Work and Employment in the High Performance Workplace

Giles Anthony, Jacques Belanger, Paul-Andre Lapointe, Gregor Murray

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135842178
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

There is a general consensus that deep-seated changes are reshaping the way production and work are organized, the way employees, employers and their representatives deal with each other, and the way governments seek to shape society. In this work a group of leading scholars take stock of the evidence and implications of the new workplace. Drawing on examples from a variety of national contexts, they seek to characterize the nature of contemporary workplace change, and assess its implications for the organization of work for workers, for employment relations and for public policy.

1	TOWARDS A NEW PRODUCTION MODEL: POTENTIALITIES, TENSIONS AND CONTRADICTIONS
	Jacques Bélanger, Anthony Giles and Gregor Murray

Judging by the dizzying pace of terminological invention over the past two decades, the modern workplace has become a phantasmagoria of swiftly evolving new practices, innovations, models and paradigms. Who has not heard of the ‘high-performance workplace’ or its recent offspring, the ‘high-commitment’ and ‘high-involvement’ workplaces? Who has not been subject to the siren calls of achieving greater competitiveness through lean production, diversified quality production, flexible specialization or world-class manufacturing? What self-respecting production manager has not considered the merits of ‘pulling’ instead of ‘pushing’ production along the value chain, of promoting a ‘customer focus’, of reconfiguring supply management chains by means of just-in-time and sub-contracting, of harnessing employee potential in teams to generate corporate productivity gains through knowledge-driven work systems, or of achieving ‘six sigma’ targets for value enhancement and customer satisfaction? Are there any corporations that have not been ‘reengineered’, ‘refocused on their core competencies,’ ‘downsized’, ‘delayered’, or otherwise discombobulated? What worker has not been invited, or instructed, to join a quality circle or problem-solving group, to work in an off-line, on-line, autonomous, semi-autonomous or other type of team or to engage in kaizen or systematic problem-solving and incremental improvement in all aspects of the work process? And what local or national union leader has not been urged to be a partner for progress, to rethink the social contract at work and to rewrite collective agreements to reflect the new realities of the marketplace in a global context?

The incessant invitations to partake of this new productive cornucopia certainly provide fodder for the sceptical-minded. After all, many of the currently popular ideas are not so new; others seem to have an exceedingly brief shelf-life; and still others fall far short of their promise to ‘radically transform’ work, the workplace or labour-management relations. Nevertheless, it is difficult to dismiss the wave of recent changes as entirely a case of old wine in new bottles or as a mere smokescreen laid down to disguise deepening exploitation.

The aim of this chapter is to offer a critical understanding of the changing workplace. We will argue that it is indeed possible to identify the contours of a new model of production, one that is likely to yield significant gains in productivity, quality and flexibility. The key operative principles of this model, however, are so fluid and contradictory that the entire amalgam remains fragile, uneven and often unstable. The daunting yet compelling task for observers of the contemporary workplace – students, researchers, practitioners and policy-makers alike – is to understand whether and how these tensions might develop into a more stable and enduring productive model.

To simplify the task and to sharpen our analytical focus, we start with two sets of distinctions: the different spheres of workplace change; and the analytical levels at which we can analyse workplace change. These distinctions are important for a clear understanding of the objectives of this chapter.

Our analysis of the changing workplace starts from a distinction between production management, work organization and employment relations.

Production management concerns the overall organization of the processes through which goods and services are produced and delivered. The way production is managed is, of course, intimately related to the type of product or service being provided as well as to the nature of the technologies used to manufacture or deliver them. However, production management's key focus is the systems and processes that govern the organization of service delivery or product manufacture. For instance, the production process can be organized on the basis of continuous assembly or process, in batches or by unit production. It also concerns the ways in which the production process is laid out (e.g. in assembly lines or modular groupings), as well as the ways in which supplies are delivered (e.g. the size and management of buffer stocks). Also of concern is the degree to which particular parts of the process are internal to or external to the production process (i.e. whether subcontracting or outsourcing is used). A key focus of production management is control over productivity and quality.

Work organization relates to the ways in which one of the factors of production, labour, is utilized in the production process. More concretely, work organization concerns the ways jobs are defined or configured within the overall organization of production of goods or services. For example, do jobs entail a relatively narrow range of pre-defined tasks or do employees enjoy a degree of discretion in the way that they do their jobs? Do employees work individually or in teams? And are employees subject to tight supervision or do they enjoy a degree of autonomy in meeting performance objectives?

Employment relations are the policies and practices governing the employment relationships of individuals and groups involved in production. These include the broad range of human resource management practices, such as recruitment, remuneration, training or promotion, that are designed to direct the abilities of employees towards the achievement of the objectives of their employer. Employment relations also include the negotiation and application of rules, taking the form of either collective agreements or customs and practices arising from successive dealings with informal work groups.

It is crucial to consider all three spheres of the workplace if we are to make sense of the dizzying array of workplace change. All too often analysis is focused on just one or two of these spheres to the detriment of a more global understanding of the changes taking place. Industrial relations and human resource management specialists, for example, often neglect the nature of change taking place in the management of production and the organization of work. Similarly, some production management specialists are blissfully ignorant of the implications of their work for employment relations. In our view, one of the key challenges for the analysis and practice of workplace change is to better understand the relations between these different spheres. Indeed, we will argue that the often observed fragility of new work systems is partly related to the tensions between the sometimes conflicting objectives pursued in each sphere.

The second distinction which informs this chapter is the level of analysis. Our objective is to offer a general understanding of changes taking place in the contemporary workplace. Such generality, however, can only be achieved by not delving into the full complexity of particular practices or patterns of changes. It is perhaps helpful here to think of three possible levels of analysis of workplace change and practice.

At a first, perhaps microscopic, level, specific practices can be isolated for detailed scrutiny, as in the case of the considerable literature on teamwork or total quality management. This research into individual practices plays an indispensable role in developing our understanding of the changing workplace. However informative the analysis of particular practices might be, most observers would probably agree that the study of individual practices cannot fully capture the extent of change in the contemporary workplace. Instead, it is necessary to go a step further and examine the relationships among the various practices and their contexts.

Thus, at a second level of analysis, one might focus on changing patterns, sets or ‘bundles’, of firm- or establishment-level practices. These are often conceived as systems that, depending on the point of view of the analyst in question, can embrace the areas of production management, work organization and employment relations policies and practices. Among the most common are ‘flexible production systems’, ‘lean production systems’, ‘high performance work practices or systems’ and the ‘high involvement’ workplace. All of these aspire to bring together a range of different practices into more general systems or models. This is at the heart of much of the recent US literature on workplace change (see, for example, Becker and Huselid, 1998b; Appelbaum et al., 2000; Pil and MacDuffie, 2000). The key notion at this level of analysis is the difficulty of implementing one practice in the absence of another or, alternatively, the incompatibility of certain practices. Research frequently focuses on the linkages between the different practices, on the question of whether particular sets of practices constitute coherent models or systems, or on the synergies to be achieved through the ‘fit’ of different types of practices. Also of considerable interest is the degree to which other organizational characteristics, such as corporate structure or product market types, facilitate or inhibit the adoption of particular models or systems. Related to this is a sometimes almost existential literature concerned with the role of strategic human resource management within the larger objectives of the firm (see, for example, Guérin and Wils, 1992; Lawler, 1995; or, for a more critical view, Guest, 1990). Much of the current literature on workplace innovation and high performance work systems focuses on this level of analysis in a search for the Holy Grail of new production systems.

This brings us to a third, more abstract level of analysis – that of the ‘production model’. A model is a simplified theoretical representation of the relations that exist between different concepts or parts of a whole. Irrespective of variations that might be observed in practice or in particular contexts, the key notion at this level of analysis is that it is possible to generalize about certain sets of relations between different components of the model. Although we shall develop this idea in much greater detail through the course of this chapter, it needs to be emphasized here that this level of analysis allows generalizations about the underlying principles at work. Observers of the world of work, for example, often refer to ‘Taylorism’ or ‘Fordism’. Such representations of the complexities of the world of work are not meant to depict specific workplaces but rather a set of principles that underlie the organization of work in many different workplaces. Wrongly used, such representations can easily distort our understanding of particular situations. However, their analytical value lies in their ability to distil complex sets of relations into a broader whole. This chapter is pitched precisely at this more abstract level.

Our core argument is that we can now identify the major principles underlying an emerging model of production, one that is different in significant ways from what preceded it. However, it is important to stress that the mere identification of distinctive principles does not confer internal cohesion on the model. On the contrary, we will argue that while the emerging model is characterized by a number of key principles which do offer some plausible consistency in the way that they operate, the model is also traversed by significant tensions and contradictions. In other words, and in contrast to much of the normative literature offering magic recipes for more productive workplaces, we do not believe that the emergence of this model abolishes the age-old difficulties inherent in the realization of value within the production process. Many of these difficulties remain intractable and are indeed exacerbated in the changing workplace, hence the real and often remarked fragility of these new production systems.

The objective of this chapter, then, is to analyse the underlying relations between new practices in the spheres of production management, work organization and employment relations, the linkages between these three spheres, and the relationship between firm-level practices and their wider organizational and institutional setting. Since many of the issues concerning new production models and the high performance workplace are defined, sometimes implicitly, in terms of a transformation or transition away from a previously dominant production model, the first part of the chapter examines that traditional model, commonly labelled Fordism. This term is here used as a shorthand to refer to a particular set of relations between the management of production, the organization of work and employee relations. The second part of the chapter sketches out the broad contours of the model now taking shape. The final part assesses the prospects for the consolidation of the new model. We argue that the slow, variable and tension-laden diffusion of this new model of production is partly a natural feature of social change, but is also due to significant tensions and contradictions within the new model. These are twofold in nature: first, the internal tensions between the most salient characteristics of the new model; second, its uncertain insertion into a wider set of social institutions.

The Rise and Fall of Fordism

A basic premise shared by virtually all analysts of workplace change is that recent innovations in production management, work organization and employment relations constitute a response to growing problems with the social system of production that dominated advanced capitalist economies during the long boom of the post-war years. However, beyond this premise, there are a number of questions and issues that have generated considerable debate. First, there is the basic issue of definition. As a quick glance through the literature soon reveals, the notion of Fordism has been used in a wide variety of ways, and so our first task is to clarify its meaning. Second, there is a plethora of explanations why Fordism is faltering, explanations that are intimately connected to attempts to characterize recent innovations. Accordingly, we briefly review some of these explanations as a prelude to our discussion, in the second part of the chapter, of the emergence of a new model that departs from Fordism.

The Fordist Production Model

The term ‘Fordism’ has come to be applied widely, and not a little casually, as shorthand for a number of distinct phenomena. It is common, for example, for Fordism to be equated simply with ‘mass production’ or with assembly-line production. Fordism is also often treated as the extension or mechanization of the ‘Taylorist’ model of work organization, i.e. the narrow definition of highly specialized tasks separated from conception and subject to the tight control of engineers and supervisors. Finally, Fordism is sometimes used to describe the pattern of labour-management relations in which employers accept the existence of unions, collective bargaining and relatively high wages in return for union and worker acquiescence to the retention of management control over work and production.

These different uses of the notion of Fordism are not surprising since the term has also been applied in a much broader sense that encompasses all of these specific meanings. Indeed, the Italian communist leader Antonio Gramsci (1971, pp. 277–320) is usually credited with having coined the term in the late 1920s as a way of encapsulating not simply a particular method of production or pattern of work and employment relations, but as both a whole system of production marking a rupture with previous modes of industrial organization and as a ‘way of life’. More recently, this broad use of the term has been taken up by French political economists belonging to the ‘regulation’ school. Thus, for Lipietz, Fordism refers to the ‘model of economic development actually established in advanced capitalist countries after World War II’ (Lipietz, 1994, p. 230; see also Aglietta, 1979). On this view, although Fordism rested on the productivity gains made possible by the application of Taylorist principles of work organization to mass production, it was not until the post-Second World War era that what the regulation school labels a ‘regime of accumulation’, combining mass consumption with mass production, was finally put in place. This regime was held together by what is labelled a Fordist ‘mode of regulation’ that entailed a specific wage relation, monetary and credit regime, pattern of competition, role of the state and insertion in the international political economy. It is argued that this particular formula underlay what ‘regulationists’ refer to as the trente glorieuses or ‘Golden Age’, namely the approximately thirty post-war years of unrivalled economic expansion in most of the major capitalist industrialized economies.

For present purposes, neither the complex theoretical architecture of the regulation school nor its oftentimes arcane vocabulary need be adopted in their entirety (for a full-blown self account, see Boyer and Saillard, 1995; for a more critical view, see Clarke, 1992). Instead, we focus on three elements of the more general Fordist model that, taken together, cover the range of innovations and experiments that are commonly treated under the rubric of the ‘new workplace’: production management; work organization; and employment relations. That said, as is often stressed by the regulation school and by other analysts, it is important not to lose sight of the connections between models of production at the level of the firm and the wider (usually national) set of institutions. These connections reflect the social relations between actors – employers, unions and the state, for example – and the institutional arrangements to which they give rise. Indeed, as will be argued later in this chapter, the arduous birth of the new production model can be attributed, in part at least, to a lack of coherence between changes at the level of the firm and their institutional setting – an incoherence that expresses the still evolving state of social relations in the new model. Let us now look at each of the three spheres of the Fordist model of production at the level of the workplace.

Production Management

In the area of production management, Fordism rested squarely on the principles of standardized mass production, i.e. the production of ‘highly standardized goods on a large scale with highly specialized equipment, operated by semiskilled workers’ (Hollingsworth and Boyer, 1997, p. 20). The characteristics of this type of production management are, of course, already well rehearsed in the literature. Suffice it to depict the broad argument as it applies to basic manufacturing. National product markets were characterized by a fairly constant demand for standardized and relatively undifferentiated goods produced by a small number of dominant or oligopolistic producers. This was the result of the ability of certain firms to achieve competitive advantage through the economies of scale that accrued from mass production, thereby eliminating smaller firms in the process (for example, see Chandler, 1977). These dominant manufacturers were typically able to use highly specialized single-purpose equipment to produce their goods. While there were differences in the quality of the goods produced, overall quality concerns appear to have been less important than the simple ability to get products to market. Thus, this type of production was generally a resource-driven or ‘push’ system, inasmuch as the amount produced was dominated by supply and output considerations rather than specific demand. Indeed, general economic conditions permitting (hence the importance of overall...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Notes on Contributors
• List of tables
• Preface and Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Assessing the Prospects for the High Performance Workplace
• 1 Towards a New Production Model: Potentialities, Tensions and Contradictions
• 2 New Forms of Work Organization in the Workplace: Transformative, Exploitative, or Limited and Controlled?
• 3 The Impact of New Forms of Work Organization on Workers
• 4 Workplace Innovation and the Role of Institutions
• 5 North American Labour Policy Under a Transformed Economic and Workplace Environment
• References
• Index