SOSC 300 K
Lecture Note 4
Technology in Economic Life
Technology in Economic Life
• How technological advance shaped and
reshaped the labor process in the
twentieth century
• Taylorism (scientific management)
• Fordism (the demand-side economic
agenda)
• Post-Fordism and the supply-side
economic agenda
Taylorism
• Frederic Winslow Taylor (1856-1915)
• “The shop, and indeed the whole
works, should be managed, not by the
manager, superintendent and
foreman, but by the planning
department”
• "The principal object of management
should be to secure maximum
prosperity for the employer, coupled
with maximum prosperity for the
employee," The Principles of Scientific
Management, Frederick W. Taylor
(1911)
Taylorism (background)
• The late 19th Century-early 20th Century U. S.
• Integration of mass production and mass distribution (the integration of
U. S. railroad network
• The rise of hierarchical business and management level (Alfred D.
Chandler, 1977, The Visible Hand)
– Scale of business in early 19th century New York: “In the
commercial capitalism of the 1840s, owners managed and
mangers owned their enterprises” (Chandler, 1977: 37)
– During 1880s and 1890s, the multiunit industrial corporation was
new. But after 1900 the modern multiunit industrial enterprise
became a standard instrument for managing the production and
distribution of goods in America. The Larger manufacturing firms
grew large through either merger or internal expansion.
– E. g. The United States Rubber Company in 1917
• De-skilled labor force: the replacement of craft trade by machinist
production process (new immigrants flew to the US—no bargaining
power; mechanized production process; unionized skilled labor was
threatened to be replaced by unskilled and unorganized labor)
Organization Chart of United States Rubber Company, 1917 (cited from
Chandler 1977: 440-440)
Taylorism and “Scientific
management”
• Scientific Management: an attempt to apply the methods of science
to the increasingly complex problems of the control of labor in
rapidly growing enterprises.
• Ideas on management before Taylorism: the gathering together of
the workers in a workshop and the dictation of the length of the
working day; the supervision of workers to ensure diligent, intense,
or uninterrupted application; the enforcement of rules against
distractions (talking, smoking, leaving the workplace, etc.); the
setting of production minimums; etc.
• Taylor’s ideas on management control: Workers who are controlled
only by general orders and discipline are not adequately controlled,
because they retain their grip on the actual processes of labor.
Taylor asserts an absolute necessity for adequate management the
dictation to the worker of the precise manner in which work is to be
performed. In other words, it refers to the control over work through
the control over the decisions that are made in the course of work.
Taylorism (principles)
• “A fair day’s work”: the maximum work that a worker can
accomplish in a day without injury to his health, at a pace
that can be sustained throughout a working lifetime.
• First principle: the dissociation of the labor process from
the skills of the workers.
• Second principle: the separation conception from
execution
• Third principle: the use of the monopoly over knowledge
to control each step of the labor process and its mode of
execution
• --specialization of work
Fordism (background)
• Henry Ford (1863-1947)
• The Model-T: began
manufacturing in 1908. Ford
combined precision
manufacturing, standardized
and interchangeable parts, a
continuing moving assembly
line.
Fordism (the Line production
system)
• What did it take? Improved conveyors, rollways,
and gravity slides to asure a continuing regular
flow of materials in the plant.
• How did it work? place machines and their
operators in a carefully planned sequence of
operations. Workers remained in place, adding
one component to each automobile as it moved
past them on the line. The components were
delivered to the workers by conveyor belt.
• Was it effective? Within ten years, half of US
cars were Model-Ts.
Fordism (definition)
• Definition: Fordism designates a specific 20th century
corporate regime of mechanized production coupled with
the mass consumption of standardized products. On the
production side, this approach to mechanized production
brought with it the deskilling of work along with the
bureaucratic control of labor process.
• M. Burawoy coins the terms “hegemonic control” and
“industrial citizenship” to interpret the U. S. labor process
under Fordism
• “Hegemonic Control”: control based on the agreement
and negotiations between managers and labor (no direct
state intervention into industrial relationship)
• “Industrial Citizenship”: Formal grievance system (both
factory-level labor union and federations of labor union—i.
e., the AFL-CIO [The American Federation of Labor and
Congress of Industrial Organizations], UAW [United Auto
Workers])
Fordism (definition)
• Mass production and mass consumption
• Under the circumstances that labor had to work
under the overall control of labor process and to
meet the high production requirement of mass
production, mass consumption market, labor
received higher incomes in return.
• The symbolic Ford’s “$ 5 a day” to workers: use
high salary to permit the mass owners of cars.
Workers were regarded as potential customers
of the products that produced.
Fordism (impacts on labor)
• Workers eventually found the homogenization of work in
the pursuit of standardization a disheartening and unfair
way of life. Somewhat ironically, it was the very
homogenization of labor itself that eventually seeded the
success of labor organizers.
• Workplace reform: From the 1970s, alienation in labor
process was attributed to the surging strikes in the U. S.
automobile industry.
• QWL (Quality of Working Life) programs: introduce
worker participation programs (such as join committees,
task forces, problem-solving groups, and other forms of
employee involvement. These new management
strategies departure from Talyorism.
Fordism (impact on labor)
• Unionized labor power and welfare benefits made the
practice of Fordism an expensive agenda
• In 1933, Henry Ford successfully resisted first effort to
unionize workers at Ford plant. But later, the UAW
nonetheless succeeded in its efforts to gain recognition
as the bargaining agent for autoworkers. The Court
orders Ford not to interfere with union activity.
• A key to the UAW’s success was labor’s workplace
bargaining power: the ability of the workers to exploit
their position within the complex division of labor
characteristics of mass production. Workers
demonstrated the limits of the assembly lines’ technical
control of the workplace: a relative small number of
activists could bring an entire plant’s production to a halt
(Silver 2002: 47).
Post-Fordism (background)
• Fordism in crisis: union labor increased labor costs, and
in conjunction with the breakdown of an aging industrial
infrastructure and competition from the Japanese auto
industry, a new era has emerged known variously as
flexible accumulation, Postfordism, globalization,
deindustrialization, etc.
• U. S. and Western European Automobile Company
abandoned the Fordist style from the 1980s
• Application of microtechnology in workplace: cheaper
and faster personal computers allowed managers to
monitor workers’ performance, increase productivity, and
cut payroll costs.
• The Japanese “lean production” In the 1980s and 1990s,
lean production methods spread globally as Fordist-style
producers around the world sought to imitate Japanese
producers selectively and as Japanese automobile
companies themselves became major transnational
corporations.
Post-Fordism (vs. the Japanese
model)
• Selectively emulate Japanese organizational
practices: flexible work rules, just-in-time
delivery systems, teamwork, quality circles, and
a move-away from vertical integration toward the
extensive use of subcontracted inputs
(outsourcing)
• Post-Fordist reorganization of production vs. the
Japanese model: The reorganization adopted
the cost-cutting measures of lean production, but
it did not adopt the employment security
provisions. Workers therefore did not have the
motivation to cooperate with employers.
Post-Fordism (vs. the Japanese
model)
• Why didn’t Japan’s automobile industry not take the
Fordist-style of production? Because Japan experienced
a mass upsurge of labor militancy at the end of the W.
W. II. (prior to the take-off of the Japanese automobile
industry), the automobile producers chose to depart in
significant ways from the Fordist style of mass
production. Japan automobile producers established a
multilayered subcontracting system that simultaneously
allowed them to guarantee employment to a core labor
force, while obtaining low-cost inputs and flexibility from
the lower rungs of the supply network. This combination
allowed Japan to escape the kind of labor unrest
experienced by all the other major producers. It also
allowed Japanese corporations to introduce a series of
cost-cutting measures in the 1970s (the lean-production)
and, hence, to triumph in the global competition of the
1980s(Based on Beverley Silver 2003, Ch. 2) .
Post-Fordism (impacts on labor)
• Impacts on labor process:
• Relocation and emphasis on just-in-time production: Laidoff (or “stepping-down”), high-turnover strategy of mass
production, anti-union policy
• See also the report from the Economist.
• The Saturn Model: A “beyond lean production” strategy?
(Rinehart 2001: 190-191): the extensive web of
collaboration between the company and the union. The
company operates with join union-management decisionmaking bodies at various organizational levels, and the
union is involved in decisions concerning supplier and
dealer selection, choice of technology, and product
development. Union representatives handled managerial
responsibilities (which were used to be done by foremen
and general foremen). Half middle managers are union
members.
Questions on Technology and
Labor Process
• According to Harry Braverman, who was
benefited from technological advance in labor
process in the turn of the 20th. century? Do you
agree with his argument?
• Who should be benefited from technological
advance?
• Are interests between capitalists and labor
contradictory with each other? Or, what would be
a better strategy to achieve a harmonious labormanagement relations?