The work organization models are understood as the way in which work processes "Work (sociology)") are managed in the different production sectors, whether goods or services. It is the ordering of the sequence of the activity that gives meaning and coherence to the work process, this in order to increase productivity or make the service offered to the public more efficient. Models are not static, they are always in continuous transformation due to different factors, both internal and external. The introduction of new technologies, the rules of the game of the economy, adjustment policies and the need to build strategies to face the new parameters of competitiveness, lead to the search for renewal in the ways of managing work.[1].
Work organization
From a sociological perspective, the organization of work is the set of technical and social aspects that intervene in the production of certain goods or services**.** It is the result of the norms and rules that determine how work will be carried out in the company. From this perspective it could be said that the organization of work is a social, historical, modifiable and changing construction[1][2].
Taylorist model
Frederick Wislow Taylor is recognized as the father of scientific management. The proposals that he promoted within the industry are condensed in his work Scientific Management. Its principles impacted the organization of work and the management of factories, as well as society itself during the 20th century.
The industry of the 19th century faced problems such as worker laziness and simulation, as well as the great waste of materials in the manufacturing process. Factory management did not have production knowledge, so work control was entirely in the hands of the worker. Faced with this problem, Taylor took on the task of carrying out a systematic study on work that seeks to compile the necessary methods to boost the production and performance of the worker. In this way, scientific management can be understood as the attempt to apply scientific methods to work control problems.[3].
Scientific administration can be encompassed in four points:[4].
Replace individual criteria, the operator's improvisation at work, with methods based on scientific procedures.
Work Cadence
Introduction
The work organization models are understood as the way in which work processes "Work (sociology)") are managed in the different production sectors, whether goods or services. It is the ordering of the sequence of the activity that gives meaning and coherence to the work process, this in order to increase productivity or make the service offered to the public more efficient. Models are not static, they are always in continuous transformation due to different factors, both internal and external. The introduction of new technologies, the rules of the game of the economy, adjustment policies and the need to build strategies to face the new parameters of competitiveness, lead to the search for renewal in the ways of managing work.[1].
Work organization
From a sociological perspective, the organization of work is the set of technical and social aspects that intervene in the production of certain goods or services**.** It is the result of the norms and rules that determine how work will be carried out in the company. From this perspective it could be said that the organization of work is a social, historical, modifiable and changing construction[1][2].
Taylorist model
Frederick Wislow Taylor is recognized as the father of scientific management. The proposals that he promoted within the industry are condensed in his work Scientific Management. Its principles impacted the organization of work and the management of factories, as well as society itself during the 20th century.
The industry of the 19th century faced problems such as worker laziness and simulation, as well as the great waste of materials in the manufacturing process. Factory management did not have production knowledge, so work control was entirely in the hands of the worker. Faced with this problem, Taylor took on the task of carrying out a systematic study on work that seeks to compile the necessary methods to boost the production and performance of the worker. In this way, scientific management can be understood as the attempt to apply scientific methods to work control problems.[3].
Select workers according to a profile and prepare them for better performance, while in the past they chose their trade and trained themselves in the best way, according to their own possibilities.
Control over work in order to scientifically execute what is planned by management.
A distribution of work in which the worker does not exceed his duties in his function.
The rhythm and control of production work was determined by the workers' union, this caused great economic losses to the capitalists. In this way, the trade worker who owned the forms of production became a target of attack who had to be defeated and reconstructed. Taylor detected the importance of knowledge and knowledge of operations, so his maxim was: “whoever dominates and dictates the operating modes also becomes the owner of production times.”[5].
The trade, this know-how of the worker, formed the pillar of the workers' resistance. The workers' organization was formed around the knowledge of the work processes, in times of conflict.[5] Stoppages, strikes and boycotts were part of the protest repertoires, they were so efficient because there were no other groups that knew the work methods, this forced the employers to bow to the conditions of the workers' union.
To achieve better performance and increased production, the objective is to first organize the tasks to create a coherent system and then fragment the total operation of the work processes into successive and simple tasks. Fragmentation made it possible to standardize, measure and perfect an activity, allowing the complexity and cost of the work of a single worker to be removed.[6][5] To these partial tasks, an imposition of time was added, in such a way that precise norms were built in the execution of the tasks that allowed the pace of production to be accelerated.
This way of organizing work scientifically, proposed the division of labor as an effective method for reducing production costs. For Taylor, work was the source of wealth and not money, so the increase in productivity was based on favoring the development of capital accumulation.[7].
This system based on the study of times and movements made it possible to eliminate variability, spontaneity and uncertainty, but above all to get rid of the worker's resistance. Scientific administration affected the subjective faculties and powers of the workers, because it expropriated individual will and intelligence,[8] this caused a deepening of the alienation of the workers. Thus, they definitively lost the possibility of applying imagination and creativity in their work.
Taylorism does not only involve the organization of work, but also the forms of supervision and control, the rules of how to think, the levels, their hierarchies, the criteria and forms of exercise of authority and power.[1] In more general words, a discipline was implemented for the worker.
Taylor's proposals politically signified the passage of control of labor from workers to management and the capitalist.[6] Workers were stripped of their identity as a union due to partialization and new forms of industrial relations. Dividing work and standardizing it implied a deskilling of the workforce. The standardized task meant that anyone with minimal training could perform it, thus excluding the most specialized workers and giving rise to a new concept of worker: the mass worker.
Furthermore, as a result of its development, there is also an increase and deepening of the growth of the scale of production, consolidating the character of mass or serial production that it had already acquired since the great industry of the 19th century. And at the same time that this mass production, characteristic of the capitalist mode of production, is affirmed, a standardization of products is also developed, corresponding to and derived from the standardization of instruments and the individual mode of work.[8].
Fordist model
At the beginning of the 19th century, in the same period in which the Taylorist production model was being developed, the name of Henry Ford began to be heard as an innovator in automotive production. Henry Ford was a pioneer in the automobile industry, creating the Ford Motor Company in 1903, in which he recovered the foundations of scientific management.
Like Taylorism, Fordism is a system of rationalization of the individual way of working. It consisted of the Taylorist measure of dividing, down to its smallest units, each mechanical operation required for production.[9] This model proposed by Ford was characterized in the first instance by the introduction of a complete mechanical system, whose pillars were the assembly line, in addition to an entire integrated set of forms of movement and internal transportation of work objects, composed of cranes, sliders, trolleys, and conveyors.[8].
Ford's best-known innovation is the assembly line. It consists of a perpetual movement, in which all the moments of production come together. The piece is moved in front of the workers, who are fixed in a position and a function, each worker modifies a part of the piece in strict times until it becomes a finished product. The workers' tasks were transformed into simple and rapid movements, which forced them to submit to a regulated cadence, eliminating unnecessary and unproductive movements in a more extreme way than in Taylorism.[8].
This intensification of work renewed the functions of the worker. It became a living part of the mechanical system, the assembly line and its accessories. If at first the machine was at the service of the worker, now he became a mere complement where the machine dictated his rhythm and actions.
As in Taylorism, Fordism subjectively affected the labor union. All forms of autonomy were subtracted and the execution of tasks through mechanized means was subverted, that is, the will to execute and intelligence of definition in the individual mode of work was transformed into simple mechanical attributes of the assembly line.[8] Thus, work for Fordism was that it must always be in total movement. From this perspective, the worker must always be mobile but fixed to a job and the only thing that had to move was the work towards him.[9].
Ford's innovations were a great change in the history of capitalism, on the one hand, it changed the conditions of extraction of surplus labor, and on the other hand it increased the scale of production.[7] It led to an even more extreme partialization of work than in the Taylorist model and with the introduction of mechanization (material conveyors and the chain) an intensification and extension of the working day.
One of Ford's most important contributions was to create a high wage system. For Ford, as for Taylor, the salary was an employer's instrument of encouragement to work.[2] In 1914 Ford announced an increase to five dollars per working day, which had two purposes: first, it sought to adapt the worker to the conditions that this new form of organization had brought: monotony, standardization, fatigue, continuous production and accelerated pace. Secondly, the aim was to break with insubordination by controlling the conditions of the production and reproduction of the workforce.
For Ford, the salary was a mechanism of control of the worker, because it not only controlled the worker's working conditions and their reproduction, but also modulated the forms of consumption and the forms of mobility and displacement. An army of unskilled workers or specialists in a single task was thus created; a contingent of workers destined to repeat the same operation; workers belonging to the “new Fordian craftsmanship.”[9].
New forms of work organization
Post-Fordist model
The Fordist model began to show its exhaustion in the 1970s. Mass production and the institutions that regulated this type of production became obsolete. The prices of goods and services rose and the purchasing power of salaries was drastically reduced, consumption weakened and companies began to feel the effects.[10].
Post-Fordism is a phase that arises due to the emergence of new ways of producing. It is a new phase in which Fordist approaches are surpassed. It would be characterized by a notable development of productive forces, through automation and microelectronics.[11] This caused a new way of organizing work, allowing the possibility of producing shorter and more differentiated series of merchandise, which was opposed to the mass production of the Fordian system. This was because mass consumption that was the mainstay of mass production was disappearing.
Productive flexibility imposed changes in the qualifications and skills of workers, with the aim of conditioning them to the new demands of work. This new way of acting in production implied that individuals fulfilled functions with interdependence, that is, the roles stopped being static (as in the Fordian chain), becoming a form of multifunctional role. To meet this requirement, the worker had to be obliged to acquire a multiplicity of knowledge that would allow rotation in functions to work.
Labor flexibility made it possible to deregulate labor law by eliminating contracts inherited from the Keynesian system. The new forms of contracting together with the new functions of the worker deepen the precariousness or deterioration of working conditions.
Post-Fordism automated production and abolished collective contracts. This flexibility systematically organized and completely replaced the old Fordist methods. The Fordist model had conquered production control, the machine and the conveyor belt coerced the worker to a work rhythm, alienating him, taking away all will and all spontaneous action, so the new post-Fordist schemes used mechanisms to have absolute control of the workers' subjectivity.
It dismantled what until the 1970s had been the configuration of jobs, both in companies and organizations. The idea of manual and supervisory work seems to be giving way to intellectual work or dominated by information. This fact has altered the world of work relationships and has caused a different style of behavior in its main actors.
Toyotista Model
The Toyota model emerged in the 1980s. It was established as a counterpart to North American production models. This model of Japanese origin was characterized by two principles: the production of the precise moment; and the self-activation of production. These two principles constituted what the precursor Ohno called the spirit of Toyota.[12].
The essence of the Toyota method was to conceive a system that was adapted to limited volume production, differentiated and varied products. In short, it is the opposite of what North American productive principles dictated: it was about going the other way around. Therefore, the maxim of this new model was “manufacture small volumes of many different models at a good price, this is the central opposition.”[12].
The so-called just-in-time procedure - along with the Kanban method (labels) - was about a continuous process in which only the parts necessary for the assembly or manufacturing of a product were needed. For this model, no more could be manufactured than what demand established. Kanban allowed greater control in manufacturing, unlike the Fordian chain where an error could cost the production line, Kanban allowed through boards to announce failures or delays in the chains, which was of utmost importance for total production since waste or losses were avoided. This procedure allowed us to offer the market a higher quality and also differentiated product.
This new way of producing required a specific worker. Unlike the American models that divided the work and thus specialized the worker to a single function, the Japanese model sought to create a versatile worker. It was about despecializing and turning workers into subjects who had the ability to perform multiple functions. Thus, the purpose of this model, like the North American systems, was the destruction of complex workers' knowledge. Although these achieved it through decomposition into elemental movements, Toyotism achieved it through plurioperation and multifunctionalities.
The model originally had different difficulties, both structural and cyclical. One of its main actions was to eliminate excess personnel and equipment. Toyotism sought to create a type of minimum factory, that is, a factory with reduced functions and personnel required only for the work that guided weekly or monthly demand. Unlike the Americans, for the Japanese, reducing personnel was one of the conditions for developing an increase in productivity.
Another of the contributions that shaped this model was to conceive a general organization of production, that is, it was about carrying out permanent surveillance of the work processes and thus being able to exercise direct control over subordinate employees.[12].
Scientific administration can be encompassed in four points:[4].
Replace individual criteria, the operator's improvisation at work, with methods based on scientific procedures.
Select workers according to a profile and prepare them for better performance, while in the past they chose their trade and trained themselves in the best way, according to their own possibilities.
Control over work in order to scientifically execute what is planned by management.
A distribution of work in which the worker does not exceed his duties in his function.
The rhythm and control of production work was determined by the workers' union, this caused great economic losses to the capitalists. In this way, the trade worker who owned the forms of production became a target of attack who had to be defeated and reconstructed. Taylor detected the importance of knowledge and knowledge of operations, so his maxim was: “whoever dominates and dictates the operating modes also becomes the owner of production times.”[5].
The trade, this know-how of the worker, formed the pillar of the workers' resistance. The workers' organization was formed around the knowledge of the work processes, in times of conflict.[5] Stoppages, strikes and boycotts were part of the protest repertoires, they were so efficient because there were no other groups that knew the work methods, this forced the employers to bow to the conditions of the workers' union.
To achieve better performance and increased production, the objective is to first organize the tasks to create a coherent system and then fragment the total operation of the work processes into successive and simple tasks. Fragmentation made it possible to standardize, measure and perfect an activity, allowing the complexity and cost of the work of a single worker to be removed.[6][5] To these partial tasks, an imposition of time was added, in such a way that precise norms were built in the execution of the tasks that allowed the pace of production to be accelerated.
This way of organizing work scientifically, proposed the division of labor as an effective method for reducing production costs. For Taylor, work was the source of wealth and not money, so the increase in productivity was based on favoring the development of capital accumulation.[7].
This system based on the study of times and movements made it possible to eliminate variability, spontaneity and uncertainty, but above all to get rid of the worker's resistance. Scientific administration affected the subjective faculties and powers of the workers, because it expropriated individual will and intelligence,[8] this caused a deepening of the alienation of the workers. Thus, they definitively lost the possibility of applying imagination and creativity in their work.
Taylorism does not only involve the organization of work, but also the forms of supervision and control, the rules of how to think, the levels, their hierarchies, the criteria and forms of exercise of authority and power.[1] In more general words, a discipline was implemented for the worker.
Taylor's proposals politically signified the passage of control of labor from workers to management and the capitalist.[6] Workers were stripped of their identity as a union due to partialization and new forms of industrial relations. Dividing work and standardizing it implied a deskilling of the workforce. The standardized task meant that anyone with minimal training could perform it, thus excluding the most specialized workers and giving rise to a new concept of worker: the mass worker.
Furthermore, as a result of its development, there is also an increase and deepening of the growth of the scale of production, consolidating the character of mass or serial production that it had already acquired since the great industry of the 19th century. And at the same time that this mass production, characteristic of the capitalist mode of production, is affirmed, a standardization of products is also developed, corresponding to and derived from the standardization of instruments and the individual mode of work.[8].
Fordist model
At the beginning of the 19th century, in the same period in which the Taylorist production model was being developed, the name of Henry Ford began to be heard as an innovator in automotive production. Henry Ford was a pioneer in the automobile industry, creating the Ford Motor Company in 1903, in which he recovered the foundations of scientific management.
Like Taylorism, Fordism is a system of rationalization of the individual way of working. It consisted of the Taylorist measure of dividing, down to its smallest units, each mechanical operation required for production.[9] This model proposed by Ford was characterized in the first instance by the introduction of a complete mechanical system, whose pillars were the assembly line, in addition to an entire integrated set of forms of movement and internal transportation of work objects, composed of cranes, sliders, trolleys, and conveyors.[8].
Ford's best-known innovation is the assembly line. It consists of a perpetual movement, in which all the moments of production come together. The piece is moved in front of the workers, who are fixed in a position and a function, each worker modifies a part of the piece in strict times until it becomes a finished product. The workers' tasks were transformed into simple and rapid movements, which forced them to submit to a regulated cadence, eliminating unnecessary and unproductive movements in a more extreme way than in Taylorism.[8].
This intensification of work renewed the functions of the worker. It became a living part of the mechanical system, the assembly line and its accessories. If at first the machine was at the service of the worker, now he became a mere complement where the machine dictated his rhythm and actions.
As in Taylorism, Fordism subjectively affected the labor union. All forms of autonomy were subtracted and the execution of tasks through mechanized means was subverted, that is, the will to execute and intelligence of definition in the individual mode of work was transformed into simple mechanical attributes of the assembly line.[8] Thus, work for Fordism was that it must always be in total movement. From this perspective, the worker must always be mobile but fixed to a job and the only thing that had to move was the work towards him.[9].
Ford's innovations were a great change in the history of capitalism, on the one hand, it changed the conditions of extraction of surplus labor, and on the other hand it increased the scale of production.[7] It led to an even more extreme partialization of work than in the Taylorist model and with the introduction of mechanization (material conveyors and the chain) an intensification and extension of the working day.
One of Ford's most important contributions was to create a high wage system. For Ford, as for Taylor, the salary was an employer's instrument of encouragement to work.[2] In 1914 Ford announced an increase to five dollars per working day, which had two purposes: first, it sought to adapt the worker to the conditions that this new form of organization had brought: monotony, standardization, fatigue, continuous production and accelerated pace. Secondly, the aim was to break with insubordination by controlling the conditions of the production and reproduction of the workforce.
For Ford, the salary was a mechanism of control of the worker, because it not only controlled the worker's working conditions and their reproduction, but also modulated the forms of consumption and the forms of mobility and displacement. An army of unskilled workers or specialists in a single task was thus created; a contingent of workers destined to repeat the same operation; workers belonging to the “new Fordian craftsmanship.”[9].
New forms of work organization
Post-Fordist model
The Fordist model began to show its exhaustion in the 1970s. Mass production and the institutions that regulated this type of production became obsolete. The prices of goods and services rose and the purchasing power of salaries was drastically reduced, consumption weakened and companies began to feel the effects.[10].
Post-Fordism is a phase that arises due to the emergence of new ways of producing. It is a new phase in which Fordist approaches are surpassed. It would be characterized by a notable development of productive forces, through automation and microelectronics.[11] This caused a new way of organizing work, allowing the possibility of producing shorter and more differentiated series of merchandise, which was opposed to the mass production of the Fordian system. This was because mass consumption that was the mainstay of mass production was disappearing.
Productive flexibility imposed changes in the qualifications and skills of workers, with the aim of conditioning them to the new demands of work. This new way of acting in production implied that individuals fulfilled functions with interdependence, that is, the roles stopped being static (as in the Fordian chain), becoming a form of multifunctional role. To meet this requirement, the worker had to be obliged to acquire a multiplicity of knowledge that would allow rotation in functions to work.
Labor flexibility made it possible to deregulate labor law by eliminating contracts inherited from the Keynesian system. The new forms of contracting together with the new functions of the worker deepen the precariousness or deterioration of working conditions.
Post-Fordism automated production and abolished collective contracts. This flexibility systematically organized and completely replaced the old Fordist methods. The Fordist model had conquered production control, the machine and the conveyor belt coerced the worker to a work rhythm, alienating him, taking away all will and all spontaneous action, so the new post-Fordist schemes used mechanisms to have absolute control of the workers' subjectivity.
It dismantled what until the 1970s had been the configuration of jobs, both in companies and organizations. The idea of manual and supervisory work seems to be giving way to intellectual work or dominated by information. This fact has altered the world of work relationships and has caused a different style of behavior in its main actors.
Toyotista Model
The Toyota model emerged in the 1980s. It was established as a counterpart to North American production models. This model of Japanese origin was characterized by two principles: the production of the precise moment; and the self-activation of production. These two principles constituted what the precursor Ohno called the spirit of Toyota.[12].
The essence of the Toyota method was to conceive a system that was adapted to limited volume production, differentiated and varied products. In short, it is the opposite of what North American productive principles dictated: it was about going the other way around. Therefore, the maxim of this new model was “manufacture small volumes of many different models at a good price, this is the central opposition.”[12].
The so-called just-in-time procedure - along with the Kanban method (labels) - was about a continuous process in which only the parts necessary for the assembly or manufacturing of a product were needed. For this model, no more could be manufactured than what demand established. Kanban allowed greater control in manufacturing, unlike the Fordian chain where an error could cost the production line, Kanban allowed through boards to announce failures or delays in the chains, which was of utmost importance for total production since waste or losses were avoided. This procedure allowed us to offer the market a higher quality and also differentiated product.
This new way of producing required a specific worker. Unlike the American models that divided the work and thus specialized the worker to a single function, the Japanese model sought to create a versatile worker. It was about despecializing and turning workers into subjects who had the ability to perform multiple functions. Thus, the purpose of this model, like the North American systems, was the destruction of complex workers' knowledge. Although these achieved it through decomposition into elemental movements, Toyotism achieved it through plurioperation and multifunctionalities.
The model originally had different difficulties, both structural and cyclical. One of its main actions was to eliminate excess personnel and equipment. Toyotism sought to create a type of minimum factory, that is, a factory with reduced functions and personnel required only for the work that guided weekly or monthly demand. Unlike the Americans, for the Japanese, reducing personnel was one of the conditions for developing an increase in productivity.
Another of the contributions that shaped this model was to conceive a general organization of production, that is, it was about carrying out permanent surveillance of the work processes and thus being able to exercise direct control over subordinate employees.[12].