Table Of ContentTRANSFORMING BUYER-SUPPLIER RELATIONS
Also by Jonathan Morris
FLEXIBLE FU1URES: Prospects for Employment and Organisation
(edited with Paul Blyton)
JAPAN AND THE GLOBAL ECONOMY (editor)
TransforDling
Buyer-Supplier
Relations
Japanese-Style Industrial Practices
in a Western Context
Jonathan Morris
Lecturer in Organisational Behaviour
Cardiff Business School
and
Rob Imrie
Lecturer in the Department of Geography
Royal Holloway and Bedford New College,
University of London
M
e Jonathan Morris and Rob Imrie 1992
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1992
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First published 1992 by
MACMILLAN ACADEMIC AND PROFESSIONAL LTD
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS
and London
Companies and representatives
throughout the world
Copy-edited and typeset by Cairns Craig Editorial, Edinburgh
ISBN 978-1-349-11202-9 ISBN 978-1-349-11200-5 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-11200-5
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British libraI)'
Contents
List of Tables vi
List of Figures vii
Acknowledgements viii
1 Buyer-Supplier Relations and Changes in
Industrial Organization 1
2 Economic Change, Vertical Disintegration and
Buyer-Supplier Relations: Some Theoretical
Considerations 19
3 Vertical Disintegration and New Forms of Work
Organization: a Review of Empirical
Evidence 40
4 Nissan Motor Manufacturing UK: Best Practice
Under Pressure 62
5 Lucas Girling: New Practices, Old Constraints 93
6 Sony UK: Supplier Development and
the Cooperative Ethos 119
7 IBM UK: From Control to Collaboration? 143
8 Beyond Adversarialism: the Advent of New
Supply Practices? 163
Bibliography 172
Index 185
v
List of Tables
1.1 The UK's share in the volume of manufactured
exports (per cent) 4
1.2 Britain's balance of trade in manufactures (SIC,
divisions 5-8, £ millions) 4
1.3 Manufacturing investment in the UK economy,
1979-88 4
3.1 The proportion of production and service activities
contracted out by the sample firms 43
3.2 Numbers of firms in the sample using new operating
methods with their suppliers 44
4.1 Domestic production and distribution facilities of
Nissan Motor Company Ltd 64
4.2 Key suppliers to Nissan Motor 68
4.3 Nissan overseas production facilities and output 69
4.4 Nissan Motor UK production levels 71
4.5 BEC based suppliers to Nissan 78-79
5.1 Major European automative components suppliers,
1988 96
5.2 Lucas sales (in £ millions) by division, 1982-1989 98
5.3 Lucas sales (in £ millions) by geographical division,
1982-89 98
5.4 Employment in Lucas Industries PLC, UK and
Overseas, 1985-89 ('OOOs) 99
6.1 Sony's European manufacturing operations 123
6.2 Japanese owned electronics suppliers in the UK 130
7.1 Top ten data processors, 1988 145
7.2 Electronic contract manufacture in the USA 156
vi
List of Figures
1.1 Traditional supply chain 8-9
1.2 Partnership supply chain 12-13
4.1 Supplier organizations to Toyota and Nissan 67
6.1 Sony's supplier policy 132
Vll
Acknowledgements
Although this book has been a collaborative effort, Rob Imrie is responsible
for writing Chapters 1 to 3 and, substantially, Chapter 8, while Jonathan
Morris wrote Chapters 4 to 7. We wish to acknowledge the Welsh Devel-
opment Agency for funding the research and the companies for generously
participating. We would also like to thank various colleagues at Cardiff for
reading the manuscript and offering helpful suggestions. Included are Tod
Rutherford, Pete Wells and Sarah Fielder. Finally we wish to thank Louise
Jones for her part in the preparation of the manuscript.
Vlll
1 Buyer-Supplier Relations
and Changes in
Industrial Organization
1 INTRODUCTION
By the mid-1980s, many commentators on the British economy were
in agreement that British industry was in the process of a series of
major changes in managerial styles and strategies, industrial relations, and
associated working practices. The Treasury's Economic Progress Report
(1986) was typical in noting the Government's intent on encouraging the
development of 'an enterprise culture and a more flexible and responsive
economy'. This political agenda has incorporated a number of enabling
measures, including the deregulation of private capital, the privatization
of significant parts of the public sector, and the introduction of com-
mercial criteria into residual state sector activities. These changes have
occurred alongside a major restructuring of industrial production, work and
employment, with the emergence of new forms of flexible economic and
labour organization, characterized by a diverse range of new technologies,
products, and services (Boyer, 1987; Jones, 1988; Martin, 1988; Wood,
1989).
In particular, a major feature of contemporary industrial change is the
restructuring of large corporations (Shutt and Whittington, 1984, Thrift,
1988). While the post-war trend of an increased scale of employment has
been reversed, with average plant sizes diminishing, new firm formation
rates have risen quickly and there has been a commensurate rise in the
numbers of small businesses. These transformations are illustrative of
wider changes in multinational corporations (MNCs), including a mixture
of forward and backward disintegration, diversification into new product
markets, and the development of a much more fluid set of intra-firm and
interfirm organizational networks than has hitherto existed. A plethora of
research indicates how MNCs are devising a whole host of new product
and market strategies (Amin and Robbins, 1990; Castells, 1988; Dunning,
1986). This is occurring in the face of rising Research and Development
(R & D) costs, rapidly changing and shortening product life cycles, greater
1
