Rhetoric and reality : the cases of Mazda and Subaru-Isuzu
- 2000-2001
Worker empowerment is like motherhood and apple pie: no managment guru over the past 20 years had a bad thing to say about it. But approval is not the same thing as analysis. This paper offers a discussion of the concept of worker empowerment, based particularly on two case studies from the US motor industry. The results of this analysis suggest that empowerment is not a simple and universal idea as most of its supporters allow, and that it may not always be the most appropriate management tool, either. More than that, the inconsistencies inherent in the concept make it virtually inevitable that empowerment will fail