Abstract
The case studies reported in the previous chapter reveal how the principles behind the emerging production paradigm are being implemented. However we have shown that while they are partially successful, social forces or socio-organisational constraints can restrict the coherence of the overarching principles. In this chapter we pursue this question further, to investigate the real structural depth of such changes (including their associated technologies), analysing some of the contradictions and constraints that seem to be integral to them.
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Notes and References
In R. Shook, Turnaround: the New Ford Motor Company (New York: Basic Books, 1990), p. 90.
P. Veltz, ‘Rationalisation, organisation et modèles d’organisation dans l’industrie’, in P. Cohendet et al., L’après-taylorisme (Paris: Economica, 1988), pp. 24–35. See also P. Veltz, ‘Destabilisation et résistance de taylorisme’ (op. cit.)
F. Mispelblom, Au-delà de la qualité: les ‘démarches qualité’ comme entreprise politique (Paris: Syros, 1995).
T. Ohno, L’esprit Toyota (Paris: Masson, 1989).
Michael Burawoy, Manufacturing Consent: Changes in the Labour Process under Monopoly Capitalism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979).
Richard Normann, Service Management: Strategy and Leadership in Service Business (Chichester: Wiley, 1984).
D. Linhart, Le torticolis de l’autruche (Paris: Seuil, 1991), 86–7.
Stephen Wood, ‘Le modèle japonais: postfordisme ou japonisation du fordisme?’, in J.-P. Durand (ed.), Vevs un nouveau modéle productif?, (Paris: Syros, 1993). Wood shows how the Japanese system is a systematisation of Fordism and that it perpetuates mass production: ‘Most products associated with Japan in world trade are classic mass products, like cameras, radios, televisions and cars. More than any other country Japan has created markets for mass products like video and cassette players and faxes. While just-in-time could be used to reduce the length of production runs through the acceleration of tool changes, it has not necessarily led to a reduction in lot size or a wider variety of products manufactured on the same production equipment’. See also
S. Wood, ‘Japanisation and/or Toyotaism?’, Work, Employment and Society, vol. 5 (1991), and
S. Wood, ‘The Japanisation of Fordism?’, Economic and Industrial Democracy, vol. 14 (1993).
See the chapter ‘Travail contre technologie’ in J.-P. Durand and F. X. Merrien, Sortie de siècle. La France en mutation (Paris: Vigot, 1991). This chapter shows how information technology helps management accumulate know-how, as recommended by F. W. Taylor, for whom the engineering department specialists were expected to learn from the workers.
See also Andrew Mair, Honda’s Global Local Corporation (London: Macmillan, 1994) for an analysis of Honda’s mass manufacturing process at its North American operations, and the particular form of work organisation, similar to those described above, that is consistent with it. Mair also uses the label ‘flexible mass production’ to describe Honda’s system.
M. Freyssenet and J.-C. Thénard, ‘Choix d’automatisation, efficacité productive et contenu du travail’, Cahiers du GIP, Mutations Industrielles, vol. 22 (Paris, 1989).
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© 1993 Robert Boyer and Jean-Pierre Durand
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Boyer, R., Durand, JP. (1993). The Ambivalence of Change and Resistance. In: After Fordism. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-14027-5_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-14027-5_9
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