Manufacturing Resistance: Rationalizing the Irrationality of Managerial Control on the Shop Floor in a US Medical Electronics Factory |
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Authors: | Victor G Devinatz |
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Institution: | (1) Department of Management and Quantitative Methods, College of Business, Illinois State University, Normal, IL 61790-5580, USA |
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Abstract: | Juravich (1985) asserts that the organization of US industrial manufacturing is irrational as well as appearing chaotic from
the workers’ viewpoint because of management’s refusal to integrate the workers’ knowledge into the production process. Because
of this, Juravich argues, if and when the workers’ knowledge is integrated into the production system, the workers no longer
will experience “chaos on the shop floor.” Extending Devinatz’s (1993) analysis in response to Juravich, this article argues
that workers use resistance as a logical strategy for rationalizing what they perceive to be the irrationality of the shop
floor. Utilizing Kusterer’s (1978) work, I argue that the use of many, but not all, resistance strategies constitutes a type
of “survival knowledge” acquired and used by workers in response to managerial control. I maintain that these strategies constitute
a special type of workplace resistance which I refer to as “pure and simple resistance.” |
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Keywords: | workplace resistance managerial control labor process |
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