International transference of lean production systems: managerial lessons from Toyota transplants in the USA, Australia, and India

The purpose of this thesis is to analyse how Toyota went about the process of transplanting its lean production system into three heavily unionized environments in the USA, Australia, and India, namely NUMMI (New United Motor Manufacturing Inc), TMCA (Toyota Motor Corporation of Australia), and TKM (Toyota Kirloskar Motors). Two research questions are embedded within this broad purpose, namely, what resistance did Toyota meet when attempting to transplant its production system into each of these three countries, and what strategies did it employ to manage this resistance? Toyota generally tries to avoid extremely pluralistic-unionised environments when choosing transplantation sites across the world. Its organisational culture is strongly aligned with a unitarist approach in which its operations are conducted within a family-like atmosphere. Therefore, how Toyota conducts its operations in circumstances dissimilar to this is of considerable interest. In this respect, the research conducted in this thesis provides an additional and unique aspect to the literature. The thesis takes a qualitative, emergent approach to addressing this research purpose and research questions, employing the methodology of conceptual ordering within a framework of a comparative case study analysis. The thesis identifies three distinct models of the transplantation process pursued by each of the Toyota transplants: hybrid (NUMMI), slow and piecemeal (TMCA), and authoritarian (TKM). Within the context of these three processes the thesis identifies five comparison features which characterise the transplantation pathways of the Toyota transplants – industrial peace, the extent and pace of TPS introduction, teamworking. cultural consonance, and organisational learning. By identifying these five comparison features the thesis then analyses why each of the transplants has attained different levels of success in achieving each of these features (for instance, industrial peace) within the context of their respective transplantation processes. The thesis has implications for understanding the forms of resistance, and the strategies to be adopted in managing such resistance, when organisations employing lean manufacturing techniques (such as Toyota) attempt to transplant these techniques across national borders into heavily pluralistic and unionised environments.