Summary
Contents
Subject index
Working in Restructured Workplaces addresses contradictory influences in contemporary workplace restructuring, its impact on workers’ lives, and the direction and nature of future changes in the workplace. This authentic collection of sociological thought and research consists of previous works in Work and Occupations and some commissioned specifically for this book to focus on the nature, causes, and consequences of workplace restructuring.
Flexible Production, Rigid Jobs: Lessons from the Clothing Industry
Flexible Production, Rigid Jobs: Lessons from the Clothing Industry
Macroeconomic crises and declining rates of corporate profit during the 1970s prompted critical interest in the organizational principles of mass production and their continued effectiveness in a more integrated and interdependent world economy (Best, 1990; Piore & Sabel, 1984; Reich, 1983). Firms that face the most difficulties in the new globalized marketplace are often those with labor intensive, standardized manufacturing processes. These firms, and their production systems, have proved vulnerable to increased competition from low-wage producers in countries that have predicated economic growth strategies on export-led industrialization (Deyo, 1987; Dicken, 1992). Because Fordism, as a labor intensive, low-skilled system of standardized mass production, was easily replicated, it ...
- Loading...