The Current Transition in Industrial Capitalism

The advanced capitalist nations are currently undergoing a wrenching economic, social, and political transformation. At its heart, this transformation involves a shift away from the mass production of highly standardized goods and services for mass markets to small-batch production of relatively customized goods and services for niche markets. This volume brings together in one place essays by a group of individuals who have thought widely and written extensively on various aspects of the current transformation of industrial capitalism in an attempt to integrate this research and these disparate viewpoints into an single complete picture. Briefly, the book touches upon five dimensions of the current transformation of capitalism: technology, labor relations, firm organization, public policy, and locational decisionmaking. Each chapter is concerned with a different aspect of the same transformative process. The purpose of this introductory chapter is to frame the debate contained within the remainder of the book. To do so, it is first necessary to define a set of terms.