The authors chart the experience of start-up factories in adopting high performance management practices and provide insights into how US manufacturing can improve labor productivity and job quality in the coming years. Based on an extensive study of 48 new branch plants-that began operating between 1978 and 1990, this book explains how best practice manufacturing companies are raising productivity and lowering unit costs by introducing innovative high performance management practices. Start-Up Factories answers six key questions related to high performance management practices in the American workplace and provides criteria for evaluating certain strategies. In doing so, it demonstrates to economists labor management professionals, and policy makers that there is a set of principles about how to rebuild management systems in ways that simultaneously provide higher rates of growth in business productivity and a greater sharing of these productivity gains with workers.

Peter B. Doeringer is a professor in the Department of Economics at Boston University. Christine Evans-Klock is from the International Labour Organization based in Geneva Switzerland. David G. Terkla is from the Department of Economics at the University of Massachusetts at Boston.