La transferencia del sistema japonés de producción hacia un país en desarrollo

Abstract

This paper contributes to the debate about the transferability of the Japanese Production System (J P S) towards different cultural contexts, and particularly to Mexico. Such debate has been polarized between those who say that J P S cannot be transfered to other cultures, because it is bounded to the Japanese culture and those who argues that J P S is transferable as long as it does consist of organizational innovations which can function in different cultural contexts. Although this is a ideal-type description of the debate, most of the participants have offered arguments and data supporting either a ?cultural position? or an ?organizational position?, as we termed here. We argue that a most promising approach to the transferability of the J P S is a synthetic approach that combines both perspectives. More over, we sustain that the organizational thesis is stronger than the cultural one. However, J P S can be transfered more successfully and in a shorter period of time, if there are certain similarities to the Japanese culture. We support our argument by presenting both secondary material and a case study of the Honda of Mexico autoplant. This paper is divided in two part s. Firstly, we draw on some authors to discuss several case studies about J P S transference to other developed countries. These cases? results are ambivalent , but they tend to support the ?organizational? thesis. Secondly, we present our fieldwork and data from a survey applied to workers of Honda of Mexico in 1997.The findings lend support to our synthetic hypothesis.