ABSTRACT

The aim of this final chapter is to pull together some to the threads of what we have learned about Japanese and British engineers through comparative study, highlighting both the diversity of approaches to comparisons of Japanese engineers with those in other industrial countries and the evidence of considerable diversity among engineers in both countries. Two important benefits from the accumulated attempts by social scientists to undertake serious and systematic comparative research on engineers in Japan and other industrial societies have been: first, a greater appreciation that the way in which engineers are educated, trained and employed in one society can provide a critical mirror in which to view social arrangements in another society; and second, that a realisation that one should treat populist accounts of engineers and their societies with a good deal of scepticism. Often, we have seen attractive images of Japanese engineers and engineering conjured out of secondary sources rather than from direct research or matched samples of engineers. All too often, these images have turned out to be little more than wishful thinking, projecting on to Japanese engineers and engineering those characteristics, achievements and rewards which reformers believe are necessary to bring about a British economic renaissance in manufacturing industry. It was a curious kind of thinking backwards from effects to supposed causes which ran along the following lines: here are the kinds of engineers, their rewards and social standing necessary to bring about manufacturing success in Britain; Japan is successful in manufacturing; therefore, Japanese engineers must have these characteristics and social rewards. The proposed reforms for the education, training and employment of engineers might well have been plausible and effective on their own terms in a British context. But they could not be legitimated by reference

to Japan. Moreover, this process was likely to obscure who engineers are and how they work in Japan. If there are attractive strengths in Japanese engineers and engineering, they are more likely to be found by more direct observation and by close comparison of engineers, and by setting education, training and employment of engineers in their wider national context.