The decline of the British tyre industry - Newcastle University

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companies in their sectors to become more efficient and thus increase their share of domestic and world markets. 20 This differed from previous indicative planning insofar that the government and the NEDC were proposing ‘to build up from the bottom on the basis of what was possible and not impose targets from above’. 21 Politically, these new bodies performed an additional function of helping the government to steer a course between Tony Benn 22 and his supporters who backed planning agreements and the CBI which opposed them. The setting up of the SWPs was ‘a means of appearing to institute planning agreements without doing much about them or risking breaking up the machinery of NEDC tripartism’. 23 One critic described the Industrial Strategy as ‘not so much a strategy, more an empty slogan’. 24 The strategy emphasised ‘picking winners’, 25 although in reality it was more indiscriminate. 26 The Director General of the NEDO described the SWPs as the ‘basic mechanism’ 27 underpinning the Industrial Strategy. Some 39 SWPs operating by consensus and tailored to specific industries were created encompassing 40 per cent of manufacturing output. 28 Some were new while others, including the Rubber Processing SWP (renamed the Tyre Industry SWP in 1980), 29 were formed from existing EDCs. The emphasis was on developing policy oriented strategic plans rather than detailed numerical plans, which mirrored the approach adopted by companies. 30 Inevitably, SWPs were established in sectors which had a powerful trade association, or where there were strong links with the sponsoring department in the Department of Industry. 31 The effectiveness of the SWP system as an instrument of industrial regeneration ‘has received surprisingly little critical attention’. 32 The SWPs could have played a vital role in the creation of an effective micro strategy by addressing problems confronting their respective industries. The limited empirical research identified the critical lack of any mechanism for securing the implementation of SWP policies at the level of the firm. 33 This article will evaluate the policy response of the Rubber Processing/Tyre Industry SWP to overcapacity and the declining competitiveness of the British tyre industry. It will explore the development of ‘efficiency dialogues’ and the difficulties of implementing this policy. The paper will examine the
institutional constraints that impacted on the policies of the Rubber Processing/Tyre Industry SWP to explain why its work became narrowly focused on communication and employee involvement. The objectives of the Rubber Processing SWP The Rubber Processing SWP contained representatives from the tyre companies with operations in Britain: Avon, Dunlop, Firestone, Goodyear, Michelin, Pirelli and Uniroyal. The management representatives were usually a chairman or managing director or, at the very least, a director or senior divisional executive. The trade unions were led by John Miller, the National Secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union. All of the union representatives, with one exception, were area, regional or national officers. 34 The other members were from the British Rubber Manufacturers Association (BRMA), the Rubber and Plastics Processing Industry Training Board (RPPITB), the Department of Industry and the NEDO. The chairman was John Cousins, Personnel Director at Plessey and an ex full-time official of the Transport and General Workers’ Union. 35 The rubber industry products are components for other manufacturers’ end products, in particular the motor industry. The tyre sector comprises two distinct market segments: original equipment and replacement sales. The former accounts for 25 per cent of the British producers total sales, and is characterised by direct, large volume transactions with the vehicle assemblers. The latter is about 2.5 times larger in volume and involves sales to vehicle owners to replace worn-out tyres. 36 inelastic and is determined by the number of vehicles produced. The demand for original equipment tyres is price In 1972 new car registrations in Britain reached a peak of 1.7 million and production similarly peaked at 1.9 million cars. The oil crisis in 1973-1974 caused demand and production to fall in unison, but as demand picked up production continued to decline, so that by 1977 new registrations had outstripped production. In
Page 1 and 2: Discussion Papers in Management and
Page 3: According to McKay and Grant the im
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 and 18: structure, but it soon became morib
Page 19 and 20: prepared to discuss common problems
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.

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