Post-Fordism and Workplace Change: Towards a Critical Research Agenda

Despite the well-developed academic critique, in particular that directed against the work of John Mathews, post-Fordism is still an influential account of workplace change. This is interesting and serious. Interesting, because it raises the question of how a discredited doctrine remains influential in the teeth of intense academic criticism. Serious, because post-Fordism propagates an image of workplace change that could confuse the deliberations of those vitally affected by the latter. This article identifies three incompatible positions on the nature of post-Fordist work organization within the work of Mathews. We argue that post-Fordism. in particu lar the work of Mathews, fails to distinguish favourable from unfavourable (for workers) forms of work organization, misreads developments in management strategy, and neglects the gender dimension of workplace change. Accordingly we counterpose a critical research agenda to that suggested by Mathews. We attempt, hesitantly, to take the debate towards a sociology of knowledge of post-Fordism, by pointing to some of the political interests post-Fordism serves.