A Radical Critique of Juvenile Boot Camps: A Critical Analysis of the Juvenile Boot Camp and the Rationale Behind This Form of Corrections From a Socialist Humanist Perspective

This paper is a critique of boot camps as a method of juvenile delinquency treatment Humanist theory is applied to suggest that boot camps fail to meet basic treatment philosophy of adaptation to normal communities and reintegration of youth into society as specified by the primary goal of juvenile courts, rehabilitation

Was Marx wrong about the working class? Reconsidering the gravedigger thesis

Was Marx wrong about the working class? Reconsidering the gravedigger thesi

On the persistence of labour market insecurity and slow growth in the US: Reckoning with the Waltonist growth regime

In this article I systematically incorporate empirical work on rising income inequality and wage stagnation into a regulation theoretic framework for analysing macroeconomic growth. The rise of job polarisation and income inequality coincides with a long period of macroeconomic stagnation, both continuing through to the present (with the exception of a brief period of strong growth and declining inequality in the second half of the 1990s). The corporate scramble to restore profit rates after the crisis of Fordism has transformed the institutional configuration of the political economy. In particular, institutions supporting upward mobility and middle-class incomes in the economy have been eroded by the twin forces of internationalisation (leading to the re-emergence of wage-based competition) and employment externalisation (outsourcing, downsizing, antiunionism, etc). The current growth regime, which may be characterised as Waltonist, based on the Wal-Mart model of buyer-driven global supply chains focused on cutthroat wage-based competition and deunionisation, is not transitional but rather embedded in apparently long-term institutional settlements that amount to a dysfunctional regime. © 2012 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC

Reworking postfordism: Labor process versus employment relations

The Fordism/postfordism framework has been widely used, but also heavily criticized, in the social sciences. I outline the central points of debate over the use of this framework for analysis of work organization, including the range of models offered as successors to Fordism. I then suggest that, while some criticisms of the concept of postfordism have highlighted important problems and issues, the Fordist/postfordist framework can be elaborated as an analytically coherent, theoretically illuminating approach to the historical, institutional, and comparative analysis of work and employment. Although researchers appear to be using the concept of postfordism increasingly less frequently over the last decade, I argue that it provides a unifying framework within which to analyze work and employment relations in the current phase of capitalism, which is characterized by an apparent variety of new organizational forms within a broader context of increasing disconnectedness of economic institutions. Lean production has become established as the predominant postfordist labor process, widespread in manufacturing but also increasingly being implemented in services. However, this must be distinguished from a broader set of changes in employment relations. © 2011 The Author. Sociology Compass © 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Manufacturing empowerment? 'Employee involvement' in the labour process after Fordism

Advocates of lean production argue that a work system is truly lean only if a given bundle of practices, including worker empowerment, is implemented in the proper configuration. In contrast, my interviews and observations in six US manufacturing plants demonstrate that substantive empowerment is not a necessary condition for achieving a lean manufacturing system that yields considerable performance improvement. While many configurations I observe appear to be 'lean enough' for satisficing managers, one commonality among the cases observed here is that worker empowerment is limited in depth and breadth. Employee involvement may be limited in depth because substantive empowerment requires a change in organizational routine and authority structure not necessary to achieve the largely technical goals of management. Even when an employer embarks on major technical and social change, pushing beyond lean enough toward world-class organization, substantive empowerment is limited in extent due to the demands of standardization and managerial prerogative, as well as resistance and reticence among workers. © 2007 Oxford University Press

Postfordism as a dysfunctional accumulation regime: A comparative analysis of the USA, the UK and Germany

The article seeks to reanimate the early regulation theory project of building Marxist political economy through the development of mid-range institutional theory. The concept of a mode of regulation - central to the Parisian wing of regulation theory - is rejected in favour of a distinction between functional and dysfunctional accumulation regimes. The Fordist regime of accumulation provided a unique institutional context allowing an extraordinary combination of high profits, rising real wages and strong GDP growth. In contrast, the postfordist regime is shown to be inherently dysfunctional, characterized by manifest tendencies toward stagnation and associated regressive trends in work and employment relations. A comparative analysis of profit rates, wage shares, growth rates and debt in the USA, UK and Germany shows that the single model of postfordism as a dysfunctional accumulation regime fits all three countries, although with important differences in forms of dysfunctionality. © The Author(s) 2013

Lean enough: Institutional logics of best practice and managerial satisficing in American manufacturing

Rational choice theory has been widely criticized for its unrealistic assumptions that individuals have perfect information and computer-like information processing capability, which are used to maximize utility. Sociological institutionalism and the behavioral theory of the firm have developed complementary alternatives. I combine the two into a single model of information processing. Institutional logics are central to top-down (schema-driven) processes that focus attention and guide action. Satisficing—settling for good enough based on a given aspiration level—is critical to bottomup (feedback-driven) information processing. Here I show that two practices associated with the postfordist logic of the capitalist firm—lean production and worker empowerment—are deeply institutionalized as best practice in the American manufacturing field. Based on interviews with 109 individuals in 31 firms, I demonstrate how moderate aspiration levels and conceptual schemas associated with formerly dominant fordist institutional logics both function to limit the adoption of best practice

Private sector management practices don’t work in welfare services

They're likely to save money, but degrade job quality and client service, write Matt Vidal and Jill Ebenshad

Temporary employment and strategic staffing in the manufacturing sector

While prior research has identified different ways of using temporary workers to achieve numerical flexibility, quantitative analysis of temporary employment has been limited to a few key empirical indicators of demand variability that may confound important differences. Our analysis provides evidence that many manufacturers use temporary workers to achieve what we call planned and systematic numerical flexibility rather than simply in a reactive manner to deal with unexpected problems. Although temporary work may provide many benefits for employers, a key function appears to be the provision of numerical flexibility not to buffer core workers but to externalize certain jobs. © 2009 Regents of the University of California

The enduring relevance of Karl Marx

This chapter is the introduction to The Oxford Handbook of Karl Marx. It summarizes Marx’s enduring relevance by demonstrating the continuing applicability of his concepts and theories to understanding twenty-first century capitalism and its crises, along with the historical development of human society across varying modes of production. It presents an intellectual biography linking the major moments in Marx’s life to his ideas and theories. The biography also gives insight into Marx’s approach to research by focusing more closely on the method he outlined in the Grundrisse. It demonstrates, among other things, that Marx continually revised his ideas in light of new evidence and argumentation. The chapter concludes with brief summaries of the handbook’s contributions, paying specific attention to the ongoing relevance of each chapter to societal concerns. While the introduction introduces the reader to the varied chapters in the handbook, it goes beyond mere summary to provide fresh insight into Marx’s life, work, and promise