Fordism

"...a battery of characteristics that epitomize Fordism; e.g., large firms, mass-production, durable manufacturing, industrial cities, and a blue-collar, male labor force. (Growth and Change March 22, 1996 SECTION: Vol. 27 ; No. 2 ; Pg. 175; HEADLINE: Continuity and change in an old industrial region. BYLINE: Brown, Lawrence A. ; Lobao, Linda M. ; Verheyen, Anthony L.);

Throughout much of the 20th century, Western economies were dominated by large, vertically integrated business firms that increasingly diversified their operations throughout national economies, as well as expanded internationally (Chandler, 1977, 1990). This model of the large firm, combined with a Keynesian welfare state that attempted to articulate supply with demand and manage relations between big business and organized labor, has been referred to as Fordism, in recognition of Henry Ford's role in making assembly-line production the model of industrial efficiency (Bagguley, 1991; Piore and Sabel, 1984). Over the past 2 decades or so, many changes have been apparent in Western economies, as increasing international competition has forced organizational restructurings and the reconfiguration of entire national political-economic systems. Some observers have comprehended this development as an institutional transformation from Fordism to post- Fordism (see Hall and Jacques, 1989).

Post- Fordism indicates an alternative (to Fordist) means of organizing both business firms and the larger national political economies within which these firms are embedded. Network-based production is the dominant model of business organization under post-Fordist arrangements. Networks are often concentrated around dominant firms that coordinate production and capture most of the value added (Harrison, 1994). In the post-Fordist political economy, the role of the state shifts from an active maintenance of corporatist arrangements and Keynesian demand management to a relatively noninterventionist stance supporting labor intensification, and monetary management (see Amin, 1994). Institutional developments that can be termed post-Fordist have occurred throughout much of the Western world, most prominently in the United States since 1980, the United Kingdom since 1979, and New Zealand since 1984.

At the organizational level, post- Fordism has been associated with downsizing (through both deconglomerization and vertical disintegration), spatial deconcentration, an increased use of subcontracting (outsourcing), and a proliferation of temporary and part-time employment (Bagguley, 1991). In terms of core technologies, flexible specialization systems able to exploit economies of scope have constituted the primary development (Piore and Sabel, 1984). The labor-management relationship has been recast in terms of a cooperative association between a core segment of skilled workers and management (Gorz, 1989; Harrison, 1994). (Unions, if part of this new relationship at all, are usually limited to enterprise bargaining activities.) These developments obviously have not occurred either concurrently or to the same extent across sectors and countries. Nonetheless, they have constituted recognizable trends and tendencies in the transformation of most Western political economies. The vast majority of commercial organizations have certainly been affected by these developments and have restructured along at least some of the lines identified above. (Business and Society March, 1996 SECTION: Vol. 35 ; No. 1 ; Pg. 7; HEADLINE: Missing the forest for the trees: a critique of the social responsibility concept and discourse.Special Issue: New Perspectives on Business and Society BYLINE: Jones, Marc T.)

For over 50 years ' Fordism' has been the regulative ideal of Western management. ' Fordism' refers to an organisational form in which elaborate management hierarchies systematically strip away worker autonomy and knowledge in highly integrated divisions of labour. Both labour and machinery in the Fordist factory perform finely defined tasks. Fordism's relentless search for maximum productivity through de-skilling is premised on the existence of stable and predictable mass markets for standardised commodities. The conservative symbiosis between market and production at the heart of Fordism has been destabilised by the fragmentation of demand and the arrival of competitors setting radically new performance standards in product and process. (Business History January, 1994 SECTION: Vol. 36 ; No. 1 ; Pg. 184; HEADLINE: After Henry: continuity and change in Ford Motor Company; Special Issue: The Making of Global Enterprise BYLINE: McKinlay, Alan ; Starkey, Ken)

Unfortunately, the designers of our current education package borrowed their ideas from Henry Ford, America's first successful mass manufacturer. Fordism offered a model of how to design and manage a mass production factory. The basic components of Fordism include a standardized product produced in high volume; workers who are low-skilled overall but who acquire a narrow specialty; a separation of management and design work from production work; a linear production process (e.g., assembly-line manufacturing); a de-skilling of production workers so as to reduce wage costs; a hierarchical organization based on task; a separation of those who process information from those who produce the information; and a geographical centralization of resources into large-capacity plants.

The Ford model, in essence, became the American model of production -- and of education. The model yielded considerable, if not inordinate, success for three-quarters of this century. The Ford model of production was aided by the destruction of the industrial base of most European nations in World War II, leaving U.S. manufacturing firms in a dominant position in the world. The parallel model of mass education was aided by the demise of labor-hungry agriculture and restrictive child labor laws, leaving children free to attend school. ( Phi Delta Kappan January, 1993 SECTION: Vol. 74 ; No. 5 ; Pg. 375; HEADLINE: Redesigning the work of education. BYLINE: O'Looney, Lohn)