Skills, human resource management and the Toyota production system (TPS): the case of Toyota Motor Thailand (TMT)

摘要

This study investigates the implementation of the Toyota Production System (TPS) at Toyota Motor Thailand (TMT). Rather than being uniquely ‘best practice’, the TPS is shaped by its institutional surrounds, and by the interplay among System, Societal, and Dominance effects. Human resource management (HRM) also facilitates the implementation of the TPS through skill formation and labour control. This research employs a qualitative case-study approach based on data collected mainly from interviews of TMT personnel and government officials as well as various corporate and official documents. The thesis argues that the relatively ‘lean’ version of the TPS at TMT results in part from system and societal effects in the Thai society, namely supportive state industrial policy, and deficient labour protection deriving from an underdeveloped industrial relations system. Industrial and labour policies attract massive investment from Toyota and accordingly encourage the transfer of their best practices: the TPS. The ‘weak’ industrial relations system does not hinder the implementation of ‘lean’ versions of the TPS, because ineffective unions lack the power to resist work reorganisation. The underdeveloped Thai skill formation system might impede the TPS implementation – since, according to much literature, the TPS requires workers to have highly developed skills. However, the inadequate skills of the Thai workforce do not impede the implementation of the TPS, owing to HRM at the firm level that fills workers’ skills gaps. Moreover, lack of clarity in the conceptualisation of ‘skill’ in HRM practice plays a key role in labour control at TMT. The concept of ‘skill’ has come to include broader ‘attributes’ of personality, particularly the ‘right’ attitudes, and this facilitates management control of labour, since workers with the ‘wrong’ attitude can be defined as unskilled and performance managed accordingly. Toyota specifically includes what could be called ‘competencies of compliance’, in what it calls the ‘Toyota Way’. Its performance management system defines such characteristics as competencies necessary for advancement in the firm. This thesis thus reveals how the practices of skill definition, skill development, remuneration, and performance management are integrated together – albeit not completely – in a ‘bundle’ of HRM concepts, which enhances skill development and labour control at TMT.