Fordism and Flexibility

The profound changes in the labour market during the 1980s are examined in this book in relation to the ideas of flexible specialization and the "flexible firm" and Marxist regulation theory, supplemented by fresh empirical evidence concerning changes in the labour process. Three related concepts have emerged around which there has been a dramatic crystallization: Fordism, post-Fordism and, supposedly linking the two, various manifestations of economic flexibility. There has been, it is suggested, a profound change in the labour process towards the "flexible worker" and in the labour market towards a "flexible workforce". Three approaches to explain these changes are especially important and provide the major focus for this book: Marxist regulation theory; the notion of flexible specialization associated with the "new" institutional economics; and the model of the flexible firm derived from the managerialist literature. In the book, the diverse claims made by these three approaches are subject to empirical and theoretical investigation and their wider implications are examined in relation to emerging patterns of work in advanced societies.