Bookbag: British Factory, Japanese Factory by Ronald Dore

A Richard Sennett favorite, as the footnotes to Authority reveal.

The importance attached to educational qualifications in recruitment has for a long time been greater at Japanese factories than at English ones. However, English Electric is becoming more like Hitachi in this respect. The change in Britain is due not only to the greater complexity of engineering and managerial technology, but also and more importantly, because there is now thought to be, thanks to the rising level of living and of parents educational aspirations for their children, a much tighter correlation between level of schooling and innate potential; the level of terminal education is seen as a much more certain indicator of ability than it was before the war when many bright working class children had no chance of a grammar school education.

No more searching for diamonds in the working-class rough? Boo, hiss.