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The paper investigates one of the possible models of the modern state, namely: the Schumpeterian Workfare State, on the basis of the analysis of scientific literature. The author gives an assessment of the phenomena that determined the transition to a new production and technical paradigm of Post-Fordism. The paper elucidates the preconditions of formation of the idea of the Schumpeterian Workfare State and its essential characteristics. In particular, it is noted that the model of the Schumpeterian Workfare State is applicable to any capitalist states at the present stage regardless of whether they have passed the stage of Fordism. The author proposes his own definition of the category of the Schumpeterian Workfare State that was missing in the modern domestic theory of the state. The author poses a number of problems that we must resolve for theoretical understanding and practical application of the model of the Schumpeterian Workfare State. To this end, the author believes that it is necessary to update the doctrine about the state in the national science to create solid theoretical foundations for the development and functioning of the Russian Federation at the modern stage.

The left sees struggles over the knowledge economy as battles for what Marx called the “general intellect.” After clarifying that capital has always expropriated knowledge, the chapter shows the role of the general intellect in the transformation from Fordism to post-Fordism, as socialist and anti-colonial struggles claimed a stake in the general intellect and capital worked back to repress and enclose the movements. It also, however, absorbed the demands of the movements in perverted form. It then shows how post-Fordism depends on the general intellect and how left theorists of the general intellect end up reinforcing the knowledge economy’s demand for more and more knowledge, despite the incalculability of knowledge.

An ethnography on early-career workers facing job insecurity at the United Nations. This ethnography focuses on the work and lifeworld at the United Nations in Geneva and Vienna. By emphasizing the perspectives of entry-level workers, this book addresses the increasing flexibility and job insecurity for those at the beginning of their potential UN careers. It explores questions such as: How do career aspirants reconcile their narratives with the organization’s image built over the past decades? How can we understand institutional power and individual agency through the lens of ritual theory and the theory of social orders? This study finally examines the entangled discourses around privilege and prestige on the one hand and the precarity and vulnerability of a growing number of UN workers on the other hand. It shows that these phenomena are not contractionary but two sides of the coin. Using the UN as an example, the study considers mechanisms of flexible and unstable work environments in times of cognitive and affective capitalism.

Inúmeras são as formas pelas quais o mercado de trabalho buscou lidar com as transformações econômicas nos últimos 50 anos. Dentre essas transformações, a flexibilização marca as novas dinâmicas de produção e de organização dos trabalhadores. O presente artigo tem como objetivo refletir sobre as transformações decorrentes da reestruturação produtiva, observando como a partir desse cenário de estagnação da produtividade fordista – percebida como resultante da rigidez e das burocracias presentes na organização da produção, distribuição e nos mercados –, demandas não só dos consumidores, mas também dos trabalhadores, não podiam mais ser atendidas. O artigo tem como foco o surgimento de um novo perfil de trabalhador, demandado a partir das novas dinâmicas de flexibilização do mercado e de uma nova racionalidade a respeito do trabalho que, no início do século XXI, vai se refletir em novos modelos de organização e gestão do trabalho, como as startups e os coworkings.

The paper investigates two Swedish cases of state regulation of profound infrastructural change in relation to mining above the polar circle. An analytical framework of neoliberal depoliticisation and state regulation is used to investigate the extent to which neoliberal logics, especially the logic of distancing, determine the state relation to peripheral communities dominated by extractive accumulation regimes. The paper finds that the neoliberal prerogatives of distancing and flexibility are dominating the state relation to peripheral communities, and that this relation is determined by different aspects of distance. The dominance of neoliberal prerogatives also leads to a questioning of the widely held notion that the Swedish state has adopted an industrial policy devoted to mining expansion since the release of the Mineral Strategy in 2013. The transformation of Swedish mining politics - Actors, possible worlds and controversies

Regulation School and Social Structures of Accumulation periodizations of capitalism switched the course of Marxist theory away from theorizing stages of capitalism based upon a historical teleology. By combining research strategies of systematizing empirical history and elaborating upon a constant of capitalism each approach arrived at the idea of intermediate theory as a “level” of theory mediating between abstract economic theory and historical studies. Intermediate or mid-range theory operates as a form of institutional analysis capturing non-economic supports capital relies upon to avert crises and sustain decades of accumulation. Concern of these theories with factors stabilizing accumulation also brings to bear analysis of crises tendencies of capitalism. Of particular interest in this chapter are debates among Marxist and non-Marxist theories of the specific crises tendencies which led to the demise of the post-WWII golden age of capitalism.

This article examines the historical emergence of “craft-like” manufacture and labor along the global commodity chains for fast fashion in southern China. Using Guangzhou’s garment district as a case study, I analyze how intensification of transnational subcontracting practices across the Pacific Rim has facilitated a synergistic melding of craft and industrial production that is often described as a post-Fordist model of mass manufacture. Craft-based organization of production and work life has melded with industrial principles of transnational subcontracting and garment mass manufacture in urban villages that serve as China’s “workshops of the world.” While conventional ideas of craft in the contemporary period tend to project an aura of authenticity upon objects and ways of making, flexible mass manufacture in this age of intensified mechanical reproduction has increasingly relied on small-scale, craft-based practices that complicate migrants’ experiences of labor across divergent historical an...

‘Post-environmentalism’ is an approach to ecological modernisation in the United States which criticises mainstream environmentalism's emphasis on placing limits on economic activity to address the climate crisis. Building upon Ronald Inglehart's analysis of shifting cultural values, post-environmentalists Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger reject this antipathy towards economic growth because it undermines the material conditions that enable post-material, quality of life concerns like environmentalism to flourish in the first place. Yet some of the policies advocated by Nordhaus and Shellenberger to promote economic growth actually serve as obstacles to the realisation of post-material values. An alternative account of the emergence of modern environmentalism situates it within the transition from a Fordist to a post-Fordist model of economic growth. This analysis reveals more promising possibilities for promoting post-material values such as autonomy, self-realisation, and environmental concern tha...

This essay assesses the feminist potential of workplace flexibility when it emerged as an object of knowledge in 1980s US public culture. The keyword flexibility, which crossed economic discourses about topics ranging from production to remuneration to consumption, was constructed as coextensive with feminism at this time. The essay begins by analyzing popular knowledge concerning labor flexibility created in scholarship and mainstream news. Next, the paper focuses on the contemporaneous articulation of flexibility to feminism. Since 1980, news, scholarship, and film argued that flexibility might provide a feminist antidote for late twentieth-century capitalism's harsh draining of labor from bodies. Particularly, flexible working conditions became publicized as a way that mothers could be better accommodated in the workplace. Yet as the century waned, flexibility failed to uproot standard time-intensive models of work and excluded some women from job opportunities and job security. When flexibility appear...

This chapter explains why we should analyse Cosa Nostra under the structural transformations of economy, combining the ideas of Umberto Santino and Vincenzo Ruggiero. Moreover, it suggests strategies to fight anti-Mafia. If Cosa Nostra developed in relation to the capitalist changes, it is possible by this token to assume that it underwent a further transformation during the passage from a Fordist economy, based on mass production and vertical organisation, to a post-Fordist economy, based on a network structure and on a demand-oriented production.

The article argues that the current financial crisis that began unfolding in late 2007 cannot be explained merely by institutional failure, false economic theories, or human misbehavior. Instead, the crisis must be analyzed against the backdrop of the internal contradictions of capitalist accumulation and the gradual disintegration of the post-war hegemonic world order under U.S. leadership. The specifics of the crisis are inherently related to the failure of Fordism in the 1970s and the emergence of a post-Fordist, neoliberal, and finance-driven regime of accumulation that was pushed to its limits in the lead-up to the current downturn. El artículo sostiene que la crisis financiera que se desencadenó a finales de 2007, y que prevalece en la actualidad, no puede ser meramente explicada por el fracaso institucional, las falsas teorías económicas o el mal comportamiento humano. Más bien, debe ser analizada en el contexto de las contradicciones internas de la acumulación capitalista y la gradual desintegración del orden mundial hegemónico de posguerra bajo el liderazgo de EE. UU. Los detalles de la crisis están intrínsecamente relacionados con el fracaso del fordismo en la década de 1970 y la aparición de un régimen de acumulación posfordista, neoliberal e impulsado por el sector financiero, que finalmente fue empujado a sus límites en los preparativos de la recesión actual.

Autonomy, or the extent to which employees can control their own work, is a central theme in debates on organizational flexibility and labour market stratification. Predictions of upskilling and autonomy, for manual workers too, have been a striking component in visions of post-Fordism and post-industrialism. The two main comparative labour market theories — the varieties of capitalism school and the power resources approach — suggest that both the level and the distribution of autonomy vary across production contexts, either because of national differences in skill requirements or because of the varying strength of organized labour. The objective of the article, based on the 2004 European Social Survey, is to test these two hypotheses by examining national variation regarding mean levels and class differences in autonomy among 21 countries. The main conclusion is that both mean levels and class differences in autonomy have much more to do with the strength of organized labour than with the skill requirements of production. The analysis also questions a central element of the varieties of capitalism theory, namely the notion of national production strategies based on differences in skill specificity.

Since some decades many things have been changed such as culture, attitude, behaviour, structures in the economy and society naturally these process leads to industrial relations, but nothing has been changed in the field of structure and policy and stragedy of trade unions. As we remember one of challenging vawe has been realised during the Keynesian Age which called Post Fordism. This wave affected labour deeply, because new wave swepeed out blue colour workers at the manifacture sector. This was first and great shock for trade unions. Because not only in Turkey but also in European Countries blue colour workers were locomotive of trade union mouvement middle of the 20th. Century. During the 1980’s the other big shock realised for trade unions with neo-liberal policies. During this age not only blue colour workers but also public sector workers decreased drastically. At the end when we having 21st. Century unions are facing deep economic crise such as 1929. Even though this kind of transformation, technological changes, changed labour demand pattern, changed culture related to solidarity and huge threats still unions keeping old wine in the old bottle. There is no new policies, new strategies and tactics. Nobody knows is this sustainable. But it looks this is end of the tunnel for traditional trade union perceptions.

There are two competing labor law reform proposals in the Mexican legislature, both of which would profoundly reshape labor-capital-government relations should they be passed. The Plan Abascal is based on idealized relations of production derived from the post-Fordist theory that new global economic realites demand new regulations that allow employers more flexibility to deal with sudden market shifts. In contrast, the reform authored by an independent union confederation protects workers against employer and government unilateralism and exploitation.

This research analyses how Greece and Ireland have been positioned in the world development since 1945 by using the French Regulation Approach. In particular, this analysis describes three broad periods, notably the Fordist, post-Fordist and the New Economy ones. In each period, apart from the general approach that concerns the world economy transformation, the specific transformations of the economies of Greece and Ireland are also described. It is argued that the different understanding of capitalist dynamism and development by Greece and Ireland, due to their different national characteristics and experiences, had as a result the two countries to implement different policies in order to respond to these changes and consequently differently to take advantage of the new opportunities that have emerged. In this respect, Ireland has advanced a more sophisticated understanding of the dynamics of capitalist development, in relation to Greece and therefore has been able to identify and give preferential assistance to growing sectors (e.g. IT sector).

This entry describes the central features of Fordism and post-Fordism with special focus on consumerism. It summarizes how the organizational and political–legal arrangements during post-Fordism made credit readily available, encouraged home ownership, and created opportunities for risk taking. The entry concludes by pointing out that the meltdown of financial markets in 2008 and the subsequent Great Recession raise important questions about the capacity of post-Fordist consumer capitalism to sustain capitalist growth and development in the long term. Keywords: capitalism; consumption; culture; ideology; political economy

Communication is examined in the realm of Marxist theory not as an autonomous social field, but as a component in the total social structure. It is argued that there was a shift from the initial Marxist idea of forms of communication as relations of production to communication as part of the superstructure, and that this view has prevailed in Marxist theory for a long period of time. In the work of later Marxists, we can spot a re-connection of communication with the capitalist mode of production, but not with the process of structuration and changing of relations of production. In my view, first we must connect these modifications in Marxist theory with the changes in the capitalist mode of production itself and secondly we must seek the role of communication primarily in the production process. We stress that at the end of the 19 th century there was a shift from extensive to intensive forms of surplus value which was tightly interconnected with the mass (enlarged) consumption of symbolic commodities and commodities – symbols as stimulus for the intensive production. In this way capitalism was transformed to symbolic capitalism. In the ‘60s, the symbolic logic of enlarged consumption led to the need for diverse and flexible production and therefore to the deep information – symbolic changes in technology and social organization of the labour. Thus the logic of consumption became logic of production. This made possible on one hand the shrinkage of the enlarged consumption and on the other the high productivity of the economic systems. This was the rise of a new, deep symbolic capitalism, which made possible the social change without seizing the power. Therefore, the recent developments in the capitalist mode of production takes us back to the primary Marxist notion of communication forms as relations of production and make possible to change the laters by changing the first.

This paper examines the links between restructuring of production (post-Fordism), Europeanisation/globalisation of the economy and changes in the financial markets (financial market capitalism). It describes how, at European level, the greater scope for capital to relocate away from existing systems (labour markets, nation states), i.e. to make use of the ‘exit option’, dramatically shifts the balance of power between employees/trade unions and capital to the benefit of the latter. At the same time the paper also identifies the natural limits of the exit option that could offer trade unions scope for action.

Two features of recent economic experience have been the transition to post‐Fordism and the ageing of populations. Post‐Fordism entails diverse production and consumption, flexible employment, privatisation and a smaller welfare state. Population ageing is predicted to cause financial problems for state pension schemes and could provoke an ageing crisis. Although post‐Fordism and population ageing have similar expected consequences, with a stress on welfare retrenchment, they have been discussed as separate topics and few connections have been made between them; the present paper aims to bring them closer together and consider how they are related. Post‐Fordism could be seen as resolving the ageing crisis and offering people better work and retirement choices in a new, post‐Fordist life course, but this version of events is questionable. An alternative view is that post‐Fordism and the ageing crisis are symptoms of the general movement towards privatisation and laissez faire, which is by no means...

An unfortunate drift towards theories of structural recurrence informs much of the thinking about post-Fordism. In a typical structuralist manner, the idea is that once a particular regime of regulation collapses, a transition period ensues culminating in a new regime of accumulation. Historical evidence suggests otherwise. The paper re-assesses the concept of Fordism in light of the experience of the US, and in particularl in the context of the powerful anti-trust movement of the early twentieth century, which fused with a broader ‘constructivist’ agenda of the First New Deal administration. I am not arguing that Fordism should not be considered as a social mechanism for coping with the advent of the new corporation and mass production. But it should equally be understood as a wide-ranging political movement that brought together elements of small business, middle and working classes in response to the emerging trusts or cartels and the immense corruption of the ‘robber barons’. Conversely, the Post-Fordist period saw not only the collapse of the Fordist compromise, but also of the collapse of that political movement and its replacement by the pro-business politics associated with the Competition State.

This paper discusses the challenges to Regulation Theory (RT) that are presented by post-national modes of accumulation. It begins by introducing to RT's core analytical foundations a mode of social regulation and its explanation of the regime of accumulation. The paper then examines how, despite clear asymmetries, the stability of the international system supported domestic accumulation. Because of this, RT only really addressed the international from the perspective of the nation state, and with only limited engagement with North–South issues. While some authors did address the international system, the greater instability of the 1970s combined domestic regime change with greater international insecurity. Up to the collapse of the Berlin Wall, new political ideologies and economic ideals challenged the nation-based Keynesian compromise while greater trade from the South and greater financial liberalisation fundamentally altered the international environment. Various approaches to the post-Fordist international regime are discussed, including that of a financial regime, and the conclusion identifies some of the areas for future research.

The paper consists of two parts, the first focusing on the institutional heritage of an innovative work organization (teamworking) that emerged in state-socialist firms in Hungary in the 1980s. The second part of the analysis concentrates on the impacts of foreign direct investment (FDI) on work organization, with special regard to the employees' role in task structuring in the post-socialist economy during the 1990s. The experience with the so-called ‘Inside Contracting Groups’ (Hungarian acronym: VGMK) in the 1980s actually meant an innovative attempt to mobilize human resources by letting employees establish their autonomous working groups after their regular working time. Almost a tenth of the industrial workforce participated in this nation-wide social experiment. The technical-professional and social-cultural learning processes in these autonomous working groups have produced the following ‘spill-over effect’: these ‘proto-entrepreneurs’ within the state-socialist firms became micro- or small busine...

The growth paths of resorts has been an enduring topic of tourism research for over sixty years yet the ability to operationalize models currently put forward to explain the process has not been satisfactorily demonstrated. The Resort Development Spectrum discussed in this paper is a candidate for providing a model that does possesses an ability to be used as a planning tool in the forecasting of the likely pattern of resort development into the future. The model is multidimensional and based on an understanding of the demand-side response to the market that operates in resorts and incorporates elements of Fordist, post-Fordist interpretation of production and demand. The model is tested by using it to explain the last 130 years of development on the Gold Coast, Queensland. The model is found to satisfactorily explain the growth path of tourism development on the Gold Coast.

This article seeks a dialectical critique of and synthesis between two conflicting paradigms. In exploring the changing structures and global markets of Hollywood's media industrial complex, it draws on, but also critiques, post-Fordist accounts of corporate change and market competition. It identifies the new dominance of the multi-divisional corporate structure and its combination with subsidiary and subcontractor modes of inter-corporate relations together with a new emphasis on branding to tap into segmented global markets. The second paradigm, the political economy of the media approach, has failed, to its detriment, to draw on or to engage theoretically with post-Fordist discussions. This is largely because post-Fordist accounts implicitly or explicitly suggest that one of the central dynamics of advanced capitalism - namely, its tendency towards the centralization and concentration of capital (the Three Cs Thesis) - is being corrected or reversed. Political economy rightly refutes this but we have to explain why the real relations take the appearance-forms (of autonomy and plurality) that they do and how this connects to the cultural dimension of the media-industrial complex. The analysis includes a case study of Disney as a multi-integrated corporation.

Post-Fordism is a term which has largely been rejected by the Left, mainly on the grounds that it dignifies aspects of capitalist society that should be challenged. In this article I aim to redeem the political value of the concept by showing how it can contribute to a positive critique of wage-based society. Radicalising the theory of post-Fordism requires a deepening of the principles of autonomy and responsibility which are central to the post-Fordist work paradigm. These principles should be extended, I argue, to apply to the wider social repercussions of post-Fordist labour, including destructive environmental consequences, the manipulation of consumer needs and above all the production of non-work or unemployment which flexible production methods entail. I argue that workers’ recognition of their wider social responsibilities therefore requires theoretical mediations capable of loosening the reductive equation of ‘autonomy’ with ‘work’. I also argue that the trend towards knowledge-based societies, because of the difficulties it creates in the definition and measurement of individual labour time, is making the abolition of waged work an increasingly rational ideal. I conclude by highlighting the alternative scenario towards which post-Fordist capitalism is otherwise heading. This is a society where every social activity — including consumption — is recognised, formalised and remunerated as work, as people are paid to produce themselves in accordance with the needs of social reproduction.

Over half a decade after the collapse of home prices in 2006, and with no shortage of books and essays on the ensuing crisis, the place of the housing bubble in political economic remains contested. Preoccupations of scholars have been high levels of income inequality model, through this brief essay I hope to highlight the usefulness of a debate that preoccupied geographers between the 1970s and 1990s, and suggest how theoretical and empirical work since, as well as the illuminating shock of the Great Recession, should compel us to interpret the political economic function of the housing bubble.

This chapter focuses on four new models of the division of labor that developed after Taylorism and Fordism: post-Fordism and flexible accumulation, McDonaldization and co-production, Siliconism and socio-technical Theory, and shareholder value by blackboxing production.

This chapter compares the models for the purpose of synthesizing three of them—Toyotism, Nikeification and Waltonism approaches—under the more general banner of lean production. The chapter also analyzes the political implications of this model, examines how this fits the global division of labor, and finally looks at the limitations of lean production in the face of emerging additive technology.

This paper investigates urban policy-making and development from a regulation theory perspective. It describes major Toronto urban trends of the past 50 years in order to gauge their conformity to changing regulation conditions. Results indicate that in the 1950s and 1960s, policies in Toronto were in accord with the Fordist mass consumption and welfare orientation. They also suggest a coincidence between the post-1995 period of public-sector retrenchment and the market-driven nature of post-Fordism. The intermediary period, however, was dominated by unsuccessful efforts at maintaining Fordist-type policies in a regulation context shifting towards post-Fordism. These findings confirm the non-functionalist interpretation of links between policy-making and regulation professed by regulation theory researchers. They also cast light on the role the city plays in the changing nature of regulation. Assertive metropolitan planning and socially balanced sub-divisions characteristic of the Fordist period of regula...

This paper addresses two interrelated issues in tourism development: horizontal integration within tourism's component sectors and attempts at vertical integration between them. The paper employs a conceptual framework adapted from regulation theory, to assess the dynamics of these processes, particularly in relation to airlines and hotels. Through examining some of the most important examples of both horizontal and vertical integration, it indicates how these have influenced contemporary strategies in the component sectors. The paper goes on to illustrate how trends towards Fordist organization within airlines have conflicted with post-Fordist trends in hotel operations, to undermine attempts at vertical integration across the tourism industry.

The Post-Fordist welfare state thesis locates contemporary social welfare change within a wider analysis of the transformation of capitalist accumulation regimes. Whilst this analysis is useful in directing attention to macro socio-economic change, it has for the most part contained three shortcomings. First, the Post-Fordist thesis has overemphasized the role of historical 'breaks' in the development of social welfare as it purportedly passes from Fordism to Post-Fordism. Second, the thesis has assumed a degree of convergence between welfare states as a result of global economic forces. In doing so, it has underemphasized the mediating impact of existing institutional arrangements within nations. Third, the thesis has assumed, rather than demonstrated, the specific changes which are alleged to be taking place in various fields of social welfare. As a consequence, aspects of continuity in social welfare have been neglected. These three lacunae are addressed through a comparative analysis of developments in the personal social services in Australia and Britain. Services to older people are employed as the specific context of comparison in relation to three dimensions of measuring transformation along a Post-Fordist trajectory: a shift from a unitary economy to a mixed economy of service provision; changes in the model of service delivery and consumption; and strengthening the governance function of the central state. This comparative analysis suggests the need for refinement of the Post-Fordist welfare state thesis concerning the restructuring of social welfare and its impact on the personal social services.

The viability and desirability of a finance-led growth regime is first assessed against the historical evidence about the many alternative regimes that have been proposed as successors to Fordism. A purely hypothetical model is then built by assembling various hypotheses derived from the observation of current American trends. The imposition of financial norms, such as shareholder value, requires a new and coherent architecture for the mode of governance of firms, the form of competition, the wage labour nexus and the objectives of monetary policy, public budget and tax system. According to the model, any requirement for increased profit has a variable macro-economic impact on wages and economic activity according to the size of accelerator effects and the relative importance of wage and profit in income formation. The stability of an equity-based regime depends on monetary policy which controls financial bubbles and thus the diffusion of finance may push the economy into a zone of structural instability....

(2006). Globalisation, Policy and Shipping: Fordism, Post-Fordism and the European Union Maritime Sector. By Evangelia Selkou and Michael Roe. Economic Geography: Vol. 82, No. 4, pp. 457-459.

A theoretical anlysis of contemporary institutional changes in the developed economies is attempted in order to characterize what a post fordist growth regime could be. One starts to recall some stylized facts about the present growth regime, i.e. about the contemporary dynamics of productivity on one side and of demand formation on the other side. We then discuss the main theoretical tools provided by the Regulation theory to analyse the institutional nexus which frames the growth regimes. The analytical framework of institutional change that we derive insist on the predominance at each period of one of the five structural forms that are distinguished by the Regulation School. As did the dynamics of institutional changes with the wage labor relationships in the previous period, today's evolutions of the forms of competition (broadly taken) condition all institutional changes. This gives us a general grid to define the features of a post Fordist regime. Still differences in history and structures leave ro...