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Reviews
| Framing Production: Technology, Culture, and Change in the British Bicycle Industry. By Paul Rosen. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2002. xi+224 pp., diags., illus., tables, appens., bibl., notes, index. $29.95 hb (ISBN 0-262-18225-4).
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The British bicycle industry, similar to its counterpart in the United States, transitioned through three distinct stages from the introduction of the safety bike in the late-19th century through the global production of mountain bikes in the 1990s. Paul Rosen tracks bicycle manufacturing from its early craft roots, through American-style factory modernization, to industrial fragmentation and ultimately post-modern global consolidation in the late-20th century.
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Rosen builds this well written history within the theoretical context of the social construction of technology (SCOT), used and modified in an attempt to account for previously undervalued social and cultural factors in technological change. SCOT defines stable technological eras as "frames." Rosen modifies this concept to "sociotechnical frames" in order to include nonproduction actors, social interactions, and consumer demands while focusing on the long transition periods between frames.
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Rosen centers his work on the Raleigh Cycle Corporation because of its dominance of the British industry for over a century and, as such, the wealth of secondary sources that describe its operation and products. The bicycle industry began as innovations in transmission and frame geometry and a rash of serious accidents made the expensive high-wheel, or ordinary, bicycle unappealing. Following the development of the triangular-framed safety bike, strong competition among manufacturers drove prices to a point where bicycles became affordable to many more people. This wide availability changed the role of bicycles from leisure devices for the wealthy to modes of mass transportation.
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In an effort to stave off a flood of cheap American bikes following boom periods in the early 1890s, several British craft manufacturers looked to the United States for manufacturing techniques to produce more efficiently and increase output. This shift from craft manufacturing to, as Rosen calls it, the "factory bike" sociotechnical frame included machine tools, standardization of components, and, for some deskilled functions, the use of labor supplied by women and children. This shift did not fully adopt the American system, and several key elements of the craft system remained, leading to key labor disputes that would affect the company throughout its history.
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Raleigh management, continually impressed with American efficiency, strove in the transition to the second frame of bicycle production to further cut costs, increase production, and drive out competition. A wave of modernization took place as the company tried to implement Ford-style mass production. As with the factory system, Raleigh adopted new mass manufacturing techniques, especially conveyor and rail systems, while still allowing British labor and craft traditions to affect the pace of production. The "mass bicycle" sociotechnical frame accounted for a remarkable increase in the number of bicycles available while further lowering costs and cementing its role as a significant mode of transportation.
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Production and market share within the mass bicycle frame rose dramatically in the interwar years and continued to grow following World War II. However, the economic boom period following World War II saw personal wealth grow such that many more consumers could afford automobiles. Cars ultimately became the prima ry mode of transportation, while the bicycle was again relegated to a leisure device.
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The transitional period from the 1950s through the 1980s saw the merger of Raleigh with several large corporations and its ultimate dissolution. The severe drop in bicycle demand saw the defragmentation and near collapse of the British bicycle industry, even as new technologies and frame designs were quickly introduced in an attempt to reverse shrinking sales. Demand for most new styles, however, was short lived.
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By the mid 1980s, the mass bicycle, now being produced at Raleigh on less than 16 percent of space used in the 50s, gave way to cellular or flexible production. This method focused on building a variety of products, especially in smaller groupings, rather than long production processes. In addition to severely cutting the number of conveyors and production areas, the smaller manufacturing groupings resulted in significantly reduced material inventories and the ability to reduce the workforce by units as needed. This flexibility allowed a tighter control of costs in a shrinking market and quicker response to rapidly changing market demands without the heavy retooling associated with mass production.
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The rapidly declining industry was revived in the 1980s with the introduction of the mountain bike. Appealing, Rosen states, to the new "yuppie" class, the new bike gave environmentally conscious riders an opportunity to get away from urban centers and return to the country. This new affluent group was quick to demand the latest innovations, making bicycles faster, easier, and more comfortable to ride.
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Because the mountain bike did not rise from a traditional product-development process but from private consumers, the industry was slow to adapt to its full production. In this gap, Asian frame and component builders quickly introduced specialized parts for mountain bikes. Cheaper, better made, and quicker to adopt new innovation demands, Asian frames and components quickly dominated the industry. The widespread availability of the new and less expensive parts led to the ultimate demise of Raleigh and most other prominent builders as bicycle manufacturers. This led to the third and current sociotechnical frame, the "global flexible" bike, where the once-large builders have been reduced to assemblers of foreign parts.
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Through the use of interviews and a strong collection of secondary sources, Rosen's history of Raleigh provides a fitting backdrop for the bicycle industry and to shifts in production and cultural values over a century. Although his primary sources were limited to management reports and long-term memory, Rosen successfully develops his thesis and modifies the SCOT approach to account for changing social relations among management, labor, designers, users, marketers, and innovators and with the evolving and changing technology on a local and global level. While strong through six chapters, Rosen digresses and uses his final chapter to continue his argument into the future by proposing that the next sociotechnical frame will be eco-friendly production and a new sustainable culture for the bicycle.
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