‘Lean Production is Dead, Long Live Lean Production’: Lean, Neo-Liberal Crisis, Turbulence and the Consolidation of Regimes of Subordination
Main Article Content
Abstract
This paper considers the various ways in which Lean originally was understood by advocates and critics. The paper argues that notwithstanding Lean’s impact in respect of material changes to work and labour processes in addition it can be interpreted as an ideological formation and the motor of neoliberal turbulence, at once a driver of the crisis of over production and a response to it. Lean engenders at the level of the political economy the link between a range of management regimes requiring stress to systems, institutions and individuals. Locally, this process was famously described by the labour movement activist-scholars Mike Parker and Jane Slaughter as Management by Stress. We argue that it is critical to the contemporary character of the turbulence driving neoliberal retrenchment-restructuring. While we accept the French labour sociologist Jean-Pierre Durand’s description of the era in which we are living as the time of the Lean society, we offer a somewhat different angle on the nature of Lean that interprets it not simply as a management strategy for renewal but rather as a response to this period of neoliberal turbulence in which it is a central component.
Article Details
How to Cite
Stewart, P. ., Pulignano, V. ., & Mrozowicki, A. (2019). ‘Lean Production is Dead, Long Live Lean Production’: Lean, Neo-Liberal Crisis, Turbulence and the Consolidation of Regimes of Subordination. Warsaw Forum of Economic Sociology, 10(19), 7–34. Retrieved from https://econjournals.sgh.waw.pl/wfes/article/view/3123
Section
Articles
Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal. All authors agree for publishing their email adresses, affiliations and short bio statements with their articles during the submission process.
References
Abdullah, S.R.S., Keenoy, T. (1995), ‘Japanese management practices in the Malaysian electronics industry’, Journal of Management Studies 32(6): 747–766.
Ackroyd, S., Burrell, G., Hughes, H., Whitaker, A. (1988), ‘The Japanisation of British industry?’, Industrial Relations Journal 19(1): 11–23.
Alcadipani, A. Hassard, J., Islam, G (2018), ‘“I shot the Sheriff”: Irony, Sarcasm and the Changing Nature of Workplace Resistance’, Journal of Management Studies 55(8): 1452–1487.
Ashton, D.N., Sung, J. (2002), Supporting Workplace Learning for High Performance Working, Geneva: ILO.
Benanav, A. (2019) ‘Automation and the Future of Work’, New Left Review 119: 5–38.
Berggren, C. (1988) ‘“New production concepts” in final assembly – the Swedish experience’, in: B.B. Dankbaar, U. Jurgens, T. Malsch (eds.), Die Zukunft der Arbeit in der Automobilindustrie, Berlin: WZB.
Berggren, C. (1993), ‘The end of history?’, Work Employment and Society 7(2): 163–188.
Berggren, C. (1995), ‘Japan as number two: Competitive problems and the future of alliance capitalism after the burst of the bubble economy’, Work, Employment and Society 9(1): 53–95.
Boyer, R., Freyssenet, M. (2000), The Productive Models: The Conditions of Profitability, Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan.
Bradley, H, Erickson, M., Stephenson, C., Williams, S. (2001), Myths at Work, Oxford: Polity Press.
Brenner, M., Fairris, D., Ruser, J. (2004), ‘“Flexible” work practices and occupational safety and health: exploring the relationship between cumulative trauma disorders and workplace transformation’, Industrial Relations 43: 242–266.
Burgess, N., Radnor, Z. (2013), ‘Evaluating Lean in healthcare’, International Journal of Health Care Quality Assurance 26(3): 220–235.
Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) (1990), Workplace issues, work reorganisation: responding to lean production, Willowfield, Ontario: CAW Research and Communications Departments.
Carter, B., Danford, A., Howcroft, D., Richardson, H., Smith, A., Taylor, P. (2013), ‘“Stressed out of my box”: employee experience of lean working and occupational ill-health in clerical work in the UK public sector’, Work, Employment & Society 27(5): 747–767.
Dardot, P., Laval, Ch. (2017), The New Way of the World. On Neoliberal Society, London: Verso Books.
Delbridge, R. (1995), ‘Surviving JIT: Control and resistance in a Japanese transplant’, Journal of Management Studies 32(6): 803–817.
Dunn, E (2004), Privatizing Poland: Baby Food, Big Business, and the Remaking of Labor, Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Durand, J.-P. (2007), The Invisible Chain: Constraints and Opportunities in the New World of Employment, Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan.
Durand, J.-P. (2017), La fabrique de l’Homme nouveau. Travailler, consommer et se taire?, Lormont: Le Bord de l’eau.
Elger, T., Smith, C. (1994), Global Japanization: The Transformation of the Labour Process, London: Routledge.
Fucini, J., Fucini, S. (1990), Working for the Japanese, New York: The Free Press.
Garrahan, P., Stewart, P. (1992), The Nissan Enigma: Flexibility and Work in a Local Economy, London: Mansell.
Gerpisa (1993), ‘Trajectories of automobile firms’. Proceedings of the Group for the Study of the Auto Industry and its Employees, Paris: University d’Evry-Val d’Essone.
Graham, L. (1995), On the line at Subaru-Isuzu: The Japanese model and the American worker. Ithaca, NY: ILR/Cornell University Press.
Jones, D. (1992), ‘Lean production (an update)’. Paper presented to the Lean Production and European Trade Union Co-operation. TGWU Centre, 6th–11th December 1992, Eastbourne, England.
Hardy, J. (2009), Poland’s New Capitalism, London: Pluto Press.
Jürgens, U., Malsch, T., Dohse, K. (1993), Breaking from Taylorism: Changing Forms of Work in the Automobile Industry, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Jürgens, U., Krzywdzinski, M. (2006), New Worlds of Work. Varieties of Work in Car Factories in the BRIC Countries, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kenney, M., Florida, R. (1991), ‘Transplanted organisations: The transfer of Japanese industrial organization to the US’, American Sociological Review 56: 381–398.
Kidder, T. (1986), The Soul of New Machine, Glasgow: Harper Collins, Avon Books.
Kenney, M., Florida, R. (1993), Beyond Mass Production: The Japanese System and Its Transfer to the US, Oxford: OUP.
Lordon, F. (2014), Willing Slaves of Capital. Spinoza and Marx on Desire, London: Verso Books.
Miliband, R. (1989), Divided Societies: Class Struggle in Contemporary Capitalism, Oxford: OUP.
Milkman, R. (1991), Japan`s Californian Factories–Labour Relations and Economic Globalisation, Los Angeles: Institute of Industrial Relations, University of California.
Moody, K. (1997), Workers in a lean World: Unions in the International Economy, New York: Haymarket.
Moody, K. (2007), U.S. Labor in Trouble and Transition, London: Verso.
Mooney, G., Law, A. (eds.) (2007), New Labour/Hard Labour: Restructuring and Resistance inside the Welfare Industry, Bristol: The Policy Press.
Morozov, E. (2019), ‘Digital Socialism’, New Left Review 116/117: 33–67.
Morris, J., Munday, M., Wilkinson, B. (1992), Japanese Investment in Wales: Social and Economic Consequences, Cardiff Business School, mimeo.
Morris, J., Wilkinson, B. (1995), ‘The transfer of Japanese management to alien institutional environments’, Journal of Managment Studies 32(6): 719–730.
Oliver, N. (1991), ‘The dynamics of just-in-time’, New Technology, Work and Employment 6(1): 19–27.
Oliver, N., Delbridge, R., Jones, D., Lowe, J. (1993), ‘World class manufacturing: further evidence in the lean production debate’. Paper presented to the British Academy of Management Conference, Milton Keynes, September.
Oliver, N., Jones, D., Delbridge, R., Lowe, J. (1994), ‘Worldwide Manufacturing Competitiveness Study’. The Second Lean Enterprise Report, Andersen Consulting.
Oliver, N., Wilkinson, B. (1992), The Japanization of British Industry: New Developments in the 1990s, London: Blackwell.
Parker, M., Slaughter, J. (1988), Choosing Sides: Unions and the Team Concept, Boston: South End Press.
Radnor, Z., Holweg, M., Waring, J. (2012), 'Lean Healthcare: the unfilled Promise?', Social Science and Medicine 74(3): 364–371.
Radnor, Z.J. (2010), Review of Business Process Improvement Methodologies in Public Services, London: Advanced Institute of Management.
Radnor, Z.J., Boaden, R. (2008), 'Editorial: Lean in the Public Services: Panacea or Paradox?' Public Money and Management 28(1): 3–7.
Radnor, Z.J., Walley, P. (2008), 'Learning to Walk Before We Try to Run: Adapting Lean for the Public Sector', Public Money and Management 28(1): 13–20.
Radnor, Z.J., Walley, P., Stephens, A., Bucci, G. (2006), Evaluation of the Lean Approach to Business Management and its Use in the Public Sector. Scottish Executive Social Research, http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2006/06/13162106/0
Rinehart, J., Huxley, C., Robertson, D. (1997), Just another Car Factory: Lean Production and Its Discontents, Ithaca: ILR Press.
Seddon, J. (2004), Systems Thinking and Performance Improvement in the Public Sector, Axminster: Triarchy Press.
Smith, T. (2000), Technology and Capital in the Age of Lean Production: A Marxian Critique of the 'New Economy', New York: SUNY Press.
Stephenson, C. (1995), ‘The different experience of trade unionism in two Japanese transplants’, in: P. Acker, C. Smith, P. Smith, P. (eds.), The New Workplace and Trade Unionism, London: Routledge.
Stephenson, C., Stewart P., Wray, D. (2019), ‘Towards a Sociology of the Sociology of Work in the UK Since 1945: the Myth of the Golden Age’, in: Stewart, P., Durand, JP, Richea, MM (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of the Sociology of Work in Europe, Cham: Palgrave Macmillan: 1–44.
Stewart, P., Lewchuk., Yates, C., Saruta, M., Danford, A (2004), ‘Patterns of labour control and the erosion of labour standards: towards an international study of the quality of working life in the automobile industry (Canada, Japan and the UK)’, in: Charron, E., Stewart, P. (eds). Work and Employment Relations in the Automobile Industry, Cham: Palgrave Macmilan: 258–290.
Stewart, P. Richardson, M. Danford, A. Murphy, K. Richardson, T., Vass, V. (2009), We Sell Our Time No More. Workers’ Struggles Against Lean Production in the British Car Industry, Pluto Press.
Stewart, P. Mrozowicki, A., Danford, A., Murphy, K (2016), ‘Lean as ideology and practice: A comparative study of the impact of lean production on working life in automotive manufacturing in the United Kingdom and Poland’, Competition and Change 20(3): 147–165.
Turnbull, P.J. (1986), ‘The “Japanisation” of production and industrial relations at Lucas electrical’, Industrial Relations Journal 17(3): 193–206.
Williams, K., Haslam, C., Williams, J., Cutler, T., Adcroft, A., Johal, S. (1992), ‘Against lean production’, Economy & Society 21(3): 321–354.
Williams, K., Haslam, C., Adcroft, A., Johal, S. (1992b), Factories or Warehouses: Japanese Manufacturing Foreign Direct Investment in Britain and the United States, London: Polytechnic of East London, Department of Business Studies.
Williams, K., Haslam, C., Williams, J. (1992), ‘Ford -v- “Fordism”: The beginning of mass production?’, Work Employment and Society 6(4): 517–555.
Williams, K., Haslam, C., Adcroft, A., Johal, S. (1993), ‘The myth of the line: Ford’s production of the Model T at Highland Park, 1909–16’, Business History 35(3): 66–87.
Wilkinson, B., Morris, J., Mundy, M. (1995), ‘The iron fist in the velvet glove: Management and organisation in Japanese manufacturing transplants in Wales’, Journal of Management Studies 32(6): 819–830.
Womack, J.P., Roos, D., Jones, D.T. (1990), The Machine That Changed The World. Rawson: New York.
Ackroyd, S., Burrell, G., Hughes, H., Whitaker, A. (1988), ‘The Japanisation of British industry?’, Industrial Relations Journal 19(1): 11–23.
Alcadipani, A. Hassard, J., Islam, G (2018), ‘“I shot the Sheriff”: Irony, Sarcasm and the Changing Nature of Workplace Resistance’, Journal of Management Studies 55(8): 1452–1487.
Ashton, D.N., Sung, J. (2002), Supporting Workplace Learning for High Performance Working, Geneva: ILO.
Benanav, A. (2019) ‘Automation and the Future of Work’, New Left Review 119: 5–38.
Berggren, C. (1988) ‘“New production concepts” in final assembly – the Swedish experience’, in: B.B. Dankbaar, U. Jurgens, T. Malsch (eds.), Die Zukunft der Arbeit in der Automobilindustrie, Berlin: WZB.
Berggren, C. (1993), ‘The end of history?’, Work Employment and Society 7(2): 163–188.
Berggren, C. (1995), ‘Japan as number two: Competitive problems and the future of alliance capitalism after the burst of the bubble economy’, Work, Employment and Society 9(1): 53–95.
Boyer, R., Freyssenet, M. (2000), The Productive Models: The Conditions of Profitability, Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan.
Bradley, H, Erickson, M., Stephenson, C., Williams, S. (2001), Myths at Work, Oxford: Polity Press.
Brenner, M., Fairris, D., Ruser, J. (2004), ‘“Flexible” work practices and occupational safety and health: exploring the relationship between cumulative trauma disorders and workplace transformation’, Industrial Relations 43: 242–266.
Burgess, N., Radnor, Z. (2013), ‘Evaluating Lean in healthcare’, International Journal of Health Care Quality Assurance 26(3): 220–235.
Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) (1990), Workplace issues, work reorganisation: responding to lean production, Willowfield, Ontario: CAW Research and Communications Departments.
Carter, B., Danford, A., Howcroft, D., Richardson, H., Smith, A., Taylor, P. (2013), ‘“Stressed out of my box”: employee experience of lean working and occupational ill-health in clerical work in the UK public sector’, Work, Employment & Society 27(5): 747–767.
Dardot, P., Laval, Ch. (2017), The New Way of the World. On Neoliberal Society, London: Verso Books.
Delbridge, R. (1995), ‘Surviving JIT: Control and resistance in a Japanese transplant’, Journal of Management Studies 32(6): 803–817.
Dunn, E (2004), Privatizing Poland: Baby Food, Big Business, and the Remaking of Labor, Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Durand, J.-P. (2007), The Invisible Chain: Constraints and Opportunities in the New World of Employment, Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan.
Durand, J.-P. (2017), La fabrique de l’Homme nouveau. Travailler, consommer et se taire?, Lormont: Le Bord de l’eau.
Elger, T., Smith, C. (1994), Global Japanization: The Transformation of the Labour Process, London: Routledge.
Fucini, J., Fucini, S. (1990), Working for the Japanese, New York: The Free Press.
Garrahan, P., Stewart, P. (1992), The Nissan Enigma: Flexibility and Work in a Local Economy, London: Mansell.
Gerpisa (1993), ‘Trajectories of automobile firms’. Proceedings of the Group for the Study of the Auto Industry and its Employees, Paris: University d’Evry-Val d’Essone.
Graham, L. (1995), On the line at Subaru-Isuzu: The Japanese model and the American worker. Ithaca, NY: ILR/Cornell University Press.
Jones, D. (1992), ‘Lean production (an update)’. Paper presented to the Lean Production and European Trade Union Co-operation. TGWU Centre, 6th–11th December 1992, Eastbourne, England.
Hardy, J. (2009), Poland’s New Capitalism, London: Pluto Press.
Jürgens, U., Malsch, T., Dohse, K. (1993), Breaking from Taylorism: Changing Forms of Work in the Automobile Industry, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Jürgens, U., Krzywdzinski, M. (2006), New Worlds of Work. Varieties of Work in Car Factories in the BRIC Countries, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kenney, M., Florida, R. (1991), ‘Transplanted organisations: The transfer of Japanese industrial organization to the US’, American Sociological Review 56: 381–398.
Kidder, T. (1986), The Soul of New Machine, Glasgow: Harper Collins, Avon Books.
Kenney, M., Florida, R. (1993), Beyond Mass Production: The Japanese System and Its Transfer to the US, Oxford: OUP.
Lordon, F. (2014), Willing Slaves of Capital. Spinoza and Marx on Desire, London: Verso Books.
Miliband, R. (1989), Divided Societies: Class Struggle in Contemporary Capitalism, Oxford: OUP.
Milkman, R. (1991), Japan`s Californian Factories–Labour Relations and Economic Globalisation, Los Angeles: Institute of Industrial Relations, University of California.
Moody, K. (1997), Workers in a lean World: Unions in the International Economy, New York: Haymarket.
Moody, K. (2007), U.S. Labor in Trouble and Transition, London: Verso.
Mooney, G., Law, A. (eds.) (2007), New Labour/Hard Labour: Restructuring and Resistance inside the Welfare Industry, Bristol: The Policy Press.
Morozov, E. (2019), ‘Digital Socialism’, New Left Review 116/117: 33–67.
Morris, J., Munday, M., Wilkinson, B. (1992), Japanese Investment in Wales: Social and Economic Consequences, Cardiff Business School, mimeo.
Morris, J., Wilkinson, B. (1995), ‘The transfer of Japanese management to alien institutional environments’, Journal of Managment Studies 32(6): 719–730.
Oliver, N. (1991), ‘The dynamics of just-in-time’, New Technology, Work and Employment 6(1): 19–27.
Oliver, N., Delbridge, R., Jones, D., Lowe, J. (1993), ‘World class manufacturing: further evidence in the lean production debate’. Paper presented to the British Academy of Management Conference, Milton Keynes, September.
Oliver, N., Jones, D., Delbridge, R., Lowe, J. (1994), ‘Worldwide Manufacturing Competitiveness Study’. The Second Lean Enterprise Report, Andersen Consulting.
Oliver, N., Wilkinson, B. (1992), The Japanization of British Industry: New Developments in the 1990s, London: Blackwell.
Parker, M., Slaughter, J. (1988), Choosing Sides: Unions and the Team Concept, Boston: South End Press.
Radnor, Z., Holweg, M., Waring, J. (2012), 'Lean Healthcare: the unfilled Promise?', Social Science and Medicine 74(3): 364–371.
Radnor, Z.J. (2010), Review of Business Process Improvement Methodologies in Public Services, London: Advanced Institute of Management.
Radnor, Z.J., Boaden, R. (2008), 'Editorial: Lean in the Public Services: Panacea or Paradox?' Public Money and Management 28(1): 3–7.
Radnor, Z.J., Walley, P. (2008), 'Learning to Walk Before We Try to Run: Adapting Lean for the Public Sector', Public Money and Management 28(1): 13–20.
Radnor, Z.J., Walley, P., Stephens, A., Bucci, G. (2006), Evaluation of the Lean Approach to Business Management and its Use in the Public Sector. Scottish Executive Social Research, http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2006/06/13162106/0
Rinehart, J., Huxley, C., Robertson, D. (1997), Just another Car Factory: Lean Production and Its Discontents, Ithaca: ILR Press.
Seddon, J. (2004), Systems Thinking and Performance Improvement in the Public Sector, Axminster: Triarchy Press.
Smith, T. (2000), Technology and Capital in the Age of Lean Production: A Marxian Critique of the 'New Economy', New York: SUNY Press.
Stephenson, C. (1995), ‘The different experience of trade unionism in two Japanese transplants’, in: P. Acker, C. Smith, P. Smith, P. (eds.), The New Workplace and Trade Unionism, London: Routledge.
Stephenson, C., Stewart P., Wray, D. (2019), ‘Towards a Sociology of the Sociology of Work in the UK Since 1945: the Myth of the Golden Age’, in: Stewart, P., Durand, JP, Richea, MM (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of the Sociology of Work in Europe, Cham: Palgrave Macmillan: 1–44.
Stewart, P., Lewchuk., Yates, C., Saruta, M., Danford, A (2004), ‘Patterns of labour control and the erosion of labour standards: towards an international study of the quality of working life in the automobile industry (Canada, Japan and the UK)’, in: Charron, E., Stewart, P. (eds). Work and Employment Relations in the Automobile Industry, Cham: Palgrave Macmilan: 258–290.
Stewart, P. Richardson, M. Danford, A. Murphy, K. Richardson, T., Vass, V. (2009), We Sell Our Time No More. Workers’ Struggles Against Lean Production in the British Car Industry, Pluto Press.
Stewart, P. Mrozowicki, A., Danford, A., Murphy, K (2016), ‘Lean as ideology and practice: A comparative study of the impact of lean production on working life in automotive manufacturing in the United Kingdom and Poland’, Competition and Change 20(3): 147–165.
Turnbull, P.J. (1986), ‘The “Japanisation” of production and industrial relations at Lucas electrical’, Industrial Relations Journal 17(3): 193–206.
Williams, K., Haslam, C., Williams, J., Cutler, T., Adcroft, A., Johal, S. (1992), ‘Against lean production’, Economy & Society 21(3): 321–354.
Williams, K., Haslam, C., Adcroft, A., Johal, S. (1992b), Factories or Warehouses: Japanese Manufacturing Foreign Direct Investment in Britain and the United States, London: Polytechnic of East London, Department of Business Studies.
Williams, K., Haslam, C., Williams, J. (1992), ‘Ford -v- “Fordism”: The beginning of mass production?’, Work Employment and Society 6(4): 517–555.
Williams, K., Haslam, C., Adcroft, A., Johal, S. (1993), ‘The myth of the line: Ford’s production of the Model T at Highland Park, 1909–16’, Business History 35(3): 66–87.
Wilkinson, B., Morris, J., Mundy, M. (1995), ‘The iron fist in the velvet glove: Management and organisation in Japanese manufacturing transplants in Wales’, Journal of Management Studies 32(6): 819–830.
Womack, J.P., Roos, D., Jones, D.T. (1990), The Machine That Changed The World. Rawson: New York.