IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/recgxx/v79y2003i3p321-339.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Lean Production Systems, Labor Unions, and Greenfield Locations of the Korean New Auto Assembly Plants and Their Suppliers

Author

Listed:
  • Yong-Sook Lee

Abstract

This article investigates why Korean auto assembly firms introduced “lean production systems” and chose greenfield locations as their new flexible production sites in the 1990s. I show that labor unions are important actors that directly affect firms’ adoption and location strategies for lean production systems, by means of an analysis of Korean auto firms’ managerial and locational strategies in response to adversarial labor relations. Korean firms’ choice of greenfield locations for implementing lean production systems indicates that their desire to procure a malleable labor force is more important than proximity. Korean auto firms’ decisions to implement Japanese-style lean production systems and their choice of greenfield locations reflect conflicts between workers and managers. The findings in this article critique the existing literature in economic geography, which is devoid of discussions of workers and labor unions as active geographic agents, from the labor geography point of view.

Suggested Citation

  • Yong-Sook Lee, 2003. "Lean Production Systems, Labor Unions, and Greenfield Locations of the Korean New Auto Assembly Plants and Their Suppliers," Economic Geography, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 79(3), pages 321-339, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:recgxx:v:79:y:2003:i:3:p:321-339
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1944-8287.2003.tb00214.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/j.1944-8287.2003.tb00214.x
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/j.1944-8287.2003.tb00214.x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ekin Alakent & Seung‐Hyun Lee, 2010. "Do Institutionalized Traditions Matter During Crisis? Employee Downsizing in Korean Manufacturing Organizations," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 47(3), pages 509-532, May.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:recgxx:v:79:y:2003:i:3:p:321-339. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/recg .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.