(PDF) Selection in the Rationalization Process

International Journal of Political Economy ISSN: 0891-1916 (Print) 1558-0970 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/mijp20 Selection in the Rationalization Process Brigitte Aulenbacher To cite this article: Brigitte Aulenbacher (1995) Selection in the Rationalization Process, International Journal of Political Economy, 25:4, 108-122, DOI: 10.1080/08911916.1995.11643914 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/08911916.1995.11643914 Published online: 28 Jan 2016. Submit your article to this journal View related articles Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=mijp20 Int. Journal ofPolitical Economy, vol. 25, no. 4, Winter 1995-96, pp. 108-122. © 1997 M.E. Sharpe, Inc. 0891-1916 / $9.50 + 0.00. BRIGITTE AULENBACHER Selection in the Rationalization Process "Olympic Teams" through Lean Production and Qualified Group Work? Selection as an old and new theme of the rationalization debate Selection processes--at the end of which only high-perfonnance laborers or "Olympic-ready" teams are left at enterprises-were a major issue during the late 1970s and early 1980s in the fonner Federal Republic of Gennany, and not only for IG MetaIL the metalworkers' union, which coined the tenn. The discussion about selection in rationalization processes was closely tied, then as now, with continuing transformations in industrial production. Bu~ although selection processes--or the issue of how to avoid them---are back on the agenda today, the situation has changed greatly since the 1970s. Translation © M.E. Sharpe, Inc., from the German text: "Selektion im Rationalisierungsproze/3: Olympiareife Mannschaften durch lean Production und qualiflZierte Gruppenarbeit?" Brigitte Aulenbacher is a research assistant at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universitat and is the author of Arbeit-Technik-Geschlecht Industriesozi%gische? Frauenforschwlg am Beispei/ der Bekleidungsindustrie (Frankfurt/New York, 1991). Translated by Nicholas Levis. 108 ijf~ER 1995-96 109 Taylorist-Fordist rationalization arrangements began breaking down in the 1970s; today their erosion is advanced. Transformed market and business requirements are raising new problems of production economy and casting doubt on the methods of TayloristFordist rationalization for economic reasons. Meanwhile, this is affecting nearly all industries. The transition from standardized mass production to flexible manufacture of more diverse and qualitatively more valuable products, with shorter delivery times and according to customer-specific demands, and the shortening ofinnovation cycles have set problems confronting industries and enterprises since the end of the 1970s, or by no later than the 1980s, and with increasing urgency in the 1990s. The problems themselves were essentially much the same in the 1980s and 1990s, but the attempted solutions undertaken in the 1980s looked very different from those being tried out today. The industrial-policy approach of the 1980s was essentially characterized by technology-oriented modernization policies, and this also influenced the search for rationalization strategies for the transition to flexible manufacture. The model of the "zero-person factory" was a prominent example. The central Taylorist-Fordist rationalization methods actually remained intact in this approach. The paths to technologically based production flexibility then involved the usual strictly vertical an~ horizontal divisions of labor and the usual expropriation of producer knowledge for transfer to management or objectification through technology-coupled with a simultaneous reduction of routine activities through automation. "Computer-integrated manufacturing" (CIM) was the magic formula of the 1990s across many industries. Today the ruins of CIM can be seen in the plants and demonstrate the limits of these rationalization efforts. As a further unintended consequence of technology-oriented modernization policy, highly complex and easily disrupted production processes arose. The "zero-person factory" remained dependent, and not just on the will and skill of the producers. Technologically supported production can only be assured through an additional dependence on newly created and still-emerging activities in areas of indirect production 110 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF POLITICAL ECONOMY and within a new scientific and technical service sector (see Bradner, 1985, pp. 61ff.; Wittke, 1990, pp. 23ff.). It became obvious that "systemic rationalization," in which technology turns into an "elastic potential" (according to the sketches of the "new types of rationalization" at that time by Norbert Altmann et al., 1986, pp. 191ff.), and in which, in conformity with Taylorist-Fordist rationalization theory, living labor tends to be eliminated from production processes as a disruptive factor, does not actually function. It is against this background that human resources are being rediscovered today. Current rationalization debates focus on tapping the flexibility and creativity potentials inherent in living labor, coupled with simultaneous control of disruption potentials. It is in this connection that group work is undergoing a renaissance. Whether as an alternative to in combination with technologically oriented rationalization strategies, group work already gained great significance in the search for new paths in industrial production back in the 1970s and 1980s, most of all under the special conditions of the ''Humanization of Working Life" program promoted by the federal Ministry for Research and Technology. The concepts and forms of group wolk at that time moved very much along the gap between rationalization and humanization of work, and the economic or participative advantages and problems of new wolk forms were the object of a broad interdisciplinary discussion On the operational leveL however, group wolk hardly moved beyond the stage of model experiments. By contrast, group work today has become a "central element of rationalization strategies going beyond the single enterprise," as Dieter Seitz (1993, p. 33) observes. Dissemination of such strategies is expected in high-tech and low-tech areas alike. But group work nowadays--also in contrast to the rationalization and humanization debate of the 1970s-is being treated as an element of "operational performance policy" (Seitz, 1993, p. 43), intended for introduction for economic reasons in a time of recession. Not only has the industrial policy background changed, but along with it the understanding of group work. Group work, according to Dieter Seitz (p. 69), has become a "code word" for the ''wish for change." The direction of this change, and how industrial work will look after the estab- R'~E 1995-96 111 lishment of group work, are still open questions, currently subject to vehement debate. Here as well, the old question of selection processes, of the creation of "Olympic-ready teams," again arises. The dispute over new rationalization models: The issue is not the principles, but the methods The current conflict over the future of industrial work does not concern rationalization per se, its logic or its abstract principle of achieving greater efficiency at less cost or effort. The highest priority in the current search is to fmd methods adequate to the present situation in industrial and social development and, with these, to realize the same principle as before. Some production policy and sociopolitical perspectives do also fonnulate new rationalization goals, in efforts to redefme the effort or cost to be reduced or the efficiency to be raised. But here as well the issue is not the principle inherent in rationalizatiorr--that effort and efficiency can only be defined with respect to single given purpose&-alld also not the assumption of the rationalizing idea, that a selection and hierarchicalization of purposes, and thus in empirical terms of sectors and of people, is necessary (see Aulenbacher and Siegel, 1993, p. 73ff; Siegel, 1994, p. 35ft) Instead, dispute focuses on issues immanent to the logic of rationalization: the goals to set for the transition from standardized mass production to flexible manufacture, the best methods for reaching these goals, and (at times without reflection) the mechanisms of selection and hierarchlcalization that should be introduced or changed. Lean production and qualified group work are the two rationalization paradigms around which the dispute revolves. They both represent the logic of rationalization and its abstract principle of achieving more efficiency with less effort Arising from processes of rationalization, they reveal the methods of reorganization of industrial production in truly paradigmatic fashion. They take up both societal experiences with rationalization and the developmental situation of society, and project them, in their ideas about the interactions of market and production economy, technology, division of JJ 2 INIERNAnONAL JOURNAL OF POurICAL ECONOMY labor, and people, onto future development. These projections of what is possible (or ''viable'') first become possible when they are absorbed and made specific by the actors of rationalization. Thus, however, they define the object and direction of the rationalization debate, which in itself remains controversial. With respect to the transition from standardized mass production to flexible manufacture, lean production and qualifIed group work offer orientations in that they set up models in the truest sense of the word. They make new rationalization arrangements, which are supposed to arise first in the further course of rationalization and negotiation processes, already conceivable and arguable today, and thus lend them their power in the debate in the first place (see Aulenbacher, 1995,p. 121ff.). Lean production versus qualified group work: Neo-Taylorism versus self-regulating Taylorism With respect to rationalization goals and the transfonnation of Taylorist-F ordist rationalization methods, lean production and qualified group work can be viewed as the two poles in a spectrum of conceivable group-work forms. This spectrum will, in the later course of rationalization, presumably cover the range of enterprise- and sector-specific mixed industrial structures, the gap between hightech and low-tech areas, and the gap between forward-looking and less forward-looking industries and professions, which are all simultaneously also gaps in gender relations. It may be presumed that various "adequate" group-work forms, meaning group-work forms designed in the sense of the rationalization process, will be created for differing production structures and labor forces on a case-bycase basis, and that the specific concrete results will be located at different points on the spectrum between lean production and qualified group work. The issue is thus not whether one or the other model is more viable, but the manner in which they both predetermine the transition to more flexible manufacture by applying the abstract basic principle of rationalization in paradigmatic fashionand of the orientations that each model offers in doing so. The empirical genesis of lean production-a coinage that became WINTER 1995-96 113 synonymous with Japanese rationalization strategies with the appearance of the MIT study (Womack, Jones, and Roos, 1990}--is as different from the genesis of qualified group work as the production and sociopolitical goals that the two models represent Lean production is based on work organization innovations within the Japanese automobile industIy. These were inspired by the mass production following World War II strongly Taylorist~Fd and initiated in order to eliminate its weaknesses (see Wood 1989, pp. 448ff.). In sociopolitical terms, this is reflected in the assertions that increases in productivity and in innovational force are supposed to contribute to economic growth and that economic growth is equivalent to social progress (Womack et aI., 1990, pp. 17ff.). Subsequent costs of this model of growth, prosperity, and progress, however, whether viewed from the perspective of ecology or of health, are radically externalized from the company view--in other words, pressed upon other areas of society (see Demes, 1992, pp. 486ff.). Qualified group work was conceived and tested as a model in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s as part of research on "Humanization of Working Life" and in the form of "antbropocentric" production systems tried out at some northern European automotive and machinetool producers. Its genesis has less to do with the advantages of Taylorist-Fordist ~tionalz than with a search for alternatives to it. In sociopolitical terms, qualified group-work models represent paths to socially and ecologically responsible production modernization. Production and product policy goals are supposed to be redefmed-however, again, primarily according to business priorities, and only secondarily according to those of participation (see Eichener, 1993, pp. 49ff.; Benz-Overhage, 1993, pp. 172ff). In production policy terms, lean production combines product and price design in a new form. Through work organization innovations aimed at achieving higher efficiency with reduced costs in material, time, and personneL higher-value and more diverse products are supposed to be offered according to customer-oriented requirements, and at lower prices with shorter delivery times (see Womack et aI., 1990, pp. 25ff.). These work organization innova- 114 /NI'ERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF POLITICAL ECONOMY tions affect direct productive activities in various process segments where pursuit of technological efforts has been restrained, and the new forms of work organization are partly seen as alternatives to computer-supported production processes. Until recently, lean production measures in Japan covered an exclusively male standing personneI-that is, skilled workers trained specifically for their activity, with high general educational levels and a lifelong guarantee of employment (see Altmann, 1992, pp. 24ff.). Beside the just-intime principle, the production processes applied include team work and constant processes of improvement (see Womack et al., 1990, pp. 79ff.). Both elements, according to Womack et al. (pp. 103ff.), involve a new quality in comparison with Taylorist-Fordist rationalization in that they eliminate vertical and horizontal divisions of labor. Empirically, this is relativized because "team work" here actually refers to a team-like organization of particular process segments, which nevertheless remain bound within a dense hierarchy of bosses, and because "flexible application of labor" occurs on the basis of standardized work tasks and means. Communication and cooperation, thinking along and planning along-in short, the exploitation of flexibility potentials inherent in living labor-become desired elements of the production process and are included in its institutionalized forms (see Jurgens, 1992, pp. 28ff.; Wood, 1989, pp. 446ff.). Nonetheless, this all remains within the framework of the Taylorist-Fordist arrangement of work organization and technology. The improvement proposals expected from the workers remain within the- horizon of workplace-related diagnoses, subsequently evaluated by specialists and finally carried out as sometimes farreaching innovations from the top down (see Altmann, 1992, pp. 24ff.). This can certainly be intetpreted as a measure to increase the efficiency of knowledge expropriation, since, in keeping with the basis of an internalized logic of rationalization (see Wood, 1989, pp. 446ff.), the employees are expected to propose "improvements" only in confonnity with rationalization. The employees may well subsequently encounter these and many other "improvements" again, after a process of selection, in the fonn oftop-<!own technical and organizational innovations. ",~1iR 1995-96 115 Lean production, viewed not only in tenns of its genesis and associated sociopolitical ideas but also in tenns of its work organization innovations, represents a neo-Taylorist path to rationalization, under which the use of producer knowledge is modified even as strict vertical and horizontal divisions of labor are maintained In production policy terms, qualified group work is also a plan for assuring customer-oriented production in the sense of new market requirements, under the maxim of doing so with less material, less time, and less personnel. In the process, social and ecological aspects are also supposed to flow into product and production policies. Empirically, the group-work production process involves flexible application of labor combined with job expansion and enrichment instead of short-cycle work rhythms, and an integration within the group of many tasks previously assigned to specialists in production planning and control, quality control, retooling, or maintenance and repair. The goal is thus a far-reaching reversal of the vertical division of labor by integrating productive activities directly and indirectly within a single group. Internally, the group is divided horizontally among specialists with process-oriented overarching qualifications. To date, qualified group-work measures have involved male standing personnel:-above all, skilled workers, and sometimes also qualified semiskilled labor. With respect to application of labor, parti~on in technical/organizational innovations, and determination of production goals, the exploitation of human resources in group work is intended to mobilize workplace and process-related professional qualifications, but also to use other resources such as communication and cooperation skills or sociocultural values and attitudes. In technological terms, these work organization innovations correspond to fonns of flexible automation without centralized structures of decision and control, allowing greater potentials for human intervention. Technical and organizational innovations are supposed to be designed with the active participation of the employees (see Benz-Overhage, 1993, pp. 177tI.; Lehner and Schmid, 1992, pp. 22ff.). Anti-Taylorist with respect to the reversal of vertical division of labor, qualified group work is still a kind of "self-regulating Tay- 116 INIERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF POLIIlCAL ECONOMY 10rism"(Greifenstein and Kissler, 1994, p. 54). On the basis of an internalized logic of rationalization, the possibilities granted for selfregulation fmd their flip side in action routines and mechanisms of (self-)selection, hierarchicalization, stigmatization, exclusion, and informal division of labor within the group (see Eichener, 1993, pp. 66ff.). Selection for the coming "rationalization Olympiad" The current conflict surrounding the two models can be seen as part of a rationalization and negotiating process in which the outlines for a future stage of rationalization are being established today. In the process, the old question of selection processes is being posed in two ways: If lean production and qualified group work exemplify new paths to rationalization in paradigmatic fashion, and if they provide their orientation function as models precisely through their offer of viability projections that can then be specified into actual production structures and labor forces in each case, then the question arises of which selection mechanisms are being conceived along with them. If the additional significance of the two rationalization models consists in defming the object and direction of a rationalization debate that is othelWise controversial in itself, and thus also defining what is politically acceptable, then the question arises of selection processes in mediated form, specifically as a matter of the selective effect of the debate itself. Who will be the "Olympic teams" of the next stage of rationalization? If rationalization processes are understood as negotiating processes as well, then this cannot be answered through deductive logic. The status quo of industrial rationalization, and the viability projections contained in the two models, do allow for grounded speCUlation, however. My first speculative consideration: Mixed forms, between lean production as a form of "reduced group work" and qualified group work, represent the future spectrum of work organization running from low-tech to high-tech areas. In their genesis inseparably bound up with Japanese society~ the performance policy mechanisms of regulation on which lean production is based are self-evidently not WINIER 1995-96 117 directly transferable to Gennan conditions. With respect to the methods employed, however, lean production represents a path toward flexibilizing unskilled and semiskilled labor on the basis of modified assembly-line production while retaining the TayloristFordist segmentation of work and standardization of work means and processes. On this basis, high general school education and work-specific qualifications, along with communication and cooperation skills, are converted into productivity potentials that assure the fulfillment of new production demands while still employing the old methods of work organization. Above all in low-tech areas, efficiency and costs are thus brought into the "right" balance in the sense of rationalization, for the cost of the labor factor exercises a key influence upon the decision between labor-intensive or capitalintensive production. Once a decision is made in favor of low tech, and thus mostly labor-intensive production, then high reorganization and qualification costs no longer payoff under the maxim of more efficiency with less of everything. If the negotiating processes (a selective aspect of the current debate) then largely occur within the logic of rationalization, the issue becomes far less one of detemlining principles than of a search for perfonnance policy regulations to accompany the transition from traditional assembly-line manufacture to reduced group work. Thus, while the negotiations surrounding implementation of the spectrum of group work also affect selection processes and perfonnance policy regulations, and can reinforce them or tone them down, selection as a principle inherent in rationalization remains undisputed Qualified group work represents, in tenns of costs and benefits as well, the path to flexibilization of high-tech areas, for only given the capital intensity and relatively expensive labor factor in high tech do the substantial expenses of reorganization payoff. These are paths to production flexibilization that involve a reconfiguration of qualified labor but also have an impact on traditional technicallproductive and scientific/technological salaried activities, as well as low-skill and semiskilled areas. The reconfiguration of skilled labor involves processes of displacement for higher levels (supervisors, work preparation experts, maintenance professionals, etc.) as well as 118 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF POLITICAL ECONOMY for lower levels between skilled workers and unskilled or semiskilled labor. Furthermore, in the model-testing phase, qualified group work is a highly selective concept, since a "selection of the best" with respect to professional, personal, and social competence is carried out to recruit the personnel of pilot experiments and to assure the success of such experiments. With the dissemination of qualified group work-which levels out as the potential of the "best" is exhausted, and once personal characteristics are converted back into ')ob requirements" (see Eichener, 1993, pp. 59ff.; Seitz, 1993, pp. 62ff.}-the selective effect is presumably also toned down. The concept then becomes less a matter of selecting elites, but remains very much a matter of selecting "winners" for the forward-looking high-tech areas and professions. My second speculation relates to the question of whether the Olympic "teams" thus fonned are indeed MANNschaften [i.e., male teams]. The gap between low-tech and high-tech areas is also a gender-hierarchical gap. If lean production and qualified group work represent a reorganization, in paradigmatic fashion, of the alphas and omegas governing it, then it may be presumed that reduced fonns of group work are more likely to be applied to areas where women are employed, while qualified group work will largely remain the domain of male employment. Citing "reasons of efficiency" that serve to conceal the logic of rationalization and of gender relations, such practices could in turn be specifically legitimated, in the sense of announced cost-benefit calculations, as representing worthy or unworthy expenses with respect to profit. This does not mean that fonus of reduced group work will only be found in areas employing women, while all men will stand among the winners. On the contrary, it can be assumed that the spectrum of group work will include both sexes, with the stratification and segmentation lines among men and women reconstituted in new ways. But, to stay within the spectral metaphor, women will be overproportionally represented at the pole of reduced group work (unskilled and semiskilled activities in low-tech areas), both sexes will be found in the middle (qualified work in low-tech areas, unskilled and semiskilled work in high-tech areas), and the pole of qualified group ~ER 1995-96 119 work (high-skill work in high-tech areas) will largely be retained for men. What already seems plausible according to criteria of efficiency is confmned by a consideration of the selection criteria according to which the genders qualify or disqualify themselves for the coming "rationalization Olympiad." Retaining both strict vertical and horizontal divisions of labor and the separation of direct from indirect productive activities, forms of reduced group work afa lean production thus also preserve the line of segregation and hierarchicalization between the sexes. Fonns of qualified group work do break up the Taylorist-Fordist division of labor, but not necessarily that between the sexes. Women and men enter the new configuration of technical/productive and scientific/technological activities from out of the traditional gender difference, and with existing inequalities in training and studies, and hence inequalities in qualification, intact (see Roloff, 1993, pp. 47ff.). In a performance society with structures of inequality and a merely formal equality of performance criteria, dissimilar qualifications in turn legitimate gender-specific application of labor. The extent to which this selection mechanism is questioned will depend largely on whether negotiating processes are left to the logic of rationalization and its efficiency-oriented thinking, and on whether the gender relation at work becomes a viable political issue in the process. On the first point, there is reason for optimism: The issue of selection processes has indeed regained a high position on the agenda of lean production as opposed to qualified group work For example, participation possibilities, such as a say in worktime and through workplace-level forms of interest representation, are being negotiated in high-tech areas and economic core sectors. This, along with a jobs quota [i.e., establishment of lower limits on employment] is intended to avoid processes of exclusion, stigmatization, and hierarchicalization (see Benz-Overhage, pp. 178ff.; Eichener, 1993, pp. 66ff.). With respect to the second question, however, of whether the gender relation will become a viable political issue, the selection debate leaves a rather insipid aftertaste. 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