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One of the central dynamics shaping organizations is a contradiction managers face between ensuring workforce discipline and harnessing worker creativity. In this rich study of American manufacturing, Matt Vidal offers a theory of 'organizational political economy', integrating concepts from organization theory into a classical Marxist framework.
List of contents
- I. The Problem
- 1: The Problem of Labor Management
- 2: Lean Management and Employee Involvement
- II. Theory
- 3: A Theory of Organizational Political Economy
- III. Analysis
- 4: The Postfordist Field in American Manufacturing
- 5: Four Approaches to Lean Production
- 6: Routine Politics of Production I: Quality Not Quantity
- 7: Routine Politics of Production II: The Workforce Contradiction
- 8: Routine Politics of Production III: The Management Contradiction
- 9: Lean Workplace Regimes: Valorization Logics and Organizational Logics
- IV. Conclusion
- 10: Capitalist Management and Routine Inefficiency
About the author
Matt Vidal is Reader in Sociology and Political Economy in the Institute for International Management, Loughborough University London. He is author of Organizing Prosperity (with David Kusnet) and editor of The Oxford Handbook of Karl Marx (with Paul Prew, Tomás Rotta and Tony Smith) and Comparative Political Economy of Work (with Marco Hauptmeier). He has published over twenty articles or book chapters on work, human resource management, employment relations, labor markets, comparative political economy, and social theory. He holds a doctorate in sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Summary
One of the central dynamics shaping organizations is a contradiction managers face between ensuring workforce discipline and harnessing worker creativity. In this rich study of American manufacturing, Matt Vidal offers a theory of 'organizational political economy', integrating concepts from organization theory into a classical Marxist framework.
Additional text
By raising this issue of permissive competition and inefficiency, ... Vidal refreshes not only LPT and the sociology of work but economic sociology and organizational more broadly. Paradigm-making questions like these are urgently needed for our field. In Management Divided, Vidal brings a critical and realistic eye to this daunting task.
