A vivid and revealing portrait of companies, unions, and individuals fighting to change and survive, Restoring Prosperity offers a road map which will lead workers and management to a better future. Wilms and his team were granted complete access to all employees at four major companies which were struggling, to get a first-hand view of how management reforms really filter down to the shop floor.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Calling themselves industrial anthropologists, UCLA professor Wilms and a team of graduate students embarked six years ago upon a unique study of the changing relationship between management and labor. The study, which involved working as factory hands, focused on four then-floundering companies: Douglas Aircraft, Hewlett-Packard's Santa Clara division and two joint ventures, General Motors with Toyota and U.S. Steel with the Korean steelmaker POSCO. The researchers found the companies transforming themselves in an era of downsizing, robotization and globalization. Managers were listening to ideas from labor; unions were less confrontational. In the case of the two joint ventures, people were overcoming barriers of language and culture. Budgets, employee rosters and inventories were all leaner, as speed and productivity increased. But none of the above was seen as lessening the national trauma of losing millions of factory jobs. Education (after fundamental school reform), says Wilms, now holds the key to restoring prosperity. But will it replace all those jobs? Wilms offers no easy answers.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Wilms (Graduate Sch. of Education and Information Studies, UCLA) indicates that management theories such as total quality management (TQM), reengineering, and sociotechnical systems (work design) in themselves do not solve complex union, business, and labor-management problems. In this industrial anthropology, he has generated or evolved a set of workplace rules for reform and a better future. The author and a research team of graduate students analyze four companies including Douglas Aircraft and a division of Hewlett-Packard in terms of the company's history and the events leading to the problems, obstacles to success, and corporate actions and their results. In the concluding chapter, the author discusses how these particular companies' experiences can be applied to other circumstances. Similar works include Michael Hammer's Beyond Reengineering (LJ 9/15/96) and David I. Levine's Reinventing the Workplace (LJ 4/1/95). This is an important book for the transformation and reeducation needed (with no magic elixir) to move us out of the defunct mass-production era.?Joan A. Traugott, Amityville P.L., N.Y.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Still well worth the read,
By Konrad "me" (California) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Restoring Prosperity:: How Workers and Managers Are Forging a New Culture of Cooperation (Hardcover)
I read "Restoring Prosperity" when it was just coming out. Eleven years layer, I am still recommending this book to people.
As this world we share changes, we must also change. We must learn from the past, and try not to repeat the mistakes of others. When it comes to industry, this book is one of the guideposts that can help you examine your own business, and see if you are falling into the traps that lead many to the unemployment line. The book is well laid out, and easy to read. Between the story aspects with first person accounts, hard numbers to back things up, and explanatory notes, you get a complete picture of the problems that were faced, solutions that were applied, and results. Not all the results were good. They do not cover up the bad. And in the good results, side effects of many sorts were exposed. No matter what your industry is, this book should be owned by the company, and passed around between all the managers, foremen, office personnel and other workers. That is because it has important information for everyone about how and why a company needs to work together, what compromises work, and what ones don't. It also exposes key elements in globalization, and how working with foreign corporations adds new challenges, and new results. This is not a silver bullet book, or cure all for a company's woes. But it is good information, in a good format, that deserves inclusion in your company's brain trust.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Labor,
This review is from: Restoring Prosperity:: How Workers and Managers Are Forging a New Culture of Cooperation (Hardcover)
We are seeing the economy of 'cooperation' between labor and management right at this moment. It is called a flattening of wages in the last 30 years. It is called the destruction of unions which is part and parcel of the wage flattening. It is propaganda to believe that managers have the best interest of workers at heart. Managers are middle men who exist to ensure the continuation of profit for the executives. This, as history attests, is done by paying the workers less money than the workers produce. If it ever becomes otherwise the worker is fired. In a capitalist structure business works no other way, no matter what happy face you put on it.
If labor is being included in the 'idea' process, you can bet that this does not translate to higher salaries or job security, but only another way to squeeze more from the worker for the good of the executives.
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