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FORDISM

Sociologyindex, Sociology Books 2012

Fordism refers to the system of mass production (assembly line) pioneered by Henry Ford to meet the needs of a mass market.

Ford versus `Fordism': The Beginning of Mass Production?, Karel Williams, University of Wales, John Williams, University of Wales, Aberystwyth, Colin Haslam, East London Polytechnic 
Work, Employment & Society, Vol. 6, No. 4, 517-555 (1992) © 1992 BSA Publications Ltd.
This article questions the stereotypes of Fordism and mass production. It does so by demonstrating that there is a contradiction between the stereotypes and the reality of Henry Ford's manufacturing practice in production of the Model T at the Highland Park factory between 1909 and 1919. Highland Park was not an inflexible factory which combined dedicated equipment, Taylorised semi-skilled workers and a standardised product. More positively, the article quantifies Ford's heroic achievement in taking two-thirds of the labour hours out of the product at the same time as he built more of each car. Ford used productive intervention to realise manufacturing flow through proto-Japanese manufacturing techniques which involved a commitment to continuous improvement. - wes.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/6/4/517

Everybody’s Life is Like a Spiral: Narrating Post-Fordism in the Lifestyle Movement of the 1970s Sam Binkley, Emerson College, Cultural Studies, Critical Methodologies, Vol.4, No.1, 71-96 (2004) © 2004 SAGE Publications
What has been variously termed the post-Fordist turn in the social and economic organization of Western societies describes (among other things) the demise of a middle class professional culture and the emergence of a new lifestyle morality of expressive self realization. This study examines the role played by selection of lifestyle innovators in this process: through an interpretive study of narratives of moral change, the shift from the old professional morality to the new lifestyle morality is interpreted as a story of learned relaxation and impulsive release. Drawing material from over 83 lifestyle publications and 34 open-ended biographical interviews, the importance of this vanguard lifestyle movement is related to a wider historical consideration of the moral culture of the American middle class, and to an overview of theories of the post-Fordist turn. - csc.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/4/1/71

Post-Fordism and Workplace Change: Towards a Critical Research Agenda 
Ian Hampson, School of Industrial Relations and Organisational Behaviour, at the University of New South Wales, Peter Ewer, Meg Smith, Labour Market Altematives 
Journal of Industrial Relations, Vol. 36, No. 2, 231-257 (1994) © 1994 IRSA
Despite the well-developed academic critique, in particular that directed against the work of John Mathews, post-Fordism is still an influential account of workplace change. This is interesting and serious. Interesting, because it raises the question of how a discredited doctrine remains influential in the teeth of intense academic criticism. Serious, because post-Fordism propagates an image of workplace change that could confuse the deliberations of those vitally affected by the latter. This article identifies three incompatible positions on the nature of post-Fordist work organization within the work of Mathews. We argue that post-Fordism. in particu lar the work of Mathews, fails to distinguish favourable from unfavourable (for workers) forms of work organization, misreads developments in management strategy, and neglects the gender dimension of workplace change. Accordingly we counterpose a critical research agenda to that suggested by Mathews. We attempt, hesitantly, to take the debate towards a sociology of knowledge of post-Fordism, by pointing to some of the political interests post-Fordism serves. - jir.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/36/2/231

Post-Fordism: Historical Break or Utopian Fantasy? 
Diane Fieldes, School of Industrial Relations and Organisational Behaviour, University of New South Wales, Tom Bramble, School of Economics and Commerce, La Trobe University, Bundoora,
Journal of Industrial Relations, Vol. 34, No. 4, 562-579 (1992) © 1992 IRSA
Since the mid-1980s there has been substantial debate about changes in the nature of production systems in Europe and North America. A range of writers, operating within a paradigm of post-Fordism, contend that traditional Western manufacturing methods, based on mass markets, mass production and Taylorism, are being replaced by strategies premised on niche markets, small-batch production and the upgrading of workforce skills and autonomy. In Australia it has been argued, chiefly by Mathews, that such changes have important implications for the labour movement. In particular, the new circumstances require a move from a confrontationist to a consensual approach to industrial relations by the trade unions. These claims are challenged in this article, both because of the determinist framework that informs them and because of their inability to explain the complexity of the changes that are taking place in the areas they address. An interpretation of recent developments, which places competitive accumulation at its centre, is suggested as an alternative paradigm. The implication that a post-Fordist strategy will reinforce the strength and integrity of the trade union movement is also questioned in the light of the later experience of the Accord. - jir.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/34/4/562

Fordism on a World Scale: International Dimensions of Regulation - David F. Ruccio, Department of Economics, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Review of Radical Political Economics, Vol. 21, No. 4, 33-53 (1989) © 1989 Union for Radical Political Economics
The method of analysis of the French Regulation School, especially the work of Lipietz, is presented and critically discussed as a potential contribution to a much-needed Marnan class analysis of contemporary capitalism. Particular attention is paid to the concepts of Regulation theory, especially the accumulation/regulation model, and to the internal tensions that emerge from the attempt to transpose a theory of national regulation to the world economy. - rrp.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/21/4/33

The Japanization of Fordism - Stephen Wood, London School of Economics 
Economic and Industrial Democracy, Vol. 14, No. 4, 535-555 (1993) © 1993 The National Institute for Working Life
Japan, or more specifically its management methods, has increasingly entered debates about work organization in the 1980s. In so doing it also began to play an important role in the wider Post-Fordist debates about transformations in production regimes and even societies in general. At one extreme Post-Fordists see the Japanese management model as prototypical of the new flexible era they are heralding. At the other extreme Williams et al. have begun to see the Japanese experience as providing significant fuel to their more general questioning of the whole Fordist conceptual edifice which underlies Post-Fordist theses. The argument of this paper suggests that the Japanese model does expose problems of certain concepts of Fordism, particularly the blanket association of Fordist mass production with inflexibility. However, at the labour process level, the Japanese model rests on the fundamental bedrock of Fordism work study, assembly lines, and mass production and marketing. It nevertheless reverses certain features of Fordism particularly by involving workers more in conception than did conventional Taylorism. As such it represents an evolution within Fordism rather than transformation of it, i.e. neo- Fordism not Post-Fordism. Though it is common to incorrectly identify Fordism with rigidity, this alone is not necessary justification for either abandoning it as a useful concept or dismissing its relevance in the context of Japanese management. The author concludes we should settle for a fairly exclusive definition of Fordism, see the issue as one of developing new concepts of it, and above all else not expect Fordism to carry a bigger theoretical burden than it can. - eid.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/14/4/535

From Fordism to?: New Technology, Labour Markets and Unions - Rianne Mahon 
School of Public Administration, Carleton University - Economic and Industrial Democracy, Vol. 8, No. 1, 5-60 (1987) © 1987 The National Institute for Working Life
In the burgeoning literature, both popular and academic, on the 'newa technology', there is a general consensus that we are on the verge of sweeping changes in the production, distribution and consumption of goods and services. There is, however, rather less agreement on the social consequences. This paper considers one of the negative scenarios that has recently gained a certain prominence: that of the 'declining middle'. This scenario is built on the assumption that, failing countervailing measures, the current wave of technical innovation could contribute to a dramatic restructuring of the postwar income structure replacing the 'income pyramid' with an 'income hour-glass' by destroying many of the better paid blueand white-collar jobs in the countries of the OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development). The primary focus of the paper will be to consider how the character of a country's industrial relations system might mitigate or exacerbate such polarisation tendencies, through a comparative analysis of recent developments in the United States (US), Japan, West Germany and Sweden. It is assumed that the way in which the industrial relations system is organised in each country will exercise a marked effect on the way in which new techniques are put to use in the production process. It will also be determinant in the distribution of the national income and, in this way, affect a firm's choice of product strategy. - eid.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/8/1/5

Globalization, Post-Fordism and the Contemporary Context of Development, Ray Kiely, University of East London, International Sociology, Vol. 13, No. 1, 95-115 (1998) © 1998 International Sociological Association
This article examines the claims that we are living in a new, global, post-Fordist era. The claims of both globalization and post-Fordism are examined, as well as some of the implications for development. Both theses are questioned, and in particular it is argued that in some respects the two arguments contradict rather than complement each other. An alternative approach is put forward, focusing on the contemporary context for development in the global economy, critically using the notion of global commodity chains. It is argued that we are currently witnessing a variety of strategies of capital accumulation in the world economy, and insofar as generalizations can be made, we have witnessed the end of the Third World as a homogeneous block. While some formerly peripheral countries are now a constituent part of the world economy, others are marginal to its needs. These countries are not so much exploited as simply left out. - iss.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/13/1/95

Post-Fordism, Monopoly Capitalism, and Hollywood's Media Industrial Complex 
Michael Wayne, Brunel University, England michael, International Journal of Cultural Studies, Vol. 6, No. 1, 82-103 (2003) © 2003 SAGE Publications
This article seeks a dialectical critique of and synthesis between two conflicting paradigms. In exploring the changing structures and global markets of Hollywood's media industrial complex, it draws on, but also critiques, post-Fordist accounts of corporate change and market competition. It identifies the new dominance of the multi-divisional corporate structure and its combination with subsidiary and subcontractor modes of inter-corporate relations together with a new emphasis on branding to tap into segmented global markets. The second paradigm, the political economy of the media approach, has failed, to its detriment, to draw on or to engage theoretically with post-Fordist discussions. This is largely because post-Fordist accounts implicitly or explicitly suggest that one of the central dynamics of advanced capitalism - namely, its tendency towards the centralization and concentration of capital (the Three Cs Thesis) - is being corrected or reversed. Political economy rightly refutes this but we have to explain why the real relations take the appearance-forms (of autonomy and plurality) that they do and how this connects to the cultural dimension of the media-industrial complex. The analysis includes a case study of Disney as a multi-integrated corporation. - ics.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/6/1/82

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