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>Rethinking the linkages between internationalization, competitiveness and shopfloor transformation: A plant-focused comparative case study of an emerging Turkish multinational in the TV manufacturing industry.
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Rethinking the linkages between internationalization, competitiveness and shopfloor transformation: A plant-focused comparative case study of an emerging Turkish multinational in the TV manufacturing industry.
This dissertation focuses on the dynamics and implications of the ongoing internationalization of production and markets, and the accompanying changes in shopfloor practices centering on workers' experiences. Empirically, it draws on a case study of an award-winning "lean" Turkish TV manufacturing plant indigenously owned by the largest business group in Turkey, a successful emerging multinational company and a pioneer in innovative production practices.;The study foremost shows the modest role and temporary significance of participatory productive workplace restructuring both in dynamic company competitiveness and overall work experience of majority of workers. It also shows that the emerging picture of the evolving trajectory of both the company and the shopfloor organization does not correspond to that of a rational organization but is rather characterized by various and ongoing conflicts and inconsistencies. To account for this complex picture and the variation in the form of shopfloor regimes and over time, the analysis highlights primarily the intricate ways the plant is implicated in wider corporate strategies and a dynamic sectoral competitive matrix. It also emphasizes organizational politics and conflicts as an inevitable social reality of organizational life and natural mechanisms of social interaction that emerge in the enactment processes of wider strategies by various actors, which also inform those strategies in return.;The proposed alternative approach is centered on the premise that both workplaces and workers' experiences are implicated primarily in a dynamic sectoral competitive matrix, which is conceptualized drawing on the notion of 'field' as a socioeconomic space of strategic interaction. As such, it is constituted by the interplay of processes and actors' strategies at various levels and domains of the political economy.;Bringing both actors and multiple levels and domains of the political economy into the center of the analysis; focusing on practices and processes; and emphasizing the modest role and temporary competitive priority of new production practices in company competitiveness, this study, primarily takes issue with the dualistic nature of the mainstream literature on globalization and work reorganization and argues for a shift away from the sterile oppositions and discourse of "convergence vs. divergence" and "participation/empowerment vs. marginalization/subordination" debates.
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