Comparative political economy of work

2007

For many years, the core of critical management studies was labour process theory (LPT), building on Braverman's (1976) reading of Marx. Recently, LPT has been losing momentum in favour of post-structuralist approaches. This paper takes one step back with the hope of taking critical management studies two steps forward. Whereas post-structuralists have largely discarded the Marxist foundations of LPT, this paper argues that LPT has been hobbled by its insufficiently Marxist foundations. I argue that LPT ignores the fundamental contradiction Marx saw between the progressive 'socialization' of the labour process and the persistence of capitalist 'valorization' constraints. Understood in Marx's terms, socialization is the movement away from local isolation towards 'universal interdependence', and it is a key trend both in the objective structure of industry and in subjective self-construals. I use this framework to develop a modified conception of skill, one that reveals how capitalist development drives a process of long-term skill upgrading. On this platform, I sketch a reinterpretation of two well-known cases of work reorganization -Taylorism and lean production. In both cases, useful insight is garnered by showing how the socialization of the labour process represented by these new management principles and the associated skill upgrading was simultaneously stimulated, retarded and distorted by valorization pressures.

2014

The comparative analysis of workplaces has been a relatively underdeveloped area of study, especially when compared to vibrant areas of investigation such as welfare states, industrial relations and production regimes. Nevertheless, the reconfiguration of capitalism and employment relations which characterizes the current historical phase is also shaped by significant changes in the realm of production, and negotiations and struggles taking place at the level of organizations.

British Journal of Industrial Relations, 2012

For a number of years, comparative corporate governance research has attempted to explain how politics influence the nature and evolution of corporate governance (CG) regimes. John W. Cioffi's latest book makes an important and topical contribution to this debate, extending his previous work on the politics of CG in Germany and the USA to include the post-financial crisis reforms. It will be of interest to scholars of CG, comparative lawyers and anyone interested in modern capitalism. Cioffi draws our attention to the importance of 'regulatory politics' in an era where legal density tends to increase. This is a timely corrective to the shifting focus in comparative political economy towards bottom-up (rule-taker driven) and incremental forms of institutional change. Cioffi defines CG as a 'juridical nexus' where different areas of law-notably company, securities and labour laws-together form the CG system. Consequently, he focuses on top-down-that is, rule-maker driven-processes of change (cf. chapter 2). One of Cioffi's major contributions is the attempt of a 'fruitful synthesis of comparative political economy with comparative law' (p. 54) by adopting a sophisticated conception of law. Law is understood as a social construct that plays a 'constitutive role' in society by shaping actors' identities and favouring new actor coalitions, thus creating its own politics (cf. chapter 2). Indeed, legal changes that promote the expansion of the financial industry-a hallmark of post-Fordist 'finance capitalism'-create powerful new economic actors and interests, which will then affect the further evolution of the system at the political and legal levels. This leads Cioffi to consider 'finance capitalism' as a unique historical entity that needs to be understood on its own terms. Cioffi rejects the widespread idea that a limited number of generic stakeholder groups-'managers', 'shareholders' and 'employees'-drive CG reform by pointing out that these groups are not necessarily 'collective actors'. Rather, they are internally divided and subject to collective action problems. As a result, state actors and political parties, which seek the support of interest groups in their striving for power, play a crucial role in the reform process by channelling economic interests into the political sphere (p. 34). After a detailed presentation of the German and US CG systems (chapter 3), this framework is applied in the empirical parts of the book (chapters 4-6), which provide a detailed analysis of the political process of CG reform in Germany and the USA. These chapters certainly do not shine with brevity, and it is at times difficult to follow the overall argument through the wealth of empirical information. However, the bs_bs_banner

Industrial Relations Journal, 2012

Global Labour Journal, 2014

Workers and Labour in a Globalised Capitalism: Contemporary Themes and Theoretical Issues is an impressive compilation of several authors' work I already respect and admire, and this collection confirmed my appreciation for their work. Azteni introduces 'Workers and Labour' in the first chapter, indicating that research in industrial relations and sociology of work has tended to focus on non-conflictual relations and has been too focused on Human Resources Management. Work and labour are usually not distinguished conceptually from one another in the Arendtian manner and control at/of work has tended to be looked at the institutional level without recognition of spatial and temporal dynamics and contemporary, very human pressures resulting from the power of capital as it is increasingly mobile and invasive. Atzeni notes a recent resurrection of research on work and labour perhaps resulting from the increase in migrant work and the growth of the service sector. Workplace requirements of a new tenor include emotional labour, mobility, and self-management. There is also a resurgence in classical research on labour looking at trade unions, tactics and strategies and collective bargaining in the context of the rolling back of welfare states. I have made similar points in my publication 'Where is the Study of Work in Critical International Political Economy?' noting that research in this area also requires a shift in focus. International Political Economy has tended to focus on policy and elite level negotiations, forgetting that globalisation and neoliberalism are not forces existing outside of human agency. Documenting and observing policy is only one step toward identifying the reproduction of neoliberal structural conditions. How policy is put into practice and the pressures on people are of most importance (Moore, 2012). A growing body of work, very much including the Atzeni collection, calls researchers to address this oversight. Atzeni's collection, as indicated in the title, intends to look at work and labour in globalised capitalism. 'Globalisation' as a concept is problematic and overused, but I was interested to see how this term would be operationalized and would drive the text. I think about globalisation as aligned with neoliberalization along the lines of Brenner (et al., 2010), points with which Atzeni does not disagree. In particular, he notes de-industrialisation gives way to the instability of precarity. However, these observations are not explicitly linked to globalisation in every chapter, and it is unclear whether the term 'globalisation' is needed at all. Nonetheless, chapters provide very sophisticated accounts of exploitation of workers and labourers, potentials for resistance and renewal and theoretical issues of class and the labour process. In this light, 'Parts' are organized as 'Theoretical Issues: Explaining the Centrality of Labour Within Capitalism'; 'Classical Issues: Explaining Workers' Resistance and Organisation'; and 'Contemporary Issues: Workers Organising in the Global World'. First, David Spencer calls for a renewed discussion of labour process theory to assess to what extent it sits in antagonism to Marx's theory of value or whether arguments around deskilling and scientific management and the logic of accumulation are more compatible with Marxism than may be documented. Then Silver writes about the way in which spatial,

Work in the Global Economy, 2021

The 2021 launch of Work in the Global Economy (WGE) has three underlying aims: first, to open up a new space to analyse and debate the changing conditions of work and labour in an era of globalised, unleashed capitalism; second to interrogate, theoretically and empirically, the labour process as a distinct moment in the circuits of capital; third, to re-connect the politics of production with the wider contradictory processes of capital accumulation. To achieve these aims, WGE welcomes the submission of new studies that deepen our knowledge of work patterns and organisations in different regions, nation states, local and international chains of production, distribution and exchange. Looking ahead, the challenge is to expose the institutional means of labour subordination, patterns of resistance, conflict and accommodations while revealing analytically how social relations at work are framed by wider class relations within a global context conditioned by crisis tendencies, regional inequalities and uneven development. WGE will build upon a tradition of shared scholarship and a commitment to theory building and rigorous empirical enquiry that has been exemplified by the annual International Labour Process Conference (ILPC). The latter has sought over many years to analyse and understand the interplay of labour process relations, wagelabour markets, social reproduction, and state regulatory and disciplinary powers. The journal will therefore strive to sustain and extend this tradition by publishing findings from researchers working in and across labour and employment studies, work sociology, political economy, labour geography and development. What follows is a brief outline of the intellectual trajectory of labour process theory (LPT) and analysis and a forward-looking research agenda for WGE. As is well known, interest in the labour process gathered pace and, initially at least, owed much to the renewal of scholarship in Marxist political economy following the 1974 publication of Braverman's Labour and Monopoly Capital (LMC). Braverman's

2017

… Relations: A Journal of Economy and …, 2006

2007

For many years, the core of critical management studies was labour process theory (LPT), building on Braverman’s (1976) reading of Marx. Recently, LPT has been losing momentum in favour of post-structuralist approaches. This paper takes one step back with the hope of taking critical management studies two steps forward. Whereas post-structuralists have largely discarded the Marxist foundations of LPT, this paper argues that LPT has been hobbled by its insufficiently Marxist foundations. I argue that LPT ignores the fundamental contradiction Marx saw between the progressive ‘socialization’of the labour process and the persistence of capitalist ‘valorization’constraints. Understood in Marx’s terms, socialization is the movement away from local isolation towards ‘universal interdependence’, and it is a key trend both in the objective structure of industry and in subjective self-construals. I use this framework to develop a modified conception of skill, one that reveals how capitalist d...

British Journal of Sociology, 2002

From disorganized capitalism to transnational ne tuning?: recent trends in wage development, industrial relations, and 'work' as a sociological categor y ABSTRACT The disorganization thesis concentrates upon globalization and market dynamics, which are believed to trigger the breakdown of any kind of institutional structures. The diversity of capitalism approach, by contrast, places much emphasis on the persistence of distinct paths of national economies. Referring to comparative data from the OECD and other sources it is shown that some variables indicate a robustness of national styles of capitalism. Others hint at resemblance: e.g. there is a striking synchronization of the overall and sectoral wage development, there is a signi cant decrease in industrial disputes, and the class composition tends to become more similar. A move beyond the disorganization thesis and diversity of capitalism approach is suggested. Special attention should be paid to the profound impacts of transnational institutions and knowledge carriers in the form of experts and guidelines.