Browsing Conference papers (ICM/IKL) by Title
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The Impact of the Global Economic and Financial Crises over Developing Countries' Automobile IndustryWad, Peter (Frederiksberg, 2010)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: In the Global South automobile production evolved behind protectionist walls and was promoted by infant industry policies and outright national automotive projects from the 1950s. In recent decades, many developing countries have liberalized their automotive markets and allowed automobile TNCs to take majority control over joint ventures, transforming domestic automotive industries into foreign controlled sectors while leaving a few national automakers in India, Malaysia and China. Decomposing and reorganizing the national value chain into regional and global automobile value chains OEMs and TNC original equipment suppliers (OESs) have off-shored and outsourced component and parts production to developing countries. Again, local auto suppliers have been acquired or relegated to lower 'tier' positions if not forced out of the market. However, with economic growth and development in the Global South during the 1990s and 2000s automobile sales have boomed, and the automobile sectors in Latin America and Asia have become „brown sunrise‟ industries generating investment, technological upgrading and employment. The present global financial and economic crisis has not profoundly changed this trajectory. The global crisis did not impact automotive markets in developing countries severely, except for automotive exporting countries like Mexico, Thailand and South Africa. Only in 2009 automotive sales and production declined across the board in the Global South, but key markets turned around in the end of the year. Thus, the automobile crisis is a downward business cycle, not a structural crisis of the industry. Companies in the automotive industry responded with traditional crisis management (temporary downsizing, cost reductions, retraining, consolidation, innovation), and governments launched traditional stimuli packages (cash-for-clunkers, tax reductions on smaller and/or cleaner cars etc). Strategic initiatives were taken to improve the competitiveness of the domestic industry (consolidation, liberalization) on the one hand and to transform it from a brown industry to a „greener‟ industry on the other hand (tightening environmental regulations, fuel efficiency and emission standards, subsidizing purchases of smaller and „greener‟ cars, investing in appropriate infrastructure and green technology R&D). Thereby, some developing countries and their surviving local automakers and parts makers are leapfrogging into „clean‟ technology frontiers competing head-to-head with global automakers or partnering with foreign firms in their common endeavor to manufacture green automobiles. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8180 Files in this item: 1
Wad-Green sunrise or brown.pdf (408.6Kb) -
An Ethnography of a Juried Ceramic Art Exhibition in JapanMoeran, Brian (Frederiksberg, 2012)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: This article discusses the social processes among members of a panel of jurors required to award a major prize to one of the submissions to a national ceramics exhibition in Japan. Uniquely based on participant observation-style fieldwork, the article details the voting procedures and (inconclusive) results, before analysing why one particular potter’s submission was selected for the Princess Chichibu Cup. It shows how social relations, rather than aesthetic taste, influenced the final choice, since jury members operated according to an informal pecking order that depended on pre-existing networks and reputations, themselves determined by seniority and age. The fact that judges did not overtly resort to aesthetic criteria when making their evaluations meant that they considered each submission in relation to other submissions, rather than on their own particular merits. They thus ended up comparing ‘incommensurate flaws’, rather than making a selection according to agreed ‘merit’. And yet ‘meritocratic principles’ seem to prevail in the longer term cumulative recognition of potters who are awarded prizes at such exhibitions. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8510 Files in this item: 1
Brian_Moeran_2012.pdf (266.7Kb) -
Cultural Cognition and U.S. Labor RelationsTackney, Charles T.; Sato, Toyoko (Frederiksberg, 2012)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: Our study explores cultural cognition in comparative U.S. – Japan employment relations through interdisciplinary analysis of Japanese Supreme Court regulation of the post-World War II lifetime employment system and the latest data available on Japan's collective bargaining-based approach to employee participation in managerial prerogative. The comparative social policy aim is to examine and account for observed employment relations variance in the U.S. and Japan, given their similar labor legislation. Japan’s Supreme Court recognizes lifetime employment as an institutionalized practice and we report all 236 references to the term “lifetime employment” in Japanese case law: 178 regional cases, 43 regional superior cases, and 15 Supreme Court cases. Quantitative analysis of Supreme Court cases contextualizes these references in post-World War II history; qualitative analysis focuses on the Court's discourse. Causally related to this recognition, management councils (a form of employee participation in managerial prerogative) are also a defining feature of Japanese employment relations at the enterprise level. Despite unionization rate declines in both nations, the persistence of Japan's participatory employee relations system contrasts sharply with recent U.S. state-based legislative assaults on long-standing collective bargaining, particularly for public sector unions. The concept of cultural cognition, recently deployed in legal studies to account for domestic U.S. risk, public policy and voting preferences, offers theoretical grounds for better understanding of the observed comparative variance in employment practices. We conclude with proposals for organized labor in the U.S. to strengthen prospects for informal network proliferation and employee participation, with the goal of enhancing national competitiveness. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8613 Files in this item: 1
Tackney_2012_2.pdf (531.3Kb) -
Tackney, Charles T. (Frederiksberg, 2012)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: 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. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8614 Files in this item: 1
Tackney_2012_3.pdf (505.2Kb) -
Baron, Irene (Odense, 2011)[More information][Less information]
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CPH Kids and Danish Children’s FashionCsaba, Fabian Faurholt; Larsen, Frederik (Frederiksberg, 2010)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: During the Copenhagen Fashion Week A/W 2010, CPH Kids opened as the first independent trade fair for children’s clothing. Despite considerable resistance, the fair managed to establish itself and challenge the established order by providing a venue devoted fully to children’s clothing and luring away exhibitors and visitors looking for change. In this paper, we analyze the dynamic development and distinctive traits of the children’s clothing sector symbolized at the new fair. Our study contributes to inquiry into the role of fairs and festivals in the creative industries by examining the special case of coinciding, competing trade fairs. We introduce and build on three closely related, but in our view complementary, concepts applied and developed in analyses of festivals, trade shows and other kinds of temporary, usually competitive events, namely tournament rituals, field configuring events and tournaments of value. We establish the common ground of the three approaches, particular their assertion of the rich research potential and vital significance of festivals, fairs and similar events for many fields, whether deemed creative or not. We also single out particular strengths of each approach, which inform our inquiry.... URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8238 Files in this item: 1
FaurholtCsaba__Larsen_paper1.pdf (325.2Kb) -
Moeran, Brian (Frederiksberg, 2012)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: This working paper, delivered at the ©reative Encounters workshop on the Business of Ethnography in June 2012, and in part (the sections on advertising and anthropology) at the American Anthropological Association’s annual meeting in San Francisco in November the same year, recounts the author’s personal experiences as a fieldworker to consider what it is that defines the newly emergent sub-discipline of business anthropology. The underlying argument is that all kinds of ethnographic research not overtly conducted on ‘business organizations’ may be counted as an anthropology of business, which itself is not strictly defined by the word ‘business’ per se, but includes such features as kinship and household organization, creative and craft practices, community structures, and so on. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8511 Files in this item: 1
Brian_Moeran_2012_2.pdf (201.0Kb) -
Dahl, Dorte Boesby (Frederiksberg, 2011)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: This paper presents stories from fieldwork among parking patrol officers and managers in a Danish municipal centre. The stories are about the hiring, firing and retention of parking officers. The centre is renowned for management’s active and ambitious work to improve the work environment for parking patrol officers, the quality of parking services and to employ diversity management. As many other types of unskilled work in Denmark, the job as parking patrol officer is a possible entry point to the labour market for people without formal education or people who have been worn out in other occupations. By presenting stories told by parking patrol officers and their managers at Centre for Parking, I wish to contribute to our understanding of the role of the public sector as an employer: the ambitions and limits of the public sector in regard to employing people for unskilled work and the dilemmas that follow. The aim of the paper is to show how these stories shape the simultaneous processes of professionalizing the traditionally unskilled work of parking patrolling and fulfilling a role as a socially inclusive workplace. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8604 Files in this item: 1
Boesby_2011.pdf (29.06Kb) -
Adaptive Appropriation in Japanese Labor Law and the Roman Catholic Social QuestionTackney, Charles (Frederiksberg, 2012)[More information][Less information]
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The case of municipal parking officesDahl, Dorte Boesby (Frederiksberg, 2012)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: This paper is about the work and management of parking patrol officers in a Danish municipal department responsible for parking law enforcement. The job as a parking officer is un-skilled and fairly light in terms of physical demands, but quite demanding in terms of contact and coping with disgruntled car-drivers. In recent years the municipality has developed a strict policy in regard to parking, increasing both the enforcement of parking rules and the prices for parking. Alongside this development, the municipal department has become renowned for management’s active and ambitious work to improve the working environment for parking officers, and to employ diversity management. Regarding parking officers as street-level bureaucrats (Lipsky 2010), the paper addresses the characteristics of their work and the challenges posed to the individual employee and manager. Becoming a parking officer is not only a matter of being able to cope with people on the street, but also being able to cope with colleagues and managements’ particular expectations to your personality. Since the department of parking is part of a public organisation these expectations become all the more complicated (Hoggett 1996). They rely not only on the revenue from parking tickets and organizational credibility, but also on the availability of unskilled work for job-seekers and integration and retention efforts in staff-management. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8605 Files in this item: 1
Boesby_2012.pdf (229.1Kb)
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