Rlchard Pettlnger

Building the stress-free environment

At an early stage of the company ’s development, Morita and Ibuka hired Shigeru Kobayashi as a factory and plant manager. In 1971, Kobayashi became managing director.

Originally brought in to sort out a succession of labor disputes at the company’s main production plant at Atsugi, he transformed the whole attitude as follows.

‘‘It was towards the end of 1961, immediately following my takeover at the Atsugi plant, that the following incident occurred. In a meeting of plant management the manager of labor relations reminded us that there had been considerable dishonesty in the handling of time cards. Such cheating could not be tolerated. Watchmen would have to be placed at the time clocks to control the situation.’’

‘‘I had already given some thought to this time clock problem and hearing this proposal was enough to make up my mind once and for all. ‘Let’s abolish the time clocks, ’ I said. ‘All they have done is to bring about the war of offense and defense that ’s now going on between management and labor. ’’