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Notes
Initiated in 1983, the labor process conference had modest beginnings, with only 16 papers presented in the inaugural year. By the end of the 1980s there were 70 papers presented to the conference in 1989.
This book series was originally published by Gower (1985–1988) and subsequently by Macmillan (1988–1991) and then by Routledge (1992–1997) and finally by Macmillan/ Palgrave from 1998-.
To make this point it is interesting to compare some of the volumes of the papers produced from the LPC for the early 1990s. Editorial chapters with substantially the same editorial team take very different theoretical emphases. The editorial introduction to a volume of 1991 (reprinted in 1996 in slightly modified form) edited by Smith et al. (1991), considers the “non-manual labor process”. This volume includes several chapters concerned with the work of professionals and managers, but the editorial introduction, and still more the first introductory chapter by Smith and Willmott includes extended consideration of Marxian and neo-Marxian concepts. References to other authorities than these are absent. Consideration of the relevance of the approach of Weber is at best delayed and grudging (Smith et al. 1991: 18–19). By contrast with this, a volume of 1992, edited by Sturdy, Knights and Willmott this time, which was collection of papers which contains several considering the attitudes and behavior of traditional working class groups, makes little use of Marxian concepts and ideas. There is only one ritualistic reference Marx (to Capital, Vol. I). Other than this, there is there is no mention of Marx or of Braverman at all. Orthodox research concerning the industrial labor process, such as that of Burawoy, is considered only to the extent that it is seen to point to the relevance of the work of more recent theorists such as Foucault, Habermas and Giddens (Sturdy et al. 1992: 10).
According to this account, when employees, lacking ownership of the means of production, sell their labor-power (and their obedience to direction) to an employer (a) the goods and services generated in the labor process may be sold realizing a surplus over costs and (b) successive surpluses so are a source of the engrossment of privately held capital. These sequences of labor process and valorization process, define the productive circuit by which capital is accumulated. The disciplinary implications of these processes, as modified or intensified by a number of other influences, create a control imperative associated with the labor process. This renders the workplace quite often a site of contention and of recurrent change, as better arrangements are sought for production, and the skills and abilities of the employees and their conditions of work are altered in pursuit of superior performance. This control imperative provides an explanation for much of the form of relationships and organizational behavior found in the workplace.
The methods used typically involve a mixture of case studies employing ethnographic methods and descriptive statistics. It is thus another factor that postponed a final breach that different factions were not that far apart in terms of their preferred methodologies: none had any tolerance for positivism and both had a mistrust of inductive statistics. For the consideration of the methodological requirements of realism, see Ackroyd 2008c.
Philosophers (Bhaskar 1975, 1986; Harre 1972, 1986) and social scientists in other fields (Sayer 1992, 2000; Archer et al.1998) have developed philosophical realism over roughly the same period. These ideas have recently been applied to organization and management studies (Ackroyd and Fleetwood 2000; Fleetwood and Ackroyd 2004).
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Ackroyd, S. Labor Process Theory as ‘Normal Science’. Employ Respons Rights J 21, 263–272 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10672-009-9119-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10672-009-9119-1