Has Pos-Fordism Replaced Fordism in Capitalist Society
The beginning of the 20th century when Henry Ford first time put his genius idea of dividing works into separate parts by using assemble line into practice was marked as the start of massive production. It is also the debut for Taylorism in the massive production area. After that such method of massive standard production was named as Foedism. Based on the ‘scientific management’ theory that comes from Taylorism, the manufacturing area began to be dominated by Fordism. However, since the 1960s when a series of new technologies appeared, manufacturing did not have to be formed in a fixed method. A more flexible production method, which was named as Post-Fordism turned up. From then on a controversy appears between two groups of sociologists. This debate is about whether the post-Fordism has replaced the position of Fordism and Taylorism in the modern society. This essay is about to critically evaluate the explosive view that ‘Taylorism’ and ‘Fordism’ have been replaced by ‘Post-Fodism’ as the ruling paradigm of work in capitalist society. Views and some comments from different sociologists, such as, Michael J. Piore, J.Atkinson and Anna Pollert will be referred to in this article.
The most obvious phenomenon of Post-Fordism is the flexibility. It can now be easily witnessed that flexible practices are kept being introduced into different areas including labor process, technology, contract. So how flexible the manufacturing process is has been a main index to recognize ‘post-Fordism’ and ‘Fodism’ Piore (1986) has a strong mind that ‘Fordism’ and ‘Taylorism’ have been replaced by the ‘post-Fordism’ and flexibility has spreaded across most capitalist countries. The customers do not satisfy with pedestrian products and look forward to more specialized products. (Piore, 1986) So what the customers want, as an example, are cars with personalities and something unique rather than the boring black Ford Model Ts. And on the other hand, the implantations of new
The most obvious phenomenon of Post-Fordism is the flexibility. It can now be easily witnessed that flexible practices are kept being introduced into different areas including labor process, technology, contract. So how flexible the manufacturing process is has been a main index to recognize ‘post-Fordism’ and ‘Fodism’ Piore (1986) has a strong mind that ‘Fordism’ and ‘Taylorism’ have been replaced by the ‘post-Fordism’ and flexibility has spreaded across most capitalist countries. The customers do not satisfy with pedestrian products and look forward to more specialized products. (Piore, 1986) So what the customers want, as an example, are cars with personalities and something unique rather than the boring black Ford Model Ts. And on the other hand, the implantations of new
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