Authority and Control in Modern Industry: Theoretical and Empirical Perspectives

ISBN-13: 9780415132121 / Angielski / Twarda / 1999 / 264 str.

Paul L. Robertson

Opis

This volume examines processes by which technological change has been assimilated into capitalist workplaces since the Industrial Revolution. Contributors present theoretical propositions, drawing arguments from neo-classical, Marxist, evolutionary and transaction cost economics, the sociology of Anthony Giddens and Max Weber, and network analysis. These are coupled with historical case studies, including: the growth of the factory system during the industrial revolution in Britain; the German chemical industry and German family firms before World War I; the American automobile industry in the inter-war period; agricultural labour in the American South after World War II; and the recent relationship between US medical specialists and hospitals.

Recenzje

'The essays are stimulating, thought-provoking and indicative of what a lively subject business and economic history can be when it is not held in the cold embrace of quantitative analysis.' - Roger Lloyd Jones, Sheffield Hallam University

'...this is a volume that supplies a good variety of ideas and empirical studies for the business historian.' - Roger Lloyd Jones, Sheffield Hallam University

'This collection offers a valuable resume of recent radical thinking on the history of enterprise and management.' - Joseph Melling, Economic History Review 2000

Spis treści

Introduction Paul L. Robertson 1. The rise of the factory system in Britain: Efficiency of exploitation? S.R.H. Jones, University of Dundee, UK 2. The co-evolution of technology and organisation in the transition to the factory system Richard N. Langlois, University of Connecticut, USA 3. Class structures and the firm: The interplay of workplace and industrial relations in large capitalist environments Thomas Welskopp, Freie Universitat Berlin, Germany 4. Knowledge, information and organisational structures P.P. Saviotti, Universite Pierre Mendes,-France, Grenoble, France 5. Technological change, transaction costs and the industrial organisation of Cotton Production in the US South: 1950-1970 Lee J. Alston, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA 6. The maintenance of professional authority: the case of physicians and hospitals in the United States Deborah A. Savage, Southern Connecticut State University, USA and Paul L. Robertson 7. Men and monotony: Fraternalism as a managerial strategy at the Ford Motor Company Wayne A. Lewchuk, McMaster University, Ontario, Canada 8. Management and labour in German Chemical Companies before World War I Sachio Kaku, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan 9. Buddenbrooks revisited: The firm and entrepreneurial family in Germany during the Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries Dirk Schumann, Universitat Bielefield, Germany

O autorze

Paul L. Robertson