Rick Delbridge: Life on the Line in Contemporary Manufacturing. The Workplace Experience of Lean Production and the 'Japanese' Model. - Review - book review

1998 Oxford: Oxford University Press. 232 pages.

Rick Delbridge's look at 'life' in contemporary manufacturing is a highly detailed account of workplace practices in two British factories. It is a well-crafted ethnographic account of shop-floor life in a Japanese-owned television assembly plant and a 'European-owned' automotive parts supplier, that is, at one and the same time engaging, troubling, and perturbing. The account engaged me as it went through the minutia of factory life and exposed the 'Japanese' model of work as little more than 'an extension of the principles of Taylor through the systematic standardization and proceduralization of tasks within a context of heightened managerial dominance and control' (p. 204). Having spent several years on the shop floor of British industry, I found Delbridge's evocative descriptions of the mundane cycles of control particularly disturbing. Yet, ultimately, I was perturbed that an otherwise valuable ethnography of workplace relations managed to ignore gender dynamics.

The book is rooted in a radical structuralist (Burrell and Morgan 1979), or 'shop-floor' perspective (p.196) that shapes the central question of the 'true' nature of Japanese management techniques in action. As someone interested in addressing the 'oppressive' nature of organization, Delbridge's account was insightful but depressing in its conclusion that while Britain is fast becoming the maquiladora region of Europe (p. 212), it is leaving in its wake systems of control that restrict the possibility of collective resistance (p. 203).

The starting point of the book is 'so-called new management techniques -- notably just-in-time and total quality management..., human resource management... and team working, and lean production and the "Japanese model" of manufacturing management' (p. 3). Delbridge begins by setting up some of the literature's more widely reported contentions that the new techniques herald radical change and discontinuity that result in the humanization of factory life (Chap. 1). He then sets out to explore the 'truth' of these claims by way of an in-depth study of two manufacturing plants in the United Kingdom that he calls 'Nippon CTV' and 'Valleyco' (Chaps. 3-9). He concludes that what is new (at least in the United Kingdom) is the 'systematic nature of control and surveillance [which] allows for less direct supervision and interventionist management and results in less visibility of management in the control process' (p. 191). What is not new, however, is 'the content and process' of control mechanisms which continues th e Taylorist tradition of treating the 'worker' as little more than 'a pair of hands':

'In practice the Japanese transplant is more successful and efficient in the management of the labour process and its manufacturing operations, but this control is effected without winning over workers' "hearts and minds". Conflict remains a central feature of the shop-floor relations at Nippon CTV and the unitarist assumptions of the proponents of new management models are demonstrated to reflect an inadequate conceptualization of the "new" shop-floor. Equally, the research findings do not support the rhetoric of multiskilled and empowered workers engaged primarily in problem solving and continuous improvement.' (p.179)

Delbridge grounds his argument in a body of evidence that was 'gathered during two periods of participant observation working on the shop-floor at the plants' (p.vii). In the world of academic discourse, where researchers hardly find the time or funding to do more than survey others, it is refreshing to read Delbridge's account of his immersion in the workplace culture of two different factories -- and a rich and detailed account it is! The story is relayed to us by way of elaborate drawings (e.g., of the shop-floor layouts) and extensive field notes, that Delbridge is very adept at translating for us. The following excerpt, for example, is one of many that reinforces the notion of a system of management that exercises control through the process of work and a reliance on employees to police each other:

'During the morning, the line stopped unexpectedly. We had run out of trolleys upon which to place the completed circuit boards. Everyone took out their brushes and began sweeping and cleaning the line. I heard one of the girls say to Angie the team leader, "Clean up? Why?" Angie's response was, "Cos I said so". The girl then backed down and responded, "No, why are we stopped?" She was given a direct order from the team leader at this point.' (p. 54)

Delbridge's discussion on research methods (Chap. 2) is one of the most useful that I have encountered in a long time, and I plan to use it in my teaching.

The problem, however, is that, in several places, the possibility of a gender effect is suggested but not explored. Instead, Delbridge takes a 'gender blind' form of radical structuralism in his focus on 'the worker' (and 'the manager') as a gender neutral entity (Hearn and Parkin 1983). Yet, for example, there are indications that management at both factories is male dominated while the shopfloor largely consists of 'women workers'; that, on occasion, women exercise a different style of leadership than their male counterparts (e.g., one female manager, in contrast to her male peers, is described as trying to 'set everyone at ease before they . . . went out on the shop floor', p. 51); and that 'a particular problem for many of the women ... is that they are expected to run households as well as work full-time', p. 103). Elsewhere, we are informed that the 'personalities of key members of management and its agents and the personal relations they formed were important in understanding the specific situation of the plants in question' (p. 110). These, and many other examples, raise important questions about the relationship between gendered identity and the observed organizational outcomes. For example, did masculinity shape the form of control (cf. Collinson and Hearn 1996)? Did femininity mediate the content of control and resistance (cf. Pollert 1981; Ferguson 1984)? Do new management techniques contribute to a 'feminization' (Fondas 1997) of the workplace or to even greater inequities (Kerfoot and Knights 1993)? What is the impact of the 'dual burden' of home and work on workplace compliance (Armstrong and Armstrong 1990)? These and other key questions are not dealt with in the narrative and point, not only to missing aspects, but to the possibility of error in analysis (see e.g., Davies' 1990 critique of Burawoy's classic study of the labour process).