The Labour Process Debate: A Theoretical Review 1974–88

Braverman’s Labor and Monopoly Capital was published in 1974. It stimulated a widespread debate in Britain, which gathered pace through the latter part of the 1970s. This debate has extended and diversified, so that now there are three major overlapping currents:(1)Questions about deskilling and the attempt to construct a satisfactory model of skill changes.(2)Questions about labour markets and the attempt to construct a satisfactory model of capitalist labour markets.(3)Questions about managerial strategy and control.This leaves out of account various other strands of the debate; nevertheless the three areas above seem to me to be the core areas and to help to define the parameters of the debate. In this chapter I intend to focus on the third area: questions about managerial strategy and control; this is the area of research which has shown the most theoretical development in the past few years and which has generated heated controversy (e.g. Storey, 1985; Friedman, 1987).