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A survey of the development of the automobile industry from its origins to the present in a perspective informed by current upheavals in markets, technology and work organization. The volume examines the international diffusion of the Fordist model, Fordism being the manufacture of standardized products using special-purpose machinery and unskilled labour. The book goes on to consider how far the recent changes in the industry mark a break with Fordism and draws on the implications for industrial relations and trade union strategy
During the 1980s there were profound changes in the labour process towards the 'flexible worker' and in the labour market towards a 'flexible workforce'. Three approaches to explain these changes provide the focus for this book: Marxist regulation theory; the notion of flexible specialisation associated with the 'new' institutional economics; and the model of the flexible firm derived from managerialist literature. In the book, the claims made by these approaches are investigated and their implications are examined in relation to emerging patterns of work in advanced societies.
Part analysis of contemporary change and part vision of the future, post-Fordism lends its name to a set of challenging, essential and controversial debates over the nature of capitalism's newest age. This book provides a superb introduction to these debates and their far-reaching implications, and includes key texts by post-Fordism's major theorists and commentators.
The paradigm of mass production has given way to radically new forms of organizing industrial production based primarily on the need to foster continuous redesign of products and processes in the face of intensified competition. This change, which is designed to engender continuous adaptive learning in production systems, requires considerable organizational flexibility. The mass production systems constructed in the early post-war period foundered in the face of new forms of competition which put a premium on learning and flexibility.
A new global history of Fordism from the Great Depression to the postwar era As the United States rose to ascendancy in the first decades of the twentieth century, observers abroad associated American economic power most directly with its burgeoning automobile industry. In the 1930s, in a bid to emulate and challenge America, engineers from across the world flocked to Detroit. Chief among them were Nazi and Soviet specialists who sought to study, copy, and sometimes steal the techniques of American automotive mass production, or Fordism. Forging Global Fordism traces how Germany and the Soviet Union embraced Fordism amid widespread economic crisis and ideological turmoil. This incisive book recovers the crucial role of activist states in global industrial transformations and reconceives the global thirties as an era of intense competitive development, providing a new genealogy of the postwar industrial order. Stefan Link uncovers the forgotten origins of Fordism in Midwestern populism, and shows how Henry Ford's antiliberal vision of society appealed to both the Soviet and Nazi regimes. He explores how they positioned themselves as America's antagonists in reaction to growing American hegemony and seismic shifts in the global economy during the interwar years, and shows how Detroit visitors like William Werner, Ferdinand Porsche, and Stepan Dybets helped spread versions of Fordism abroad and mobilize them in total war. Forging Global Fordism challenges the notion that global mass production was a product of post–World War II liberal internationalism, demonstrating how it first began in the global thirties, and how the spread of Fordism had a distinctly illiberal trajectory.
"A highly readable and approachable account of the sociology of work... a first-rate introductory text that is sure to become essential reading for students, teachers, and researchers." - Jason Hughes, Brunel University "An excellent text. Its comparative and historical sweep is particularly welcome and the analysis provided is thoughtful and well grounded." - John Eldridge, University of Glasgow "An invaluable and up-to-date text for students and researchers. Detailed and wide-ranging in its scope it is an excellent source of materials combined with a thought provoking and challenging set of arguments." - Huw Beynon, Cardiff University Stephen Edgell′s book charts the rise of ′work′ and explores all aspects of work including paid and unpaid, standard and non-standard and unemployment. New material has been incorporated covering the theories and practices of globalization, interactive service work, economic crisis, technological and organizational change, and trade unions. Drawing on classic and contemporary theorists, the book: Covers key issues regarding paid industrial and service sector work: alienation, skill, post-industrial society, network enterprises, flexibility, Fordism, neo-Fordism, post-Fordism, McDonaldization, emotional labour, destandardization and the social impact of unemployment. Discusses key issues regarding non-paid work: domestic work as ′work′, the impact of technology, symmetrical family thesis, the impact of feminism, and globalization. Provides student friendly pedagogy: suggestions for further reading, questions for discussion and assessment, an extensive glossary and links to key websites and downloadable articles. This latest edition will be welcomed by lecturers and students wanting an authoritative guide to the sociology of work.
It is a widespread view that democracy and the advanced nation-state are in crisis, weakened by globalization and undermined by global capitalism, in turn explaining rising inequality and mounting populism. This book, written by two of the world's leading political economists, argues this view is wrong: advanced democracies are resilient, and their enduring historical relationship with capitalism has been mutually beneficial. For all the chaos and upheaval over the past century--major wars, economic crises, massive social change, and technological revolutions--Torben Iversen and David Soskice show how democratic states continuously reinvent their economies through massive public investment in research and education, by imposing competitive product markets and cooperation in the workplace, and by securing macroeconomic discipline as the preconditions for innovation and the promotion of the advanced sectors of the economy. Critically, this investment has generated vast numbers of well-paying jobs for the middle classes and their children, focusing the aims of aspirational families, and in turn providing electoral support for parties. Gains at the top have also been shared with the middle (though not the bottom) through a large welfare state. Contrary to the prevailing wisdom on globalization, advanced capitalism is neither footloose nor unconstrained: it thrives under democracy precisely because it cannot subvert it. Populism, inequality, and poverty are indeed great scourges of our time, but these are failures of democracy and must be solved by democracy.
Examining the political economy of punishment, this book debates the view that the evolution of punitive systems should be connected to the transformations of capitalist economies. The author investigates the emergence of a new flexible labour force in co