Bell argues that focus has shifted from producing goods, like steel and automobiles, to producing services, like fast food and health. It has also been argued, most famously by Daniel Bell, that we have moved from an industrial to a post-industrial society (Ritzer, 2000). The distinctive characteristics of it are as follows: declining interest in mass products, growing interest in customized products, consumers willing to pay more for high quality and easily noticeable goods, shorter production runs, flexible production, flexible management, more capable workers with greater autonomy and responsibility, and greater differentiation in society and the workplace (Ritzer, 2000). It is believed that Fordism began to decline in the 1970s, replaced by Post-Fordism. Fordism refers to ideas and principles propagated by Henry Ford: mass production of uniform goods and a market for this, rigid technologies like the assembly line, unvarying work routines (Taylorism), and increasing productivity through economies of scale, deskilling and intensification (Ritzer, 2000). Thomas (2000) most aptly describes this: “The corporation ‘delayered’, throwing off entire levels of management it ‘disaggregated’, ridding itself of its extraneous operations it embraced ‘flexibility’, making it easier to replace career employees with (zero-benefit) temps it ‘outsourced’ every possible piece of work to the lowest bidder it ‘reengineered’ its various processes in a less labor-intensive way it ‘disintermediated’, using new technology to cut out middle-men and move back-office jobs to wherever wages were lowest” (p191).īefore describing the impact globalization has had on work and organizations, it may be useful to briefly speak about the central ideas of Post-Fordism and Post-Industrialism. It implies, among other things, arbitrariness in the workplace, pervading threat of termination, an increasingly wide gap between the rich and poor, job loss and a weakening of job security, and the rise of superstar CEOs.
This new Market dictates, or rather governs, the way corporations think and how workers are treated.
As we move from Fordism to Post-Fordism and from Industrialism to Post-Industrialism, the new Market that prevails under Globalization implies many changes to the nature of work and organizations.