Theories of the Information Society, Third Edition - Cryptome

REGULATION SCHOOL THEORY
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technologies on the shop floor. As important is that one’s networks are developed
and used optimally: within and between the organisation that efficiency
might be increased, to and from one’s subsidiaries and suppliers that weaknesses
may be eradicated and strengths built upon, and to one’s markets that
opportunities might be seized. Increasingly it appears to be the case that
the successful corporation is that which is highly automated on the shop floor
and offers the best product available, but which also possesses a first-class
network that provides excellent databases on its internal operations, on real
and prospective customers, and on anything else which may be germane to its
affairs – and which can act quickly on the information it has available.
David Harvey (1989b) conceives the sum of these processes as resulting in
what he calls ‘time–space compression’ (p. 284), something which has been taking
place over centuries, but which since the early 1970s has entered a particularly
intense phase during which one-time limitations of space have been massively
reduced (courtesy of information networks, corporations can orchestrate their
interests across huge distances) and the constraints of time have been eased (realtime
trading is increasingly the norm in an age of global networks). Once places
were so far away and it took so long to get there – just consider how long it took
to get to the United States a century ago, or even to get from London to Paris –
nowadays they are contactable immediately and continuously through ICTs. It is
certainly true that an important element of time–space compression has been the
spread of rapid means of transport, notably air travel which, in the course of but
a few decades, has shrunk the distance between continents dramatically. But even
more important has been the establishment of complex and versatile information
networks that enable the continuous and detailed management of dispersed affairs
with relatively little concern for the restrictions of time. When one considers, say,
the provision of perishable fruits and vegetables in a typical supermarket, supplied
from around the world, so foods are made available the whole year round,
one begins to appreciate what ‘time–space compression’ means for life in the
early twenty-first century. Much the same imagination can be applied to the manufacture
and supply of microchips, fridges, clothes and even books. Still more
striking is the plethora of call centres in locations as diverse as Scotland, the
Bahamas and Bangalore, far away from customers and corporate headquarters
but combining cost-effectiveness and ready monitoring of activities.
These features each suggest a quality that is always highlighted in descriptions
of post-Fordism – flexibility. However much individual thinkers may disagree
about particulars, there is uniformity in the assertion that flexibility, on a range
of definitions, is fast becoming the norm. And this is posed, as a rule, as a distinct
contrast with the circumstances that prevailed under Fordist regimes that were
characterised as cumbersome, structured and standardised. Let us review some
of the commonly considered aspects of flexibility and, as we do so, one may bear
in mind that Fordist times were allegedly characterised by their opposites.
For most thinkers influenced by Regulation School theory, the regime of ‘flexible
accumulation’ (Harvey, 1989b, p. 147) is different from its predecessor in
three ways.
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