Critically evaluate whether we live in a Fordist, Neo-Fordist or Post-Fordist society.

University Degree Business and Administrative studies

When the new black Model-T came off the assembly line and started in Ford’s plant in Highland Park (Detroit) 90 years ago, the human industrial society began to change. Looking the same as any previous models, this Model-T was built only in one and a half hours. The saved ninety percent of labour hour rapidly led to ‘The First Industrial Divide’ of the western world. Even today, how deeply this industrial revolution, the so-called Fordism, had actually affected our society is still a controversial topic. In what following, an analysis of Fordism and Post-Fordism will be conducted concerning both current and historical examples as well as some classical arguments, in order to identify the society we are living in.

When referring to the term Fordism, the frame of monotonous and simple jobs, standardized single products, intense industrial relations will occur immediately. One comprehensive definition given by Michel Aglietta (1979) is the ‘regime of accumulation involving specific forms of capitalist production as well as social consumption norms.’

According to Robin Murray (1989) (Cited by Madry and Kirby, 1996, pp.50), the Fordist production was based on four major principles, which are standardization, mechanization, scientific management and flowline production.

These Fordist production principles largely raise the firms’ productive efficiency and then increase the productivity of the whole economy. Specifically, standardization can save time and resources in developing different types of parts to match different types of products; mechanization saves the labour cost and increases some workers’ safety; Scientific management, which is heavily influenced by Taylorism, refers to both fragmented tasks and redesigned jobs based on Time-and-Motion studies, i.e. break tasks into simplest pieces and strictly manage the production process to stop workers from being lazy; The flowline, compared with nodal assembly, not only saves the moving time for workers but also helps workers to concentrate on their own jobs.

Generally, Fordism helps manufacture firms achieve mass production and hence enjoys the benefits brought in by the economies of scale. However, there are also some inevitable limitations conduced by Fordism’s nature.

First of all, because the requirement of scientific management, tasks have to been broken down as much as they can. According to Braverman, this was resulting in the emergence of de-skilling, which was defined as ‘The removal of skills from work by the application of new machinery and new techniques which simplify tasks’ (Source: HEFP Sociology Handout). In order to be more specialized,

‘…power and knowledge about work and work process cease to reside with the workers but instead are transferred upward from the workers to the management…’ (Source: HEFP Sociology Handout)

This suggests a situation that ‘you take the responsibility to work and we take the responsibility to order’. Consequently jobs seemed to be more efficient and much easier, but actually more monotonous. Marxists argue that such repetitive and routine jobs will result in a higher level of alienation and intensify the class conflicts. The high rate of defective products with absence and injured labour as well as the tense industrial relation were all enumerated as evidences for the high level alienation in a Fordist industry.

What’s more, the product-centred nature of Fordism also has been criticized. Firstly, due to ...

This is a preview of the whole essay

What’s more, the product-centred nature of Fordism also has been criticized. Firstly, due to the limits from standardization, it is hard for Fordist firms to provide a wide range of products to satisfy consumers’ needs. The joke ‘You can have any color (Model-T) you like, as long as it is black’ given by Henry Ford himself proved such weakness to some extents. Moreover, the output of mass production can hardly be adjusted when the economy conditions are changed. This is especially important for firms to adjust their output to a reasonably lower level so as to go through the recession. Failing for such adjustment will bring on over-stocking, cashflow crisis and other critical issues. In reality, it was shown that during the Great Depression of 1930s, ‘Fordism survived largely as a result of state intervention in the form of subsidies to industry and policies to promote ‘full employment.’ (Madry and Kirby, 1996, pp.54)

All on above have shown that Fordism’s existence largely depends on several specific economy conditions. The most significant some are the predictable mass consumption, certain degree of monopoly and a central planning tended government. Looking back to the history, it was more or less these conditions that ensured the Fordism’s survival and diffusion.

However, along with the changed world’s political and economic atmosphere, especially in the 1970s when it was believed that Keynesian-regulatory model of regulated capitalism was running out of steam, those conditions were all seriously weakened. It is believed that the process of deregulation, globalisation and privatization pushed the world economy to a much more competitive level and therefore empowered the market to determine the social production. The fatal defects of Fordism had thus been approached. Having lost the government protection as well as the stable and predictable mass demand, firms can only survive by rapidly adjusting their products to cope with the changing market demand. A market-led output became necessary no matter in quantity or quality. Hence, the Fordist production method that only provides huge quantity of undiversified goods was suggested to be over and forced to transform to a totally different production method, the Post-Fordism.

The term Post-Fordism, or Flexible specialization’ (FS), or Neo-Fordism, was introduced to describe the production method in which assembly line manufacture and mass production was superseded by flexible batch production with the help of new technology such as computer and information technology. It was suggested that in flexible specialized firms, including those big firms,

‘Economies of scale are replaced by economies of scope — that is, the use by large plants of flexible manufacturing technologies to produce for several relatively small or segmented markets.’ (Perulli, 1999, Lecture)

It is trying to convince that the profitable mass production era had passed. Those flexible manufacturers who can provide variety of goods that can feed both mass and niche market will have a larger chance to succeed in the future.

According to Alan Warde, this general trend of increasing flexibility can be identified in some following aspects: the changing technology, products, jobs and contracts.

In manufacture industry, the benefits of technology mainly came from the use of CAD/CIM (computer aided design/manufacture). Rather than reproducing a new assembly line, the re-programme on machineries can easily switch an assembly line from producing one product to another. Also because of the improvement of automation, the same assembly line was allowed to produce different products at the same time, passing the more complicate work to the machines.

On the side of retail industry, the use of EPOS can record and transfer the stock information instantly. Today, if you go to Tesco and buy 20 packs of Mars bars, this information will be recorded in Tesco’s database. Reorder will be automatically made if there aren’t enough Mars bars are left. The company will also gather and analyses these data in order to decide the quantity of goods that should be purchase. According to such kind of feedback data, the Mars bar factory’s output will be roughly equal to the market demand.

The changes of product seem to be the most straightforward and convincing aspect. It could be more convincing to show Ford’s production range today in the following diagram:

Rather than a single black Model-T, Ford is offering 12 different types of vehicles. And the word ‘Price From’ is suggesting that within those listed series, the consumers can even have the choice to select different features of their own car, such as additional CD-Player, Air-bags, leather interior etc. May be this is one most important reason why Ford can still operate as the biggest car manufacturer of Europe.

Jobs and contracts are suggested to be another important aspect to distinguish Post-Fordism from Fordism. John Atkinson argued that appropriate use of labour is the most important approach to flexibility. He categorized firms’ flexibilities into two groups, one is called numerical flexibility and the other is called functional flexibility. The numerical flexible means ‘to adjust labour supply to product demand’ while the latter means ‘to use the same workforce for a wide variety of tasks.’ (Madry and Kirby, 1996, pp.55-56)

He then divided the workforce into ‘core’ and ‘periphery’ groups and went on to argue that the numerical flexibility can be achieved by adjusting the quantity of periphery workers while the functional flexibility can be achieved by investing in core workers to upgrade their skills. According to Atkinson, the reason of the increased jobs in the past 10 years was basically part-time jobs seems to be reasonable.

So far, all of the given evidences and arguments were suggesting that the capitalist society has been transforming from 1920’s Fordism to today’s Post-Fordism. However, there is a risk to make the hurried conclusion here. As was stated, an industry’s production method generally depends on the economic conditions. However, such conditions can largely vary from different industries even in the same society at the same time. Thereby it will be doubtful that whether or not either of these production methods, Fordism and Post-Fordism, has been dominant. As a sceptic, Pollert argued that

‘…the Fordist methods were never as widespread as the post-Fordists suggest… Fordism never became a universal or typical form of capitalist production.’ (Cited by Madry and Kirby, 1996, pp.50)

It has also been suggested that production methods can always differ from different industries and different countries. For instance, in 1950s, when it was the time that Fordism was widest adopted, there were still many firms that producing based on the craft workers. Such examples can even be found in the motor industry, which is the root of Fordism. Roce-Royce, Ferrari and other luxury car companies are always insist on engaging high skilled manual workers to produce their top-end cars in order to ensure the product quality and their business are always famous and successful. Conversely, examples of Fordism can also be found in nowadays society. The mature commodity industry and the heavy industry are always categorized as a Fordist society.

On the other hand, because of the impact of globalization and deregulation, many Fordist industries in developed country have been switched to the third world countries where cheaper labour can be found. In UK, for instance, less then 30 percent of the workers are manual workers, which means UK is generally a more Post-Fordist country than those Southeast Asian countries like Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia that have always been attacked for the western ‘sweatshop’ manufacturing.

What is more, Atkinson’s dual labour market theory has also been oppugned. It is argued that during the recession, core workers will also be fired. This phenomenon was stated by Madry and Kirby as ‘It appears that, because of the economic recession, the supposed privileges of the core group disappeared’. Moreover, the trend of equally treating full-time and part-time workers is discovered as ‘most employers did not regard their part-time workers as ‘peripheral’ workers, but saw them as a crucial element of the workforce.’ (Employment Gazette, 1992, pp.34)

To sum up, the determinants of the production method are the economic conditions of the society. Because of the improved technology and other factors that changed the economic conditions in the late 20th century, many traditional Fordist industries have transformed towards Post-Fordism. However, to certain extent, both two types of production methods always exist. Therefore, it is inappropriate to identify a society as ‘Fordist society’ or ‘Post-Fordist Society’.

Reference

Aglietta, M. (1979) A Theory of Capitalist Regulation: the US Experience, Verso Ltd, London

Madry, N & Kirby, H. (1996) Investigating Work, Unemployment and Leisure, Collins Educational, UK

Bibliography

HEFP Hand Out (2004) De-skilling and Proletanrianization, Organisational Behaviour

Perulli, P (1999) Lecture: More Global and More local. Network enterprises and the Benetton case revisited. Professor of Economic Sociology, UMUIA, Venice

Warde, A. (1989) The Future of work, Social Studies Review, September

Atkinson, J. & Gregory, D. (1985) A Flexible Future: Britain’s Dual Labour Force. Marxism Today, April: pp.12-17

Department of Employment (1986) Labour Force Survey, HMSO, London

Bibliography

Atkinson, J. & Gregory, D. (1985) A Flexible Future: Britain’s Dual Labour Force. Marxism Today, April: pp.12-17

Department of Employment (1986) Labour Force Survey, HMSO, London

Grint, K. (1991) The Sociology of Work 2nd, Polity, Cambridge

Haralambos, M. Holborn, M. (2000) Sociology, Themes and Perspectives 5th ed. England, Collins Educational Publisher, London, the United Kingdom

HEFP Hand Out (2004) De-skilling and Proletanrianization, Organisational Behaviour

Madry, N & Kirby, H. (1996) Investigating Work, Unemployment and Leisure, Collins Educational, UK

Perulli, P (1999) Lecture: More Global and More local. Network enterprises and the Benetton case revisited. Professor of Economic Sociology, UMUIA, Venice

Piore, M.J. & Sabel, C.F. (1984) The Second Industrial Divide: Possibilities for Prosperity, Basic Books, New York

Thompson, P. (1993) The Labour Process: changing theory, changing practice. Sociology Review, Vol.3, No.2

Warde, A. (1989) The Future of work, Social Studies Review, September