Theories of the Information Society, Third Edition - Cryptome

REGULATION SCHOOL THEORY
1 There is a new flexibility of employees. That is, post-Fordist workers are those
who neither hold to rigid job descriptions nor have the attitude that, once
equipped for an occupation, they stay there for the rest of their working life.
In contrast to the era of ‘demarcation disputes’ and ‘once a fitter always a
fitter’, today we have adaptability as a central quality, with ‘multi-skilling’ the
norm. Here the image is projected of ‘lifetime training’, of realisation that
change is continuous in these ‘new times’, and that therefore employees must
above all be ‘flexible’ (McGregor and Sproull, 1992). Orientations to the job
and to training are but one facet of this flexibility, since there is also wage flexibility
(a trend towards paying individuals for what they do rather than at an
agreed union or national rate), labour flexibility (be prepared to change jobs
every few years, to which end it is increasingly common to be employed on
fixed-term contracts), and time flexibility (part-time employment is growing
fast, as is ‘flexi-time’ and pressures to work shifts and, frequently, through the
weekend).
2 There is flexibility of production. Here the proposition is that Fordist methods
are outdated by the spread, thanks to information networks, of more versatile
and cost-effective production such as ‘just-in-time’ (JIT) systems which wait
until orders are taken before the factory manufactures, hence saving on warehousing
and, of course, on unsold products. To function such systems must
be flexible enough to respond with alacrity since, of course, customers will not
wait long for the goods they have requested. Nonetheless, market competition
puts a premium on such flexibility and impels corporations to invest in the
information systems that can deliver it. Another form of flexible production is
the vertical disintegration trend referred to above. It is evident that extensive
use of subcontracts provides the corporation with the option of painlessly
switching suppliers and products without the burden of offloading its own
personnel.
3 There is flexibility of consumption. Here the suggestion is that electronic technologies
allow factories to offer more variety than was possible in the uniform
Fordist period. Nowadays shorter runs are cost-effective because computerisation
provides the assembly line with unprecedented versatility. In addition,
and I return to this below, customers are turning against the uniformity of
Fordist products, looking for different things which might express their own
particular lifestyles and dispositions. Thanks to the information and communication
infrastructure, goes the argument, customers’ desires can at last be
satisfied, with increasing amounts of customisation of production in the post-
Fordist epoch.
These elements of flexibility, it ought to be understood, are in practice combined
to a greater or lesser degree. Thus in the archetypical post-Fordist organisation
the customer’s order is received, its particulars are routed to the factory
where the plant is programmed to meet the individual specifications, and a multiskilled
workforce sets to and manufactures what is required with adaptability and
urgency. Note, too, that the entire process hinges, at each stage, on information
processing, application and distribution. From the level of ordering through to
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