Managing for Ford

Abstract

In explaining the rationale for his classic account of working for Ford, Beynon (1973, 1984) argues that he was filling a gap in our knowledge of the experience of work. While the founders of corporate dynasties such as Henry Ford are public figures, at the time of Beynon's book we knew little of the people who do the work that makes corporations such as Ford public names. Beynon set out to remedy this deficiency. This paper sets out to fill a gap that still exists in our knowledge - the managerial experience of work. It starts where Beynon finishes, at the beginning of the 1980s, and proposes that the 1980s constituted a watershed for Ford managers with the introduction of a new notion of management - Participative Management - which challenged many of Ford's previous management assumptions.