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Article
Publication date: 29 August 2008

Colin Williams

This paper aims to provide a critical overview of the diverse visions of the future of employment.

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Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to provide a critical overview of the diverse visions of the future of employment.

Design/methodology/approach

A conceptual framework is presented for understanding the common narrative structure that underpins a multitude of contrasting visions on how employment will be organized in the future.

Findings

This paper shows how the diverse stories about the future of employment adopt a similar storyline, and reveals how most visions: firstly squeeze all forms of employment into one side or other of some dualism; secondly, order the two sides into a temporal and/or normative sequence in which one side is seen as universally replacing and/or more progressive than the other; and finally, represent this one‐dimensional linear trajectory by concocting some label to represent their vision, which usually involves using some ‐ism, ‐ation or post‐something‐or‐other.

Practical implications

Visions of the future of employment are shown to be grounded in some binary hierarchy (e.g. from Fordism to post‐Fordism, bureaucracy to post‐bureaucracy), all of which over‐simplify lived practice. To offer a way forward that transcends these one‐dimensional and linear stories, this paper argues for a more kaleidoscopic understanding that recognizes the heterogeneous and multiple directions of employment and opens up the future to new possibilities.

Originality/value

This paper highlights how a common storyline underpins a diverse array of competing visions of the future of employment.

Details

Foresight, vol. 10 no. 5
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1463-6689

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 January 2005

Andrew Goddard

This paper is an attempt to theorise the recent changes to accounting practices in local government in the UK. The principal theory used is regulation theory, which incorporates…

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Abstract

This paper is an attempt to theorise the recent changes to accounting practices in local government in the UK. The principal theory used is regulation theory, which incorporates aspects of hegemony theory and governance. Regulation theory attempts to explain major changes in national economic structures by examining underlying systems of capital accumulation, regulation and hegemony. Central to these structures and systems are the role and operation of the state and its institutions. Changes in economic structures will result in conditions, which favour different governance structures for these institutions; comprising markets, hierarchies, civil society, and heterarchic combinations. Several researchers in these areas have characterised “traditional” institutional practices as Fordist and are associated with a particular approach to regulation. However, the underlying economic structure is seen to be in crisis and a new Post‐Fordist regime may be emerging. Post‐Fordism is associated with new institutional practices, particularly decentralised management, contracting out of public services, extended use of public private partnerships and concerns for value for money, charters and league tables. The introduction of such practices may therefore be explained by the changes in underlying structures rather than as a teleological development of accounting. Moreover, some researchers have characterised such changes as representing a fundamental shift from government to governance. The very nature of the relationship between governance, accountability and accounting may therefore have also changed. These issues are explored in the paper.

Details

Journal of Accounting & Organizational Change, vol. 1 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1832-5912

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 March 1991

Colin Lizieri

Consider the post‐Fordism/flexible specialisation hypothesis.Examines how it can shed light on future changes in the propertyindustry. Concludes that changes in the global economy…

Abstract

Consider the post‐Fordism/flexible specialisation hypothesis. Examines how it can shed light on future changes in the property industry. Concludes that changes in the global economy – notably the integration of circuits of financial capital and the reorganisation of manufacturing industry – have potentially significant impacts on the property market.

Details

Journal of Property Valuation and Investment, vol. 9 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0960-2712

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 January 1995

Lee Hanson

Economic globalization is making Strategic Management researchers increasingly aware of the important extent to which international business strategies are shaped by national…

Abstract

Economic globalization is making Strategic Management researchers increasingly aware of the important extent to which international business strategies are shaped by national, regional, and international institutions — by differing business‐state and management‐labor regimes, industrial organization, and capital allocation systems, techno‐economic processes, etc. As yet, however, relatively limited attention to the “institutional embeddedness” of corporate strategy has developed within Strategic Management education. This paper seeks to encourage debate on incorporating analysis of the institutional shaping of corporate strategies by discussing four issues recommended to be systematically addressed in Strategic Management texts, lectures, and case work. The topics are: (1) the transition from the “Fordist” to “Post‐Fordist” global economy; (2) comparative business systems analysis; (3) political forces of the global economy; (4) global warming and environmental management.

Details

International Journal of Commerce and Management, vol. 5 no. 1/2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1056-9219

Article
Publication date: 1 January 1992

William P. Hetrick and David M. Boje

Attempts to reformulate the notion of organizational controlconsidering the new dictates of the post‐Fordist agenda. Ideology, as acontrol mechanism, takes on a secondary role…

Abstract

Attempts to reformulate the notion of organizational control considering the new dictates of the post‐Fordist agenda. Ideology, as a control mechanism, takes on a secondary role with the body (re‐)emerging as the ontological priority for the examination of human subjectivity, or more importantly the lack thereof. The major implication is the recognition that post‐Fordism, at least for the labour force, is nothing more than a ploy by the advocates of capital to further perpetuate control relationships. Identifies and discusses repercussions for postmodern organization “theory”.

Details

Journal of Organizational Change Management, vol. 5 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0953-4814

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 6 September 2011

Siobhan Stevenson

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the value of French School Regulation theory for questions of relevance to researchers and practitioners working in the field of…

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Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the value of French School Regulation theory for questions of relevance to researchers and practitioners working in the field of information policy in general and public librarianship in particular.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper is divided into two parts. Part one outlines Regulation theory's twin analytic tools of Fordism and post‐Fordism and its value for questions about the evolution of the public library. Part two provides an example of the approach's explanatory potential when applied to a series of public library planning documents produced by the Government of Ontario, Canada from the 1950s.

Findings

An interpretation of the evolution of the identity of the library user from patron to customer to information producer‐consumer is proposed at the intersection of the neoliberal state's austerity in social spending, the ubiquity of the new information and communication technologies, and fundamental changes in libraries as sites of waged‐work.

Research limitations/implications

The research facilitates the development of a political economy of the contemporary public library of potential value to the international public library community. Also, conceiving of the public library as first and foremost a site of productive work forces one to re‐engage with the meaning of shifting relations between the library user and the institution on working conditions.

Originality/value

The applicability of a relatively under‐utilized theoretical framework is modelled that enables one to ask new questions of relevance to the field of library and information science.

Details

Journal of Documentation, vol. 67 no. 5
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0022-0418

Keywords

Content available
Article
Publication date: 1 August 2002

Janet Sayers

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Abstract

Details

Women in Management Review, vol. 17 no. 5
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0964-9425

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 August 1991

Andrew Laing

The office as a workplace has reached a critical point in itsevolution. The requirement of the conventional office would appear to beholding back the near applications of IT and…

Abstract

The office as a workplace has reached a critical point in its evolution. The requirement of the conventional office would appear to be holding back the near applications of IT and organisational creativity, which aim to promote a much freer and more dynamic relationship between space and time for the office workplace. Henry Ford′s mass production of the 1920s laid the foundations of the modern office as we know it, but “post‐Fordism” is challenging the rigid patterns then ordained, especially the traditional notions of work time and space. To this end not only must the office be redesigned but also the nature of work itself must be redefined.

Details

Facilities, vol. 9 no. 8
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0263-2772

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 February 1997

Rick Delbridge and Jim Lowe

The period since the mid 1970s has seen dramatic changes in the economies of the industrialized nations with the vast majority of OECD countries experiencing a reduction in growth…

Abstract

The period since the mid 1970s has seen dramatic changes in the economies of the industrialized nations with the vast majority of OECD countries experiencing a reduction in growth of industrial production and a marked reversal in employment trends in the industrial sector (Rowthorn and Glyn, 1990). This process of “deindustrialization” has attracted the attention of academics and commentators from a variety of disciplines and been variously heralded as evidence of the advent of “post‐industrial” society (Bell, 1974), “post‐Fordism” (Piore and Sabel, 1984), “disorgan‐ized capitalism” (Lash and Urry, 1987), and the “postmodern world” (Clegg, 1990). These authors have described discontinuous shifts in the pattern of industrial society with broad changes in regimes of accumulation and regulation which involve socio‐cultural and political as well as economic change. Economists have described the failure of Keynesian economic policies in the West to sustain rapid growth and high employment as the “end of the golden age of capitalism” (Marglin and Schor, 1990).

Details

Management Research News, vol. 20 no. 2/3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0140-9174

Article
Publication date: 1 May 1992

Philip Garrahan and Paul Stewart

Current debates about new management strategies exhibit a marked tendency to regard economic, political and social changes largely as though they amount to the end of an old era…

Abstract

Current debates about new management strategies exhibit a marked tendency to regard economic, political and social changes largely as though they amount to the end of an old era and the beginning of something new. New production arrangements have been envisaged before, usually with reference to the transitionary period of industrial development around the late 1960s and early 1970s. Others have described current transitions to new management arrangements variously as part of Post Fordism, of Japanisation, of Lean Production, or of Toyotaism.

Details

Management Research News, vol. 15 no. 5/6
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0140-9174

1 – 10 of 218