Learning Factories or Reproduction Factories?

Abstract

This article compares and contrasts the labor-management practices of Japanese consumer electronics maquiladoras in Mexico with those of consumer electronics factories in Japan and assesses the extent to which the labor-management practices of Japanese factories have been transferred to maquiladoras in Mexico. An idealized model of the labor-management system employed in Japanese factories in the consumer electronics sector is delineated from the available research literature. Data on labor-management practices of the Japanese consumer electronics maquiladoras are derived from personal interviews with 75 Mexican production workers. The findings suggest that the consumer electronics maquiladoras in Mexico are using a hybrid labor-management system that is similar to but differs in important ways from the system used in consumer electronics factories in Japan.