I'm trying to finish off an essay that's due in today, in about 5 hours. Anybody know of any links/sites with a list of pros and cons for each? I've googled and googled 'til I'm blue in the face and I can't find sweet fanny all. I should really have used the library, in retrospect, but it's too late now. I've got the cons covered pretty well, but the pros are giving me problems with Fordism. Any help much appreciated! Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Well it's not like anyone on earth whose not in your class knows what fordism is. Oh ok, I just wikipedia'd it, so it is a real thing. You're still an asshole.
Fordism as in the economic policies of Henry Ford? Or Fordism as in the nonsense of "A Brave New World"?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fordism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-Fordism Fordism - Assembly line, mass production, repetitive labour - the workers only do one job (e.g. screw a certain bolt onto the car, fit the front left wheel or put a wingmirror on, etc). Centralised industry - raw materials, transport, work force. Resource driven. Died because of piss poor economy (early 70's - oil, etc), competition from other countries, etc. Post Fordism - Production of different parts shifted to countries where labour is cheaper. Contracts and subcontracts are given to produce certain parts of product - e.g. car radio. Wealth and skilled workers are in developed countries. Demand driven. Franchising. Joint ventures. Blah. etc, etc.
Its dead? I thought it was still alive. Theres entire sub-parts of engineering devoted to planning production lines for maximum efficiency. THe new guy at work used to work for NCR (Making cash machines) and they had a very similar system. Now, strictly speaking it was not broken down into one precise job per person. But nothing much is done like that these days, its arranged more so people can do what is necessary and let it move on. What is necessary depends upon the production line. So you could just say that Fordism got smarter. (And its stil alive and well in some places. I worked ina sandwich factory for 2 weeks and spent some time smearing jam on bread on a production line. IF that isnt a form of fordism, I dont know what is.) Or perhaps you mean it is a situation of making ushc massive returns on investments by selling a product so widely, that you can also pay your workers enough to be able to buy the product htemselves? I suggest you go look up Frederick Taylor and "Taylorisation". He was around, IIRC before and during Ford.
Anyway, re-reading your definitions that someone posted, they are pretty much self defining. They summaries it all, what more need to be said. Meanwhile, whwn I did a few management modules at uni, "fordism" was not what was talked about. Taylor was also just as revolutionary. From the definitions you should hav been able to put ofrwards an easy list of pros and cons. If you couldnt, your probably too stupid to be posting on Sciforums. (NOt that that stops anyone)
Good afternoon and a hearty fuck you, guthrie Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Yes, Taylorism preceded Fordism. Fordism does still work in some scenarios. I should have put Fordist Production and Post-Fordist Production. I was only concerned about that side of it, not the socio-political or anything else really. The main gist is that Ford made just about the whole car, in one geographical location which happened to be a developed country. Now Ford have a multitude of factories, can ship raw materials easily, contract places in SE Asia or wherever to make certain parts of the car and benefit from the cheaper labour. Humour me then. Come up with a list of pros and cons for each.
My, someone's grumpy today... I've never studied this, but it's interesting. I'd have to say the downside of post-fordism would be the cheap labor: it's exploitative. I have a cousin who lives in a factory-centric town in Missouri, where the Americans want paychecks that let them live a life AND let them finance and trick-out a brand-new F-150, buy and new computer, and buy new hunting gear every year. However, Guatamalan immigrants to this same town are raising families of 4 children with a single minimum wage paycheck. Now I agree that these Guatamallans getting ANY paycheck is a good thing, but really, minimum wage is kinda shitty to raise a family on, and for a company to stoop to "cheaper labor" means they're milking some sweatshop factory in southeast asia for all it's worth. So yeah I lost my flow of thought... but basically, post-fordist production seems to open the door of exploitation of people that we don't ever meet or care about. Kinda sick really Again, I never studied this, this is pure, shoot-from-the-hip speculation.
OK< a few off the top of my head, without reading up on anything: Pro's post-fordism: More flexibility in production runs. (And raw material sources) More break down resilient. cheaper (in terms of wages, taxes, and possibly efficiency). You, the final company, can offload uncertainties and a lot of costs onto subsidiary contractors (I believe Japan does this a lot) Cons: More complex. Less direct control. Fordism: Pros Direct control. good return. the concentration of people and capital is very powerful. (The problem is that a lot of the pros were pros for the period, and have since evaporated.) Cons Massive single investment needed. Susceptible to breakdowns- if one bit of the plant goes you have to back everything up. Transport of raw materials ties you to a specific geographical region otherwise it gets too expensive. Less flexibiklity in terms of output etc.
Yep. I got roughly the same, but a few more geographic ones. I keep adding bits, but the question I was set was - "Discuss the main geographical changes associated with the shift from Fordist to post-Fordist production." I hadn't done the research, didn't use any of the set texts for the course and had about 1 page of useful lecture notes. All my own fault, though. I think I answered the question, but the majority of what I wrote wasn't all that relative! Some pros are cons and some cons are pros depending what side you're on, too, I guess.
Ahhh geographical changes. I imagine it would include the near exhaustion of the ore and coal fields that were used by Ford et al? I dont know how much they were or not, perhaps someone could find out. Also, again offf the top of my head, its not so much that Fordism became irrelevant, its just that the evnironment changed around it. IMprovements in machine tooling and typing have made differently designed factories more efficient, and improvements in metals processing mean you dont really have to have the factory next to the steelworks- but i think youll find they are quite close together still in many countries. But putting it as geographical changes makes it even easier- the drivers are cheaper wages due to favourable exchange rates, more malleable workforce with no unionisation, lower taxes due to weaker (Or less caring) gvts. Hence the move to Mexico and China. But they do still make a fair number of cars in the USA, so again things are more complex. Your sources would have more data on the actual real life situation with production lines and steel plants.
