Neo-Taylorism at Work: Occupational Change in the Post-Fordist Era

The last quarter of the twentieth century saw an erosion of job security in both manual and professional occupations. In this article, we investigate how the proliferation of employee involvement schemes in manual production and the growth of layoffs, temporary outsourcing, and project-based teams in the professions have influenced working conditions in both manual and professional settings. We argue that these practices represent not a departure from scientific management as is often presumed, but rather adoption of Taylorist principles not fully manifested in Fordist-era mass production. Flexible practices have thus expanded the influence of scientific management in manual work, and extended the scope of its application into the professions in an era perhaps more aptly termed neo-Taylorist than post-Fordist. Using data derived from the population of workplace ethnographies, we evaluate historical shifts in the organization of manual and professional work and outcomes for employees. Our findings support accounts critical of the nature and degree of change in manual jobs and suggest that post-Fordist shifts in the professions have successfully ushered in intensification analogous to what Fordist strategies accomplished in manual work-with unintended negative consequences for workers. Our conclusions point to a general deterioration of conditions in both manual and professional occupations due at least in part to an increasingly rigorous application of the principles of scientific management to both types of work.