Management by Customers and Customer Control: (Im-)Balances of Power in Interactive Service Work

Thomas Birken, Wolfgang Menz and Nick Kratzer

Chapter 5 in Customers at Work, 2013, pp 76-99 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract On society’s long journey from its predominantly agrarian past to its post-Fordist present, the Fordist era has now become synonymous with clearly regulated relationships between companies, employees, and customers. Henry Ford, after whom the concept was named, is asso- ciated with a very specific way of conceptualizing social production and consumption. His conception was based on three distinctive, mutu- ally compatible pillars: equating value creation with the production of goods, a concept of labor based on the subjugation of human needs to the requirements of production machinery, and an image of the customer’s economic contribution as limited to the consumption of standardized mass products as famously illustrated by Ford’s statement that ‘any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black’ (Ford, 1922: 73).

Keywords: Service Work; Corporate Culture; Service Company; Labor Power; Customer Participation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-1-137-29325-1_5

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DOI: 10.1057/9781137293251_5

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