The decline of the British tyre industry - Newcastle University

More documents

Recommendations

Info

senior union officials. The companies used the SWP as a medium to get the message across to the workforce that the industry’s problems stemmed from low productivity. The oligopolistic structure of the industry prevented the SWP from discussing the rationalisation and restructuring of the tyre sector. There were no discussions on matters relating to any individual company (rules under which the SWPs operated), especially jobs and future plans. If the government wanted to discuss these matters, it would do so directly with the company concerned or else through the BRMA. The NEDO could do little to extend the role of the SWP because company participation was voluntary. The companies could have withdrawn from the SWP without damaging their relations with the government. Further, the companies dealt directly with their sponsoring division in the Department of Industry on matters such as financial assistance for new investment. The Department of Industry did not use its participation in the SWP to encourage the development of a sector strategy. The presence of its representative was to gather information for informing government policy-making, including the trade unions’ perspective, with which the department had no direct contact. Conclusions The Labour Government’s industrial policy was ‘voluntary and responsive, rather than dirigiste’. 103 Stout argued that the SWPs could pursue industry-wide objectives because the management and trade unions had a common interest in developing policies to enable the British producers to compete with the foreign competition. 104 The tyre companies were, however, multinationals and competed against one another in domestic and overseas markets. The White Paper on the Industrial Strategy made no reference to the internationalisation of production. 105 The integrated production strategies of the tyre companies made it ‘impractical to conceive of sectoral planning on the national level’. 106 There were limits to which managers were willing to develop common sector policy solutions with their competitors. 107 The managers were
prepared to discuss common problems in SWP meetings, such as competing overseas, but they were ‘not prepared to blur competition at home for the sake of any industrial strategy’. 108 The weakness of the SWPs was summed up by the Director-General of NEDO: ‘SWPs have inherent limitations in what they can do. They are not executive bodies; they operate at sectoral, not company level; management members are often, if not always, in competition with each other in the market place’. 109 The main limitation of the SWPs was the ‘lack of any effective instruments for implementation’. 110 The SWPs conducted analysis and proposed policy in terms of the industry as a whole whilst decisions on investment were taken by individual companies. Imberg and Northcott found no evidence that the SWPs influenced investment decision-making at the level of the firm. 111 The case study of the Tyre Industry SWP supports this finding. The SWP did not initiate any major policy initiatives that had a direct impact on the operations of the tyre companies. 112 The case study also supports Imberg and Northcott’s conclusion that there was no mechanism for translating the aggregate industry targets for production, exports and imports into individual company objectives. 113 Tyre imports continued to increase despite the growth in productivity because the SWP could not influence the production and sourcing policies of the multinationals or the independent distributors. The evidence from the tyre industry does not support Driver’s contention that the SWP system was a surrogate for selective protection measures. 114 The NEDO did not see the role of the SWPs to be involved in policy implementation. Their task was to communicate ‘the results of their work and their recommendations to those who can implement them’. 115 The Tyre Industry SWP relied upon the cooperation of the management and unions in individual firms to improve productivity and efficiency. This was the level where the Industrial Strategy was at its weakest. 116 The case study explains why the SWPs were not ‘powerful enough’ 117 to reverse Britain’s industrial decline, and why their achievements were ‘meagre’. 118 It confirms the difficulty of trying to reform the existing
Page 1 and 2: Discussion Papers in Management and
Page 3 and 4: According to McKay and Grant the im
Page 5 and 6: institutional constraints that impa
Page 7 and 8: weight of throughput per man hour)
Page 9 and 10: The SWP proposed a two-pronged atta
Page 11 and 12: productivity (productivity index) f
Page 13 and 14: None of the voluntary targets were
Page 15 and 16: Professor Bain found that Dunlop ha
Page 17: structure, but it soon became morib
Page 21 and 22: Bhaskar, Krish. The Future of the U
Page 23 and 24: 1983. NEDO. Industrial Strategy. Re
Page 25 and 26: 10 Grant, “Government,” 101. 11
Page 27 and 28: 61 Ibid, 7. 62 Ibid, 8. 63 NEDO, Th
Page 29 and 30: 119 Wilks, Industrial Policy, 268.

The decline of the British tyre industry - Newcastle University

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?