but successfully met, many academics see the quality movement that emerged from it as just another fad. In seeking to reconcile these two views, Cole explores the reasons behind American industry's slow response to Japanese quality, arguing that a variety of institutional factors inhibited management action in the early 1980s. He then describes the reshaping of institutions that allowed American companies to close the quality gap and to achieve sustained quality improvements in the 1990s. <br><br>Hewlett-Packard serves as an example of a company that made this institutional transition more effectively than most. Cole describes Hewlett-Packard's successful strategies while also pointing out the serious problems that it and other companies face as they attempt to adapt, improve, and go beyond Japanese practices. He also uses Hewlett-Packard, an exemplar of the highly decentralized company, to explore effective strategies for the creation, dissemination, and implementation of knowledge. <br><br>Unprecedented as a scholarly treatment of the quality movement,Managing Quality Fads provides several important lessons for those interested in management decision making under conditions of uncertainty and organizational transformation in a rapidly changing business environment.<br></p>

Managing Quality Fads: How American Business Learned to Play the Quality Game

Business & Money

Cole, Robert E.

Management & Leadership

Oxford University Press

Japanese blue collar;: The changing tradition

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

University of California Press

<p>Examines the current state of Japanese industry in terms of the opportunities, wages, and benefits available to the blue collar worker and assesses his burgeoning strength as a social and economic force</p>

Japanese Blue Collar: The Changing Tradition

History

Asia

Work, Mobility, and Participation: A Comparative Study of American and Japanese Industry

Economics

Univ. Of California Pr.

<p>Labor Studies, American Studies, Japanese Studies, Intl. Affairs</p>

Work, Mobility, and Participation: A Comparative Study of American and Japanese Industry (Fishing and Marine Lore in the Palau District of Micronesia)

Strategies for Learning: Small-Group Activities in American, Japanese, and Swedish Industry

How do firms become motivated to adopt small-group activities such as quality circles and self-managing teams? How do they acquire expertise in these activities? Noted sociologist and management expert Robert E. Cole addresses these issues through an examination of small-group activities in the United States, Japan and Sweden during the past twenty-five years.

<p>How do firms become motivated to adopt small-group activities such as quality circles and self-managing teams? How do they acquire expertise in these activities? Noted sociologist and management expert Robert E. Cole addresses these issues through an examination of small-group activities in the United States, Japan and Sweden during the past twenty-five years.</p>

<p><div>At a minimum our goal is to develop a better understanding of Japanese labor market practices and work organization and in so doing develop a more enlightened vision of American practices. We will greatly enhance our ability to achieve both these goals by arriving at a better understanding of the comparative experience of the two nations over time. We can no longer afford the delusion that what exists in the United States reflects the characteristics of industrial society in its most advanced form. Yet to follow current fashion in simply denying that the United States is the very model of a modern society, while advocating that we imitate the Japanese, is to take a course filled with its own pitfalls. Perhaps it is time we accepted the fact that the social scientist's intense commitment to generalization cannot be allowed to obscure the fundamental observation that nations develop along their own paths, based on their own political, cultural, economic and social histories. As nations industrialize there is undoubtedly convergence in important institutional spheres, such as the expansion of education, the adoption of common technologies and determinants of labor mobility. Certainly nations can learn from one another, and indeed some nations impose their will on other nations. Yet there are also unique solutions to common problems. --From the Introduction</div> <div>&nbsp;</div> <div>This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1979.</div></p>

<p>This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1971.</p>

Industries

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Cole, Robert E.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Cole, Robert E.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Cole, Robert E.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Managing Quality Fads: How American Business Learned to Play the Quality Game

Japanese blue collar;: The changing tradition

Japanese Blue Collar: The Changing Tradition

Work, Mobility, and Participation: A Comparative Study of American and Japanese Industry

Work, Mobility, and Participation: A Comparative Study of American and Japanese Industry (Fishing and Marine Lore in the Palau District of Micronesia)

Strategies for Learning: Small-Group Activities in American, Japanese, and Swedish Industry

Strategies for Learning: Small-Group Activities in American, Japanese, and Swedish Industry

Work, Mobility, and Participation: A Comparative Study of American and Japanese Industry

Japanese Blue Collar: The Changing Tradition

Strategies for Learning: Small-Group Activities in American, Japanese, and Swedish Industry