Hybrids or Hodgepodges? Workplace Practices of Japanese and Domestic Startups in the United States

This study examines the adoption of high-performance workplace management practices in Japanese and domestic manufacturing plants, spanning a broad range of products and technologies, that began operations in the United States between 1978 and 1988. Japanese transplants, the authors find, were likely to adopt “hybrid” systems of high-performance practices melding Japanese principles of workplace management with the American industrial relations system. Domestic startups incorporated many of these same techniques, but they tended to take a more limited and piecemeal approach. The managers of domestic startups also paid less attention to how individual high-performance practices fit into an overall system of efficient workplace management than did managers at Japanese transplants.