Publisher's Synopsis
Britain once held undisputed pre-eminence in the shipbuilding industry, producing 60% of world output at the turn of the century. By the late 1960s, Britain accounted for 5% of the world market.;British economic decline has often been attributed to the poor quality or the conservativeness of British management and the recalcitrance of workers or unions. The central claim of this book is that these two responses are not culturally specific behaviour, but rather rational responses to two conditions: if existing institutions are contributing to declining competitive performance, then why, the author asks, are the rules not changed? He addresses this question in the context of an explanation for the decline of the British shipbuilding industry, illuminating the complex ways in which the labour process in modern industry is conditioned by a number of outside economic, political and historical factors.
