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KEYWORDS: TRANSNATIONAL; FORDISM; LEAN PRODUCTION; MEXICO
This paper examines two trends in the restructuring of North American automobile production during the last 20 years: the export of productive activities or globalization and the return of productive activities to core regions with the increasing implementation of “lean” or Japanese techniques. It argues that globalization failed and the trend towards globalization has diminished because globalization, as practiced in the late 1970s and 1980s, entailed the export of Fordist techniques. While acknowledging the superiority of lean production over Fordism, it is argued that lean techniques will not lead to the massive return of auto production to North America. Instead, the most important trend in the North American automobile industry over the next ten years will be between the two extremes of globalization and the return of production to North America and consist of the expansion of production in a low wage region, Mexico, but using lean techniques.
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Carl H.A. Dassbach Department of Social Sciences Michigan Technological UniversityHoughton, MI 49931
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EJS VOLUME ONE NUMBER ONE (1994)
© 1994 Copyright Electronic Journal of Sociology
