Raphael Kaplinsky, and Anne Posthuma
Published by Frank Cass and the UNU Press, 1995
ISBN 0-7146-4611-3 (cloth) / 0-7146-4135-9 (paperback), 321 pages

Abstract
The study examines the experience of firms implementing the techniques in developing countries as diverse as Brazil, the Dominican Republic, India, Mexico, and Zimbabwe, and finds that the high levels of education and training found in the Japanese workforce are not prerequisites for the success of these techniques. Even in these low-income countries, with relatively poor human resource development, the new management techniques have improved the performance of both implementing firms and the overall economy.
Although the authors note that success is not automatic, and that some firms have failed in their attempts to introduce the new techniques, they argue for actively promoting the rapid diffusion of the techniques, and identify specific policy implications for management, government, and labour. The authors note that prevailing social relations are an important factor in the successful adoption of the techniques, and suggest that new kinds of social relations, built on the specific cultural and political experience of individual firms and countries, need to be identified.

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