|
|
|
Book Review
| Snaford M. Jacoby, Employing Bureaucracy: Managers, Unions, and the Transformation of Work in the 20thCentury, Revised Edition, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah, NJ, 2004. pp. xi + 315. US $79.95 cloth, US $34.50 paper.
|
| The publication of Sanford Jacoby's Employing Bureaucracy in 1985 represented a major advance in American industrial relations and labour history, providing one of the first comprehensive analyses of the development of modern employment practice. Despite an extensive tradition of labour and business history in the United States, up until then the history of employers had been largely overlooked. Employing Bureaucracy filled a gap in the historical record by documenting how and why bureaucratic employment practices (such as formal recruitment and selection, promotion and career structures, job evaluation and seniority systems) developed in American industry during the first half of the twentieth century. The book has in the intervening 20 years become a classic study which is widely used as a reference and teaching resource. The release of this revised edition is a welcome update of this important work. |
1
|
|
The core chapters of the book focus on the evolution of employment practices in American manufacturing firms from the late nineteenth century through to World War II. Chapter 1 begins by outlining the informal employment practices that existed in the nineteenth century factory and the pivotal role of the foreman as the prime regulator of work effort on the shopfloor. While effective, such workplace informality also had costs, particularly high turnover and growing labour unrest. In the following three chapters, Jacoby outlines the first moves towards more systematic employment relations through the activities of industrial engineers and welfare workers working within innovative enterprises, as well as activists within the vocational guidance movement. Focused on the problems of labour unrest, turnover, and unemployment, these groups formed the basis for a new profession of personnel management that evolved in the period prior to World War I. In a context of cheap and plentiful labour, employers were initially resistant to the promise of personnel management and more formalised employment relations, however as outlined in Chapters 5 and 6, the war, government intervention and labour scarcity resulted in the rapid adoption of personnel management by American industry and its continued diffusion during the 1920s. While the Great Depression led to cost cutting, job losses and a return to employment informality in many firms, government intervention and the upsurge of union organisation from 1933 re-energised the personnel function (Chapter 7). The onset of World War II and government intervention, further entrenched employment bureaucracy and heightened the status of the personnel function. In this revised edition, Jacoby's original analysis is complemented with a fresh Introduction which sets out the book's key argument and structure as well as a new final chapter (Chapter 9) which seeks to extend the analysis from the 1950s to the present day, charting the hey-day of bureaucratic employment relations during the post-war economic boom through to the more recent erosion of job security via downsizing and the growth of contingent employment. |
2
|
|
Beyond being a fascinating and well written narrative of the evolution of modern employment relations, Jacoby's book also challenges conventional interpretations of the growing bureaucracy of employment. In contrast to traditional organisational theory, Jacoby's analysis finds that increasing bureaucracy in the employment relationship was not simply an expression of increasing organisational size; indeed some of the most innovative firms developing internal labour market structures were medium sized employers and many large firms lagged in the adoption of formal personnel practice. Nor, as writers in the labour process tradition have argued, did the increasing bureaucracy of employment simply equate to an expression of managerial control. In fact some of the strongest advocates of internal labour market regimes were trade unions and workers. Rather, Jacoby argues the development of employment bureaucracy was the outcome of a struggle that occurred both within management and with other groups (trade unions, social reformers, government) over the choice between laissez faire capitalism and social protection. One of the most valuable insights in this regard was the divisions between different factions of management over the merits of bureaucratised employment structures. In particular, the formation and development of the personnel management profession represented a challenge to foremen and production managers who often preferred more contractual employment relations. The book therefore provides a complex interpretation of the changing nature of work that goes beyond simple single factor explanations and highlights the role of contradictory institutional forces in the development of organisational structures. |
3
|
|
If there is a weakness in the analysis it is perhaps the final chapter, which while providing a useful update from the 1950s to the present day, seeks to condense an enormous and complex range of developments within a single chapter. Perhaps of most interest here is Jacoby's rebuttal of the oft-stated assumption that internal labour markets are currently in decline through downsizing and delayering, the growth of contingent employment, reductions in unionisation, and deregulation of labour markets. By contrast, Jacoby argues these developments highlight 'changes of degree not of kind' in the pattern of internal labour markets and that the social embeddedness of bureaucratic employment structures prevents a simple return to a pure market transaction. Rather than the disappearance of career-based jobs, Jacoby argues recent changes in employment reflect risk-shifting by employers onto employees in an increasingly uncertain economic environment. |
4
|
|
This book is essential reading for anyone interested in the history of work or seeking to understand the historical bases of contemporary changes in employment. Despite its American focus the book provides many relevant insights to the Australian context, as well as a source of comparative analysis. |
5
|
| | | | |
| University of New South Wales |
CHRISTOPHER WRIGHT | |
|
Content in the History Cooperative database is intended for personal, noncommercial use only. You may not reproduce, publish, distribute, transmit, participate in the transfer or sale of, modify, create derivative works from, display, or in any way exploit the History Cooperative database in whole or in part without the written permission of the copyright holder.
|