ABSTRACT
Japan as Model: The Postmodern Problematique In the early 1970s, Dore1 pointed to the possibility of a reverse convergence in industrial relations by suggesting that Japan had gone beyond the industrial relations of class conflict and work segmentation commonly associated with industrialisation in the West (especially the United Kingdom). While he did not refer to Japan as being 'postmodern' or 'postindustrial', he clearly implied that Japan's industrial relations were qualitatively more advanced than those in the West. He labelled the Japanese approach 'corporate welfarism'. Since then numerous observers have written about the just-in-time system, noting that it too is qualitatively more advanced than the just-in-case systems developed in the West in terms of enforcing new levels of quality control and efficiency on the economy.2
