Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate recent labor unrest in China's automobile industry and the implications for the debate on the future of the country's labor relations and cost competitiveness. Design/methodology/approach – Using data between 1999 and 2007, the authors...

The current obsession with globalization and technological change has given rise to a new school of management, the revolutionary school. This school uses language appropriated from the political concept of revolution and argues that the key role of management is the transformation of their...

Purpose – The paper aims to research the mechanics of voluntary export restraints (VERs). It first develops a comprehensive VER research agenda, subsequently covering a 1991 VER between the European Union (EU) and Japan that established “voluntary” quotas on Japanese cars until 1999....

Purpose – To examine customers' readiness for mass‐customised products in two European countries, Turkey and the UK. Design/methodology/approach – Examines the demand side of the market and begins to explore whether mass‐customisation can be implemented as an international product...

Purpose – To examine the reasons why Renault of France and Nissan of Japan entered into a merger. Over the past decade the automotive industry has been subject to a spate of merges and take‐overs which not only brought about a considerable degree of consolidation, which made it increasingly...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate insights into cross‐cultural conflict, identity and values amongst selected managers within a South African management context. It aims to increase the understanding of these complexities from an academic managerial perspective, thereby...

Purpose – The main purpose of this paper is to identify and rank a set of performance measures using the approach of interpretive structural modelling (ISM) to support the evaluation of automotive supply chain performance. Design/methodology/approach – The paper develops a framework to...

Describes a case study of a process reengineering project conducted by a tier 1 supplier in the automotive industry. The process that was reengineered was the bill‐to‐cash process for its OEM customer. Deficiencies in the process came to light as a result of implementing OEM mandated support...

This paper investigated the impact of components and contextual elements of strategic planning on the effectiveness of the strategic planning process. Specifically, the characteristics of planning and the overall effectiveness of planning processes in the automotive industry were studied. A...

Currently, automotive original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) aim at developing Internet‐based methods to redesign their relationships with the suppliers. The majority of the manufacturers believe this to be a possibility to improve the relationships to their suppliers, especially regarding...