Management Control and a New Regime of Subordination: Post-Fordism and the Local Economy

Abstract

In a recent review of the changing organisation of modern industry, Wood (1989) firmly concluded that while transformations in work may be occurring, the changes are too diverse to support the notion of a single, linear trend in new developments. This sensible note of caution informs our contribution to the debate about flexibility at the core of recent industrial change, and we address this via an analysis of the Nissan project in Sunderland. Nissan is represented as, and makes the claim for itself to be (Wickens, 1987), a pathfinder in the modernisation of an old industrial region. The Nissan development has been actively encouraged and assisted by UK governments in the 1980s (Garrahan, 1986; Crowther and Garrahan, 1988) and there is a strong resonance here with the Thatcher governments’ antiunion legislation. However, the significance of Nissan is not so much in employment creation as in the innovation of new management styles in industry. At the heart of this managerial renaissance are notions of a more flexible, more integrated, and hence more productive set of industrial relations.