Abstract
This chapter aims to provide deeper insight into how a modern and sophisticated management of employees plays an important and—in our view—key role for the successful reindustrialization of the Western world. There are important lessons to learn from high-cost countries that successfully compete in the global marketplace. In such contexts, the re-combination of tacit knowledge, people, competences and culture to create effective and efficient automated production is indeed essential.
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Notes
- 1.
OEM stands for Original Equipment Manufacturer such as Ford and General Motors.
- 2.
Lean will be discussed in later chapters. It started as a way of explaining how the Japanese companies, especially Toyota, achieve high effectiveness and efficiency in their factories without compromising quality (Womack, Jones, & Roos, 1990).
- 3.
Two of the researchers are authors of this book.
- 4.
Where C6 and C3 are located.
- 5.
As C3 has been listed on the Norwegian Stock Exchange and some information systems were closed to us, for example, the financial system.
- 6.
The term observation of actions is used when the research team sat in on meetings and discussions, but did not actively participate. An observation made on one member of the research group was shared with the others by discussions and reflection notes.
- 7.
This is a common problem as people say it is very difficult to set aside time for reflections. It is another dimension of facilitative management but it is not the focus of this book.
- 8.
On-site means working located at the customer’s offices.
- 9.
A much-used program for conducting social research; http://www.qsrinternational.com/products_nvivo.aspx
- 10.
EDWOR program was the PhD-school at NTNU that one of the researchers attended. EDWOR stands for Enterprise Development and Work-Life Research.
- 11.
Ennals’ chapter describes how this EDWOR-progra m was conducted the first time around. It was very similar when the researcher participated in the EDWOR II program (2007).
- 12.
This was in the research proposal written in the spring of 2007. Later, similar points were made by Isaksen and Kalsaas (2009).
- 13.
Gjøvik University College is now a part of Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU—www.ntnu.no).
- 14.
The financial crisis was before the EURO crisis.
- 15.
All the major companies at Raufoss Industrial Park participated in our investigation. See the context chapter for details.
- 16.
Ford owned the North European car manufacturer at this point.
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Holtskog, H., Carayannis, E.G., Kaloudis, A., Ringen, G. (2018). Introductory Chapter. In: Learning Factories. Palgrave Studies in Democracy, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship for Growth. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-41887-2_1
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