Flexibility and changes in forms of workplace subjectivity: a case study of the South African automobile assembly industry
Date
2016-07-14
Authors
Barchiesi, Franco
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Abstract
This thesis is an investigation into worker responses to restructuring of work and production
organisation in a South African automobile manufacturing company. The orgnnisation of work
and production is analysed as part of managerial strategies aimed at promoting flexibility
Worker responses will be conceptualized in a general model of worker subjectivity. Subjectivity
here means the process through which workers make sense of changes in factory life according
to regulative ideas and general moral and cultural constructions of the meanings of industrial
work.
I adopted a method based on observational research and semi-structured interviews with a
group of workers, integrated by archival research and interviews with managers and union
organisers,
The results of my enquiry confirm hypotheses and theoretical frameworks critical towards the
notion of flexibility as representing a clear divide with traditional "mass production" methods.
In fact, managerial promotion of flexibility coexists here with relevant continuities in hierarchical
and authoritarian structures, paternalism, lack of skills' recognition, use of technology as a
mainly cost-cutting device, routinisation and lack of worker responsibility and independence.
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Description
A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in fulfilment of requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Sociology. Johannesburg, 1997.