Japanese maquiladoras: Production organization and global commodity chains

Abstract During the last decade at least 66 Japanese maquiladoras have been established in Mexico employing in excess of 20,000 workers. This paper examines the organization of production in these plants and the insertion of these production activities in the global commodity chains of these firms. Managers at 17 firms were interviewed either in person or by telephone and 10 of the plants were visited. The results indicate that the production organization and labor-management relationships resembled that of temporary employees in Japan. Most of the activities undertaken in the maquiladoras are relatively low-skill level, labor-intensive activities. In Tijuana there are now at least 31 Japanese maquiladoras most of which are in the electronics industry and these include a number of Japanese suppliers, thereby creating a proto-industrial complex.

[1]  Andrew Mair,et al.  THE NEW GEOGRAPHY OF AUTOMOBILE PRODUCTION: JAPANESE TRANSPLANTS IN NORTH AMERICA , 1988 .

[2]  E. P. Thompson,et al.  The Making of the English Working Class. , 1965 .

[3]  J. Agarwal,et al.  Globalisation of production and markets , 1994 .

[4]  M. Aoki.  Information, Incentives and Bargaining in the Japanese Economy: A Microtheory of the Japanese Economy , 1988 .

[5]  Daniel T. Jones,et al.  The machine that changed the world : based on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 5-million dollar 5-year study on the future of the automobile , 1990 .

[6]  P. Dicken.  Global shift: The internationalization of economic activity , 1992 .

[7]  H. Shaiken.  Mexico in the Global Economy: High Technology and Work Organization in Export Industries , 1989 .

[8]  S. Levine,et al.  Economic Development and the Labor Market in Japan. , 1971 .

[9]  J. Hudson.  A DIAMOND ANNIVERSARY , 1979 .

[10]  R. Florida,et al.  Transplanted Organizations: The Transfer of Japanese Industrial Organization to the U.S. , 1991 .

[11]  Anand Swaminathan,et al.  Beyond Mass Production: The Japanese System and Its Transfer to the United States , 1994 .

[12]  Barry Wilkinson,et al.  The Japanization of British industry , 1988 .

[13]  R. Cole.  Strategies for Learning , 2023 .

[14]  K. Yamamura,et al.  Transfer of Japanese Technology and Management to the Asean Countries , 1991 .

[15]  Robert B. South,et al.  Transnational “Maquiladora'’Location , 1990 .