| High performance work systems—characterized by employee participation, increased training, and employee incentives such as incentive pay and job security—seem genuinely fragile in the U.S. institutional environment. Despite initial successes and substantial evidence of gains in employee morale, productivity, product quality, and profitability, these new work systems may erode over time and revert towards more traditional, Taylorist forms of work. Precisely why remains unclear in the literature, and there is a lack of analysis exploring the experience of plants with high performance work systems through time. Utilizing a case study approach, my dissertation focuses on the ten-year evolution of an initially successful U.S.-Japanese joint venture in steel, I/N Tek and I/N Kote. Careful planning and collaboration between Inland Steel (the American partner), Nippon Steel (the Japanese partner), and the United Steelworkers helped to smooth implementation of new technology and a new high performance work system. Though the 1990s, however, management change at Inland's corporate level, financial market pressure, and a recent change of ownership of Inland pushed the two plants toward more traditional work systems. During these periods the Japanese partner, local management, and unionized production employees struggled to maintain the integrity of the work system even as external cost cutting pressure threatened job security, training, employee participation, labor-management cooperation, and internal trust—all key components for successful high performance work systems. Policy implications include reform that lengthens the time horizons of absentee shareholders, trains strategic decision-makers effectively in the requirements of high performance work systems, and enables employees to have more participation in cost driven organizational change. |
