Abstract
Management Divided represents the culmination of Vidal’s research from his doctorate until now. Vidal (2013a, 2013b) is an eclectic scholar: He studied the transition from Fordism to post-Fordist accumulation regimes and its implications for macro-level outcomes such as the labour share or job quality; but he also focused on the organizational level, looking at the organization of work and other management strategies (Esbenshade et al., 2016; Vidal and Tigges, 2009). While Vidal analysed capitalism, organizations and the labour process predominantly through Marxist lenses (Vidal et al., 2019), he has also fruitfully engaged with organizational institutionalism (Vidal, 2017) and comparative institutionalism (Vidal and Hauptmeier, 2014). In Management Divided, Vidal brings these different approaches and levels of analysis together to develop an original theory of organizational political economy, that conceptualizes the tensions that managers and workers face in lean workplaces and explains why lean organizations are characterized by different workplace regimes.
Vidal argues that in post-Fordism lean is the best practice of work organization and that lean with substantive workers empowerment represents the most efficient way of organizing work. Yet, in the implementation of lean systems, the management experiences the contradiction between coordination and discipline, which distinguishes all management systems, in the form of empowerment versus deskilling (p. 80), and they often satisfice rather than maximizing efficiency. Managers settle for ‘limited forms of empowerment that produce satisfactory increases in efficiency’ (p. 85) based on their aspiration levels and cognitive orientations. They might satisfice because the former logic of Taylorism still resonates with them; or because they are happy to settle for good enough between deskilling and empowerment instead of going all the way to substantive empowerment; or they might satisfice in the routine politics of production, when they engage with workers who defend their existing routines and resist change (p. 95).
Vidal skilfully builds this theoretical framework on an impressive range of literature. He discusses old and new research in great depth, singling out arguments and empirical observations to clearly position his own theoretical arguments and findings. His framework is also supported by a large amount of empirical evidence mainly consisting of interviews with managers and workers (over 100 individuals) and 169 hours of direct observation in manufacturing plants in the United States. The empirical chapters include quotes of statements or even longer exchanges between Vidal, the managers and workers. The interview data convincingly show that management implemented lean to pursue a qualitative transformation of the labour process rather than only work intensification (Chapter 6) and illustrate the routine politics of production involving reticent workers and managers with different cognitive orientations and aspiration levels (Chapters 7 and 8), which resulted in different workplace regimes (Chapter 9).
When reading through the empirical findings, I found that many of the quotes resonated with the conversations I had with managers and workers 10 years after Vidal’s fieldwork within my own research project on lean production in European manufacturing plants. My interview data also revealed the contradiction between empowerment and deskilling experienced by managers as well as their attempt to ‘satisfice’ that contradiction by including some, albeit limited, involvement measures in overall standardized job positions. Yet, the labour–management interactions, and especially the position of unions and workers on lean production systems, were different from those presented by Vidal in his description of the routine politics of production.
This empirical observation raises the question what the role of the context in Vidal’s theory of organizational political economy is. First, the theory builds on empirical findings that were collected in a specific context; Vidal indeed dedicates Chapter 4 to present the macro-context of his case studies – that is, the American post-Fordist regime – and the main features of the companies he conducted his fieldwork in. Yet, his empirical case is not a ‘critical case’ – that is, a case that can be leveraged to generalize a theory or argument to a broader range of cases beyond lean manufacturing. Vidal does argue for the generalizability of the framework across occupations and sectors – albeit with variations in the ‘balance and precise nature of conflicting pressures and strategies’ (p. 307); yet, a more detailed upfront discussion of the influence of the (institutional) context on the theoretical framework might have clarified how the latter could be applied to a broader range of cases beyond the United States and supported the call for context-sensitive research in studies of work and employment (Edwards, 2005).
The question to what extent the case selection influenced the theory also remains, at least partly, open. In particular, my second point concerns the implications of context-driven differences for the routine politics of production as described by Vidal. To be sure, Vidal acknowledges that, while the management is more influenced by global best practices, labour is more embedded in the institutional socio-economic context (pp. 91, 233). Employment relations scholars, most prominently Hyman (2001), showed that unions follow different identities (but we could call them also logics or orientations) depending on their history and political traditions. These different ‘logics’ are likely to influence the reticence of workers vis-a-vis change and, more specifically, the opportunity for empowerment. For instance, unions’ commitment to Fordist ideas and resistance to change is typical of Anglo-Saxon (manufacturing) unions, which have little control over changes in the work organization due to their poorly institutionalized voice rights. For instance, before being crushed by Margaret Thatcher, British manufacturing unions resisted the implementation of new technology, cross-training and rotation for fear of losing job control (Lane, 1988). In contrast, German unions and works councils have traditionally been more pro-active and have shaped the implementation of lean; to do so, they have relied on their strong voice rights and built on the tradition of humanization of work, which is counterposed to the Taylorist logic (Kern and Schumann, 1984). As a result, the lean adopted in those companies with ‘typical’ German institutions of industrial relations differs from the lean systems adopted in other contexts (see, for example, Krzywdzinski, 2017) even though it is also true that the implementation of lean even in German manufacturing supports Vidal’s claim that lean represents ‘the best way’ globally (pp. 57, 58).
The power resources available to labour also vary across institutional contexts. Vidal is surely aware of cross-national (and subnational) variation in the micro-political bargaining processes between labour and management, and their influence on the organization of work and other employment outcomes; he indeed acknowledges that organized labour, adversarial tactics and militancy play an essential and indispensable role (pp. 38, 322), but such a role is not integrated in the theory when discussing the mechanisms leading to high-involvement lean regimes (pp. 153–155). However, a central claim of comparative employment relations scholars seems to speak to Vidal’s argument; that is, that strong labour can serve as ‘beneficial constraint’ on management because it prevents the compression of labour costs and forces management to invest in their workforce and in workplace innovation to improve productivity (Sorge and Streeck, 1987). In Vidal’s words, institutional ‘beneficial constraints’ could prevent the management from ‘satisficing’ and push them to adopt a lean work organization that entails ‘substantive empowerment’; for instance, the German codetermination can prevent managers from ‘routinely dismissing workers’ ideas’ (p. 81), ensuring greater influence on the routine politics of production and its outcomes. As European scholars emphasized the role of labour, I wonder therefore whether the US context is partly responsible for Vidal’s claim that managers with the highest aspiration level are primarily responsible for the adoption of lean with substantive empowerment – the most efficient form of lean according to Vidal.
Luckily, I do not think that my questions will stay unanswered for very long as I am confident that comparative scholars (including myself) will soon take up the challenge to expand Vidal’s framework to other countries, sectors and occupations. Cutting across debates in several disciplines, from sociology and political economy to employment relations, management and organization studies, Management Divided will surely stir up discussion in different fields. Vidal’s book contains provocative and original ideas, which will have a large following but will also raise some scepticism among scholars close to a more ‘orthodox’ Marxist tradition. Yet, it cannot be denied that Management Divided is a unique book for its ability to bring together different theoretical approaches and levels of analysis and is a stimulating and engaging read for all scholars interested in management, organizations and work.
