an article by Nikolaus Hammer and Réka Plugor (University of Leicester, UK) published in Work, Employment and Society Volume 33 Issue 6 (December 2019)
Abstract
This article focuses on the interlinkages between the labour process and global value chains. It draws on the renewed growth in UK apparel manufacturing, specifically within the fast fashion value chain, and asks how value chain requirements are translated into the labour process as well as how the latter enables quick response manufacturing.
The case study shows how buyer-lead firms engender accelerated capital circuits of fast fashion which rely on an increased segmentation of manufacturers and workers, the elimination of unproductive spaces in the labour process, and a further rise in the informalisation and precarity of labour.
The article demonstrates a strategic disconnection within the fast fashion value chain: upstream manufacturers are only able to satisfy lead firms’ economic and operational standards if they disconnect – informalise – labour from the latter’s ‘ethical’ standards.
Showing posts with label labour_process. Show all posts
Showing posts with label labour_process. Show all posts
Wednesday, 4 December 2019
Thursday, 18 October 2012
Government reforms, performance management and the labour process: the case of officers in the UK probation service
an article by Jenny Gale (Staffordshire University, UK) published in Work Employment & Society Volume 26 Number 5 (October 2012)
Abstract
Taking a labour process perspective, this article investigates the impact of government reforms and performance management on officers in the National Probation Service (England and Wales).
Based on a case study involving two Probation Service Areas and interviews with national and local trade union officers, insights are gained into changes for probation work and the workforce that perform it.
The findings illustrate how reforms of probation practice, implemented locally through performance management, have led to probation work becoming increasingly ‘Taylorized’ with implications for the division of labour based on labour substitution, deskilling and degradation.
As the Probation Service was entering a new political era under the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition, these findings provide insights into its trajectory under previous governments. They also invoke questions regarding the implications of reforms for the Probation Service and public services generally.
Hazel’s comment:
Taylorism is the theory of scientific management [Wikipedia article here] which seems to me to be a singularly inappropriate methodology for performance measurement in a social, people-oriented environment.
As an employment adviser in the Jobcentre our performance was measured using the Management by Objectives system. My best statistic was achieved by placing the same person into nine different short-term jobs in a year. My greatest achievement from an emotional point of view was working my butt off to get someone into work who hadn’t had a job for a very long time – and discovering that he was still there two years later.
People are all different and cannot be counted in the same way that you can count the number of accurately manufactured widgets coming off the production line.
Abstract
Taking a labour process perspective, this article investigates the impact of government reforms and performance management on officers in the National Probation Service (England and Wales).
Based on a case study involving two Probation Service Areas and interviews with national and local trade union officers, insights are gained into changes for probation work and the workforce that perform it.
The findings illustrate how reforms of probation practice, implemented locally through performance management, have led to probation work becoming increasingly ‘Taylorized’ with implications for the division of labour based on labour substitution, deskilling and degradation.
As the Probation Service was entering a new political era under the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition, these findings provide insights into its trajectory under previous governments. They also invoke questions regarding the implications of reforms for the Probation Service and public services generally.
Hazel’s comment:
Taylorism is the theory of scientific management [Wikipedia article here] which seems to me to be a singularly inappropriate methodology for performance measurement in a social, people-oriented environment.
As an employment adviser in the Jobcentre our performance was measured using the Management by Objectives system. My best statistic was achieved by placing the same person into nine different short-term jobs in a year. My greatest achievement from an emotional point of view was working my butt off to get someone into work who hadn’t had a job for a very long time – and discovering that he was still there two years later.
People are all different and cannot be counted in the same way that you can count the number of accurately manufactured widgets coming off the production line.
Friday, 5 October 2012
Entrepreneurship and expropriation
an article by Campbell Jones (University of Auckland, New Zealand) and Anna-Maria Murtola (Independent Researcher, New Zealand) published in Organization Volume 19 Number 5 (September 2012)
Abstract
Entrepreneurship plays out today in an ideologically mediated contest between production in common and expropriation of the common.
On the one hand, it is possible to locate a ‘positive’ moment of the increasing socialisation of work through which production has become social and cooperative, involving production from the common, in common, of the common. On the other hand, there is a ‘negative’ moment that seeks to separate, enclose and capture this common.
Entrepreneurship is a key ideological operator in the expropriation of the common, through localising production and claims to value in one particular element of socialised production.
Although entrepreneurship research today recognises that entrepreneurship rests on production in common, it hesitates to come to the radical conclusions required by this recognition. Caught between production in common and expropriation of the common, entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship research today confront the prospect that those whose production in common is daily expropriated might turn the tables on the expropriators.
Abstract
Entrepreneurship plays out today in an ideologically mediated contest between production in common and expropriation of the common.
On the one hand, it is possible to locate a ‘positive’ moment of the increasing socialisation of work through which production has become social and cooperative, involving production from the common, in common, of the common. On the other hand, there is a ‘negative’ moment that seeks to separate, enclose and capture this common.
Entrepreneurship is a key ideological operator in the expropriation of the common, through localising production and claims to value in one particular element of socialised production.
Although entrepreneurship research today recognises that entrepreneurship rests on production in common, it hesitates to come to the radical conclusions required by this recognition. Caught between production in common and expropriation of the common, entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship research today confront the prospect that those whose production in common is daily expropriated might turn the tables on the expropriators.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
