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Your next boss is Japanese: Negotiating cultural change at a western Massachusetts paper plant
Abstract
This dissertation is a longitudinal ethnography of a bicultural organization in transition I began in October 1987 directly after the takeover by Japanese management of a Western Massachusetts paper plant. This project documents the experience of both the American workforce and the Japanese management team at the plant, a microcosm of the cultural change process recurrent in modern industrial America. In particular, I examine cultural differences in the understanding of leadership and "concept of work," actual and experienced shifts in how inequality is structured, how conflict is managed, and how "otherness" is defined. The results are organized around four themes which emerged over time from the ethnographic data: (1) a conceptual model of "negotiated culture"; (2) national cultural differences in the transfer of technology; (3) effects of culture on labor relations and the collective bargaining process; and (4) "bicultural alienation" of the American middle manager. This study employs a between-methods triangulated research design involving both a qualitative ethnographic component as well as a quantitative study. The ethnography relies on a dialectical mode of inquiry wherein current anthropological theory and ethnographic data gathered at the field site are constantly compared. The results of the ethnography are then used to inform the generation of strong constructs which are the basis for a quantitatively tested organization-wide census. My ethnographic methods include participant observation and intensive interviewing of the American managers, union committee, blue collar workers, and Japanese management team in the U.S. and in Japan. The quantitative component of my methodology is a retrospective questionnaire administered to the entire workforce (N = 203) which measures their attitudes towards the Japanese management and their assessment of the evolving organizational culture at three distinct time periods: (A) before the takeover; (B) after a $40 million dollar expansion of the facility---a zenith of the company's success; and (C)~the present---after the company has endured its first layoffs in the wake of a severe industry downturn. Results of the questionnaire analysis are woven into the body of the ethnographic reports, sometimes supporting, sometimes adding to, and sometimes challenging the ethnography.
Subject Area
Management|Labor relations|Cultural anthropology
Recommended Citation
Brannen, Mary Yoko, "Your next boss is Japanese: Negotiating cultural change at a western Massachusetts paper plant" (1994). Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest. AAI9420601.
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations/AAI9420601