An Instructional Case Unit Concerning Japanese Management and Comparative Corporate Governance on the 1988 Labor Union Coup at Okuma Corporation, a Japanese Machine Tool Manufacturer

This is an instructional case unit designed to introduce students to comparative management practice and comparative corporate governance. Employee participation (management consultation) in the modern Japanese industrial enterprise is dramatically explored by presenting students with a corporate crisis in managerial prerogative faced by the 1988 enterprise labor union and labor union executive of Okuma Corporation. Okuma is global leader in machine tools manufacture, based in Aichi Prefecture, Japan. An unusual feature of the Okuma Case concerns the agent for managerial change with whom students are invited to identify: the executive of Okuma Corporation’s enterprise labor union and its recourse to the firm’s management council. This instructional case unit contains an instructor’s manual, background information, and suggested questions

Early Returns: Exploratory Data Analysis of the 2010-2011

Initially inspired by a 2009 Boston College Lonergan Fellow’s survey interest in the international use of Lonergan’s empirical method in the social sciences, the Global Lonergan Survey (GLS) is a data collection instrument available on the Internet since January 2010. This paper details the survey design as it developed through the collaborative support of many with an interest in Lonergan studies. As the first systematic, “cloud-based” assessment effort concerned with the diffusion of Lonergan's legacy in education throughout the world, the non-anonymous survey presents queries about a respondent’s academic background and teaching circumstances. Particular questions on moral conversion address those engaged in first year undergraduate instruction. There are questions designed to capture graduate student perspectives. In addition to simple binary and multiple choice questions, open-ended queries provide an opportunity for those surveyed to offer insight and provide suggestions on future implementation of Lonergan studies. The 2011 West Coast Methods Institute (WCMI) paper is an exploratory data analysis of the current valid survey sample: n=98 to date. The WCMI presentation offers summary survey outcomes to those actively involved in Lonergan studies, with a view to discussion of future steps

"Where would you like to work and why?” Legal ecology enterprise models for comparative study

This Working Paper for the Department of Intercultural Communications and Management (IKL) of Copenhagen Business School is being filed to record a path that combines educational concerns related to the European Undergraduate – Research Oriented Participatory Educational model of Copenhagen Business School with comparative industrial relations research stream concerned with labor law and contemporary enterprise ecology studies of employee participation in management prerogative

Lonergan’s General Empirical Method and the European Higher Education Area

This is a participant-observer report concerning curriculum deployment of Bernard J.F. Lonergan’s insight-based critical realism and general empirical method for interdisciplinary research methods and allied courses in Copenhagen Business School (CBS, Denmark), from 2001 to the present. I also report similar instruction in interdisciplinary methods for management and organization studies at the International School for Social and Business Studies (ISSB, Slovenia) in 2012.1 The overall time period has been entirely under the aegis of the Bologna Process, begun in 1999, and the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), launched in March, 2010. Both the originating Bologna Process and subsequent EHEA envision curriculum development appropriate to “ensure that the European higher education system acquires a world-wide degree of attraction” (European Commission, 2013). In addition, the Bologna Process calls for specification of the “necessary European dimensions of higher education” (Ibid.). The point of this working paper is to report teaching success and indicate potential merits of Lonergan’s general empirical method, grounded in insight-based critical realism, as a robust epistemological basis for EHEA university curriculum and instruction. The design approach to Lonergan’s method offers grounds to think it uniquely adapted for interdisciplinary social science in the complex trans-cultural, multi-lingual, and religiously pluralist EHEA, thus providing curriculum content adequate and appropriate for the “necessary European dimensions of higher education

The Case of the 1998 UAW Strikes against General Motors

In 1998, a late July settlement of the Flint, Michigan United Auto Workers strikes at General Motors narrowly averted or postponed a labor-management confrontation fully capable of precipitating an economic meltdown with far reaching consequences for our increasingly global economy. This paper uses a comparative legal ecology model of the modern enterprise to gain theoretical and empirical insight into the economic and societal costs of combining Japanese manufacturing techniques with managerial prerogative pursued "the American way." I begin by introducing the comparative legal ecology of the workplace as a theoretical concept to compare and contrast national differences in the modern industrial enterprise. This provides a standard to evaluate the extent to which General Motors had appropriately adapted the Japanese modes of social relations within the firm. The events associated with the Flint strikes evidence the cost of this oversight. The paper concludes by discussing the need to appropriately emulate Japanese modes of social relation when firms seek to successfully adapt their modes of production

2012 Walmart Labor Organizing and a Theology of the American Workplace

This paper applies theology of the workplace and cultural cognition studies to support recent “open source” labor union action at Walmart in North Americ and redress the lack of clear 2012 teaching on the social question by the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops. In an era of diminished cultural awareness about the role and significance of labor unions, insight-based critical realism, as a component of workplace theology analysis, can complement cultural cognition legal research for more effective labor organizing as well as Roman Catholic engagement in the social question. Comparative employment ecology workplace models, focusing on the U.S., Germany, and Japan, help in the historical derivation of practical, normative benchmarks for organized labor and management in respect to enacting more authentic employment relations. The benchmarks are grounded in theology of the workplace guidelines drawn from Roman Catholic encyclical teaching. Two basic parameters are shown to be particularly salient for the U.S. case: just cause dismissal protection and employee participation in managerial prerogative. Specific legal enactments and a strategic organizing model are offered in the conclusion for both union strategizing and collaborative church support

Management Policies and Industrial Sector Ecology in Japan's postware Machine-tools Industry to the 1980s

This is an exploration, using Japanese language primary sources, of management policies and relat-ed industrial sector ecology of the post-World War II machine tools industry. From postwar devas-tation to global leader in worldwide market share by the mid-1980s, remarkably little is know of the factors that contributed to this sucess. Paralleling Max Holland’s 1989 Burgmaster case study method of the U.S. firm’s and industry failure, this study examines the history of Okuma Corpora-tion, an Aichi Prefecture machine tools producer. The role of management leaders and government support for viable firms is shown to provide the necessary industrial ecology for machine tools pro-ducers to recover, innovate, deal with successive oil shocks, and achieve a leadership role in the machine tools sector. Comparative reflections on the parallel decline of the U.S. machine tools in-dustrial sector conclude the paper

Participation and Distribution Decisions in Japan's Industrial Relations System after World War II - Evidence of Conversion and Workplace Evangelization

In this paper, and even more in presentation, I will be going out rather far out on the limb of my training in industrial relations. Such is, perhaps, the intent of the collaborative process envisioned by Lonergan, no less than the theme of this conference. It will be evident from my referencing specializations far from my field, along with the shaky tone of voice, that the limb is beginning to bend and, perhaps, may be about to give way. If the participants could offer a turning word that will aid this investigation, I would be grateful. This paper takes the form of an extended essay. We begin with a very simple and specific policy proposal for the current U.S. economic crisis, which I offer from my studies in industrial relations. Thereafter, as the section headings suggest, we will venture far afield. The distance travelled is necessary due to the topic, the nations, and the cultures involved. My aim is, first, to shed light upon one particular set of decisions taken in Japan, in the immediate aftermath of the Pacific War, and how these effected industrial relations developments thereafter. Second, and on a different level of analysis, I will present evidence that singular collaboration took place in Japanese history, at a specific point in time, that certainly appears to anticipate the notion of cosmopolis as Lonergan describes this utopian scheme. Third, I will end with brief points of possible further interest to Lonergan scholars

A critical management studies comparative assessment based on Japanese industrial relations research

At the core of the present global crisis lies an ideological oversight that indicates standard business models are subject to fail due to moral hazard: managerial prerogative, particularly the U.S. variant, is not self-regulating in respect to either corporate risk or the stewardship of stakeholder trust. We know there is variance in national political economies, but less is known about legal factors informing firm-specific variance, especially as these regards trust and transparency. This paper reports research seeking to bridge this ‘gap’ by the introduction of comparative legal ecology employment models of the enterprise. The construct is derived from reflection upon industrial relations research into the existence and nature of Japan’s ‘lifetime employment system’. Construct parameters include employment security, labor unions and the degree of employee participation permitted (if any); model schematics are offered for the United States of America, Germany, Japan, Denmark, and the People’s Republic of China. The comparative models help to account for variance in the legal extent and nature of managerial prerogative, job security, and the degree of information, power, and resource transparency of any enterprise. These offer, in consequence, clear and clearly comparative benchmarks of industrial democracy