Thesis (Ph. D.)--United States International University, 1989. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 153-157).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Johns Hopkins University, 1992. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 440-463).

Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1990. / Cover title. Supervised by Michael S. Orrantia. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 94-95).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Tennessee, Knoxville, 1992. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 165-174).

xiii, 103 p. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number. / NAFTA has had a significant impact on production, exchange, and labor throughout North America. An area significantly transformed by NAFTA is the maquiladora production region in northern Mexico. While once predominantly a female space of labor, we now see more male workers employed by industrial units there than in the past. This thesis interrogates what has happened to the women workers of the maquiladoras. In what ways have NAFTA, global economic restructuring, and the resultant legal atmosphere affected women's daily lives and employment opportunities? What strategies of resistance have these women developed to contend with the new economic landscape? I argue that women are adapting by moving away from the U.S.- Mexico border to work in garment industries and resisting the economic and social pressures resulting from globalization by engaging in subtle protests within in the maquiladoras, opting to participate in the informal economy, and utilizing community groups to facilitate social change. / Committee in Charge: Dr. Anita M. Weiss, Chair; Professor Ibrahim Gassama; Professor Marcela Mendoza

Participative management practices between United States parent companies in the maquiladora industry and their Mexico assembly plants were investigated for this study. It was hypothesized that managers of parent maquiladora companies in the United States encouraged greater levels of worker participation than did expatriate managers in Mexican subsidiaries. However, the findings of this study indicate that expatriate managers in a number of the Mexico subsidiaries are currently implementing employee involvement approaches. In some instances, highly participative team-based approaches are being used.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, Irvine, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 245-255).

Made available in DSpace on 2016-06-02T19:51:47Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 3442.pdf: 1314799 bytes, checksum: 72cd9127441471994abf8e917a56b30d (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011-02-17 / The purpose of this research is to determine and analyze the differences in the behavior of labor productivity between the process industry and assembly industry in the period 1990 to 2002. The main hypothesis which led to implementation of the study was that labor productivity growth in the assembly industry would have been higher than the labor productivity growth in the process industry. The reason for this lay in evidence in the literature showing that the adjustment of firms to new competitive context of the Brazilian economy was, mainly in their initial stages, through the adoption of modern management techniques and tools that were based on the toyota production system or lean production. Also according to this type of literature, such techniques and tools were most appropriate, and therefore more widespread, in the assembly industry. To achieve the objective and confirm or refute the hypothesis, the work was divided into four chapters. The first deals with the process of globalization and related issues, such as changes in industrial structure and economic reforms. The second chapter is devoted to discussing the concept of productivity and the results of several studies on the behavior of productivity in the Brazilian economy. The third chapter presents the characteristics of the process industry and industrial assembly.. The fourth chapter presents the methodology used to calculate the labor productivity in these different industries and presents also the results of calculations of labor productivity for the process industry and assembly industry made from three databases made available by IBGE. The main conclusion was that, especially in the period 1990 to 1996, growth in labor productivity in the assembly industry was actually higher than the growth of productivity in the process industry. / O objetivo da pesquisa é determinar e analisar a existência de diferenças no comportamento da produtividade do trabalho entre as indústrias de processo e de montagem no período de 1990 a 2002. A hipótese principal que conduziu a execução do trabalho foi a de que os ganhos de produtividade do trabalho nas indústrias de montagem teria sido superior aqueles apresentados pelas indústrias de processo. A razão para tal repousava em evidências encontradas na literatura que mostravam que o ajustamento das empresas ao novo contexto competitivo da economia brasileira ocorreu, principalmente nos seus momentos iniciais, através da adoção de modernas técnicas de gestão que tinham por base as ferramentas do sistema toyota de produção ou produção enxuta. Ainda de acordo com este tipo de literatura, tais ferramentas tinham o uso mais adequado e, consequentemente, mais difundido, nos processos produtivos das indústrias de montagem. Para atingir o objetivo proposto e confirmar ou refutar a hipótese citada, o trabalho foi dividido em quatro capítulos. O primeiro trata do processo de globalização e temas correlatos, como reestruturação produtiva e reformas econômicas. O segundo capítulo é dedicado à discussão do conceito de produtividade e dos resultados de vários estudos sobre o comportamento da produtividade na economia brasileira. O terceiro capítulo busca apresentar as características das indústrias de processo e das indústrias de montagem. No quarto capítulo é feita a apresentação da metodologia usada para o cálculo da produtividade do trabalho e é feita a apresentação dos resultados dos cálculos da produtividade do trabalho para as indústrias de processo e a indústrias de montagem. Tais cálculos foram realizados a partir de três bases de dados disponibilizadas pelo IBGE. O principal resultado encontrado foi o de que, principalmente no período 1990 a 1996, o crescimento da produtividade do trabalho nas indústrias de montagem foi realmente superior ao crescimento da produtividade nas indústrias de processo.

Le but de cette recherche est de décrire et comprendre le fonctionnement du management de la créativité dans des entreprises d’assemblage automobiles en Thaïlande. La question principale qui est posée est «comment peut-on gérer la créativité dans l’entreprise ? ». La stratégie d'étude de cas, a été privilégiée à d’autres modes de recherche qualitative. Les données provenant de sources multiples ont été rassemblées: les documents, les protocoles des entretiens avec des participants de niveau hiérarchique différent dans l’entreprise. Quatre études de cas sont présentées. La créativité dans les entreprises d'assemblage en Thaïlande est basée essentiellement sur le concept de ‘Kaizen’. L'étude démontre que les valeurs culturelles et sociales thaïes ont une influence déterminante sur la créativité du salarié. L'activité de créativité au niveau de l'individu et au niveau du groupe ainsi que les facteurs qui ont une influence sur la gestion de la créativité ont été présentés dans cette étude. / The purpose of this study is to understand and describe the creativity management in the car assembly companies in Thailand. The main research question is how can manage the creativity. The case study strategies, which is one of the strategies in the qualitative research methodology is used. Data were collected from multiple sources: documentary evidence, guided interviews with the participants from different positions. Four case studies are presented in this study. The creativity’s definition in Thai car assembly companies was defined based on the concept of Kaizen. The study demonstrates Thai cultural and social values have some effects on the employee’s creativity. The creativity activity in individual and group level, and the factors that influence on creativity management were presented in this study.

Over the last few decades, production processes have become increasingly fragmented: they are divided into ever smaller parts considered as separate activities, which are then spread over various locations in different countries. In other words, value chains for many products are becoming global. This implies that inputs into the production process are sourced from both local and foreign suppliers. The latter mode of sourcing is commonly referred to as offshoring. Expressed as the share of imported in total intermediates, offshoring has grown relatively fast in the recent past. Moreover, its scope has been extended as it increasingly encompasses not only manufacturing but also service activities. A typical example for the former is the sourcing from abroad of parts and components for car assembly. While offshoring of manufacturing activities has been occurring since long and has been largely facilitated by trade liberalisation, the offshoring of service activities such as the provision of accounting or call centre services is a more recent phenomenon that has been fostered by the increased tradability of such services.<p>With the increasing scale and scope of offshoring, it becomes crucial to get a grasp of its drivers as well as the gains and threats associated with it. The latter are the focal point of the public and academic discussion around offshoring, in particular the potential threats for workers in developed economies. Typical questions that are being raised are whether offshoring leads to job losses in developed countries and whether it favours certain categories of workers and is to the disadvantage of others. These threats are directly linked to the motivations for engaging into offshoring. In this respect, wage costs play a prominent role. But other factors may also influence offshoring decisions, e.g. regulations, in particular those regarding the environment. Last but not least, offshoring may also entail gains for developed economies through the improvements in the efficiency of production. In this PhD thesis, several causes and consequences of offshoring are examined empirically for Belgium.<p>The first issue that is investigated is whether offshoring of materials and business services affects industry-level employment. An improved offshoring intensity measure is introduced. It is a volume measure of the share of imported intermediates in output split into materials and business services and according to the country of origin of imports, i.e. high-wage and low-wage countries. Estimations of static and dynamic industry-level labour demand equations augmented by offshoring intensities do not reveal a significant impact of either materials or business services offshoring on total employment for Belgium. This result holds for both the manufacturing sector and the service sector and it proves robust to splitting the manufacturing sector into high-technology and low-technology industries.<p>These results raise the question whether there are actually productivity gains from offshoring. Therefore, estimates of the impact of materials and business services offshoring on industry-level productivity in Belgium are presented. Two features of the analysis are new compared to the existing literature on this subject: the issue is examined separately for manufacturing and market services industries and the possibility of forward and backward spillovers from offshoring, i.e. that productivity gains from offshoring feed through to upstream and downstream industries, is investigated. Results show that materials offshoring has no effect on productivity, while business services offshoring leads to productivity gains in manufacturing. Furthermore, there is no evidence of either forward or backward spillovers from offshoring.<p>Despite the absence of an industry-level total employment effect, offshoring may alter the within-industry composition of employment. In this respect, a major concern is the worsening of the labour market position of low-skilled workers. This issue is addressed by providing evidence on the impact of offshoring on the skill structure of manufacturing employment in Belgium between 1995 and 2007. Offshoring is found to significantly lower the employment share of low-skilled workers. Its contribution to the fall in the employment share of low-skilled workers amounts to 35%. This is mainly driven by offshoring to Central and Eastern European countries. Business services offshoring also contributes significantly to the fall in the low-skilled employment share. As a complement to the existing literature, the widely used current price measure of offshoring is compared with a constant price measure that is based on a deflation with separate price indices for domestic output and imports. This reveals that the former underestimate the extent of offshoring and its impact on low-skilled employment. Finally, further results show that the impact of offshoring on low-skilled employment is significantly smaller in industries with a higher ICT capital intensity.<p>Furthermore, attention is drawn to environmental effects of offshoring by asking whether offshoring contributes to reducing air emissions from manufacturing. Indeed, since the mid-90’s, production-related air emissions in Belgian manufacturing have been reduced substantially. It can be shown that the pace of the reduction has been fastest for domestic intermediates. The issue of whether offshoring has played a role in this reduction by replacing domestic intermediates by imported intermediates is widely debated. Here, a decomposition analysis is developed to measure the contribution of offshoring – the share of imported intermediates in total intermediates – to the fall in air emissions for domestic intermediates. Based on the results from this decomposition analysis, it is possible to calculate that 17% of the fall in greenhouse gas emissions, 6% of the fall in acidifying emissions and 7% of the fall in tropospheric precursor emissions in Belgian manufacturing between 1995 and 2007 can be attributed to offshoring.<p>Finally, emission intensities are also considered as a potential determinant of offshoring. An econometric approach for testing the pollution haven effect for imported intermediate materials is developed. The approach is new with respect to the existing literature on pollution havens through its specific focus on imports of intermediates. The test is embedded in a cost function framework from which a system of cost share equations for variable input factors is derived. The set of potential determinants of the demand for imported intermediate materials includes emission intensities for three types of air pollutants. Their impact constitutes a test of the pollution haven effect. The system of cost share equations is estimated by a within ISUR using data for the Belgian manufacturing sector. Results show some albeit relatively weak evidence of a pollution haven effect for imported intermediate materials.<p> / Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished