International Institute’s Best Book Award for 2021 goes to Thomas Janoski and Darina Lepadatu 

The Cambridge International Handbook of Lean Production by Thomas Janoski and Darina Lepadatu is the culmination of almost 20 years of work, an NSF grant, and the author’s fourth book on lean production in organizational and industrial Sociology.  Darina Lepadatu said that: 

“It was close to a miracle that we have accomplished this project working with 40 authors from all over the world in the middle of the worst pandemic of the century. The co-editor’s collaborators were on lockdowns, got divorces, received cancer diagnoses, retired or moved to other countries, but they still worked with us until it was finished.” 

The Handbook recently won “The 2021 ILSSI Best Book Award” presented by John Dennis and Constantin Stan of the International Lean Six Sigma Institute in Cambridge, UK. They said the book “will help new generations to develop a greater understanding of the power and importance of lean principles and techniques.” The award committee also commented on the quality of the chapter authors including James Womack and Daniel Jones of early bestseller The Machine that Changed the World fame. We will make a presentation on May 20^th to the Institute and its members in a webinar.

The International Handbook has three parts. Part I is unique in that it presents the very diverse theoretical viewpoints on lean production from five disciplines: management, industrial engineering, industrial relations, the social sciences, and labor process theory. As we indicate in the social science chapter, sociology is split between conventional work on the sociology of work who have a negative view toward lean production, and specialists in the areas of Toyotism and Japan who have a more positive view. Surprising to sociologists is that industrial engineering is the discipline most involved with lean production. In many ways “lean production” is an unfortunate description of this division of labor, and Toyotism is the better term. Part II is about lean production across industries: automobiles, product innovation, telecommunications, healthcare, public services, mass merchandizing, finance, and software. Part II also incudes an essay from the practitioner approach in industrial engineering with the True Lean Toyota Production System approach.  Part III is about the implementation of lean in different countries: Korea, the US, UK, Germany, France, China, India, Australia, Mexico and Russia. There are major differences with successes and failures in these countries with very different cultures, capitalisms, and labor relations. Part III starts out with an analysis of survey data showing that lean production has become the dominant form of the division of labor in Europe and the United States. There are many unsuspected surprises: the encounter of lean and the Chinese Communist Party; Toyota’s difficulties in India, and Russian worker suspicions and resistance. Based on massive surveys in the West, Toyotism is three times more frequent than Taylorist methods, but a close relative called ‘learning methods’ (i.e., socio-technical theory) also has a large presence. 

The larger purpose of the International Handbook and the authors’ recent book Framing and Managing Lean Organizations (Routledge, 2020) is to bring lean production and Toyotism to sociology as the dominant division of labor in the capitalist production system. We emphasize many of the positive aspects of lean production including participation in teamwork and higher product quality, but also the negative aspects like temporary employment, outsourcing, and offshoring. In our three chapters in the handbook and previous books, we emphasize that there are three forms of lean production: Toyotism as the fullest form of lean production; Nikeification with its split between Toyotist innovation and Fordist production (e.g., Apple in the US versus Apple subcontractors in China); and Waltonism (from Matt Vidal) with Walmart’s use of only just-in-time inventory and little attention paid to worker participation. More broadly, we point out that Toyotism — like Fordism before it with unionism, Keynesianism, and the welfare state — also has political implications that often converge with neoliberalism, anti-unionism and some high-tech tax avoidance. But Thomas Janoski, who was a piston-shooter on an automotive engine line in the late 1960s, said: 

“The involvement of workers in quality control, design processes, and job rotation gives many workers a sense of respect and participation that they did not have under Fordism. Also, consumers no longer have to fear the dreaded “lemon” that would haunt their driving for years.”

Please check out the recent publication by OOW member Harland Prechel:

Prechel, Harland. 2020. Normalized Financial Wrongdoing: How Re-Regulating Markets Created Risks and Fostered Inequality. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Here is a short description of the book:

In Normalized Financial Wrongdoing, Harland Prechel examines how social structural arrangements that extended corporate property rights and increased managerial control opened the door for misconduct that contributed to the 2008 financial crisis and historically high levels of inequality. Beginning his analysis with the financialization of the home-mortgage market in the 1930s, Prechel shows how pervasive these arrangements had become by the end of the century, when the banks created political coalition with other economic sectors and developed strategies to participate in financial markets. The book examines political and legal landscapes in which corporations are embedded to answer two questions: First, how did banks and financial firms transition from being providers of capital to financial market actors in their own right? Second, how did new organizational structures cause market participants to engage in high-risk activities?

You can find more about the book and buy it on the Stanford University Press website.

Please check out the recent publication by OOW member Yuval Elmelech:

Elmelech, Yuval. 2021. Wealth. Cambridge: Polity.

Here is a short description of the book:

The pursuit of wealth has captivated people’s attention for centuries. Yet, as a topic of social research, the way in which wealth is accumulated and unequally distributed has largely been neglected, remaining hidden beneath data on income inequality. Wealth aims to address this blind spot in the academic discourse.

In accessible prose, Yuval Elmelech explains how personal wealth differs fundamentally from other conventional measures of socioeconomic status and why it has become increasingly important to our understanding of social mobility and stratification. Crucially, Elmelech presents a dynamic sociological framework of wealth attainment that illuminates the effects of cumulative advantages and disadvantages over the course of an individual’s life, and across generations. He describes how these advantages and disadvantages are in turn shaped by a complex interplay of multiple markets, changing demographic landscapes, and persistent inter-group wealth disparities.

Blending theoretical approaches with empirical evidence and macro-level contexts with micro-level processes, this book is an astute guide for thinking about wealth as a key determinant of social and economic wellbeing and for interrogating the role of wealth accumulation in social inequality.

For 20% off the paperback version, go to www.politybooks.com and use code EL731 at checkout (valid from 3/30/2021 until 7/31/2021).

Please check out the recent publication by OOW member Laura Adler:

Adler, Laura. 2020. “Choosing Bad Jobs: The Use of Nonstandard Work as a Commitment Device.” Work and Occupations, Online First.

Abstract

With nonstandard work on the rise, workers are increasingly forced into bad jobs—jobs that are low-paying, part-time, short-term, and dead-end. But some people, especially in cultural industries, embrace this kind of work. To understand why some might choose bad jobs when better options are available, this paper examines the job preferences of aspiring artists, who often rely on bad day jobs as they attempt to achieve economic success in the arts. Using interviews with 68 college-educated artists, I find that their preferences are informed not only by utility and identity considerations—two factors established in the literature—but also by the value of bad jobs as commitment devices, which reinforce dedication to career aspirations. The case offers new insights into the connection between jobs and careers and enriches the concept of the commitment device with a sociological perspective, showing that these devices are not one-time contracts but ongoing practices.