British industrial relations has changed greatly over the past decade. A central development has been management′s sponsorship of new, direct forms of employee involvement (EI) such as team briefing, quality circles and profit sharing. In many larger manufacturing firms new schemes now...

This article reports on a new strategy for labour control in a British carpet factory, brought about under the pressure of the recession. The key characteristics of this approach have a number of similarities with the Japanese model of labour relations. Quality circles are the only overtly...