Power, Control and Resistance in ‘The Factory That Time Forgot’

Mahmoud Ezzamel, Hugh Willmott and Frank Worthington

Journal of Management Studies, 2001, vol. 38, issue 8, 1053-1079

Abstract: This paper contributes to a developing body of literature which questions the claim that the ‘factory of the future’ is a total institution in which self‐subordination through ‘new wave management’ is virtually inescapable. It examines the experience of frustrated management efforts to re‐engineer working practices, mainly at the point of production, in response to repeated corporate‐driven initiatives designed to implement a range of ‘lean manufacturing’ initiatives at ‘Northern Plant’, a pseudonym. Our findings illustrate how workers can and do employ a variety of individual and collective forms of resistance involving dissembling co‐operation with change initiatives whilst maintaining a distance from them. In accounting for resistance, we note the significance of market conditions but focus primarily upon the importance of workers’ identification with practices that had been established earlier when management were content to indulge self‐managing patterns of work in return for securing required levels of output.

Date: 2001
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-6486.00272

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:jomstd:v:38:y:2001:i:8:p:1053-1079

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... s.asp?ref=00022-2380

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Management Studies is currently edited by Timothy Clark, Steven W. Floyd and Mike Wright

More articles in Journal of Management Studies from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().