flexible specialization

a form of industrial organization in which firms specialize in certain products but are able to change at short notice to producing different ones. A notable feature is that such flexibility can make it viable to produce small batches of each product. A prerequisite is the use of advanced flexible technology operated by employees with a broad range of skills who are able to surmount traditional job boundaries. Research by sociologists, however, suggests that, in the UK at least, flexible technology is not being fully exploited and that managers are often reluctant to create multi-skilled workforces. See LABOUR FLEXIBILITY.

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The post-1970s period was marked by flexible specialization, which launched a new form of management within capitalist companies that was based on the flexibility of labor processes and inspired by the techniques developed in Japan from the late 1940s.

Between reward and suffering: the bank workers' view of the flexibility discourse/Entre a recompensa e o sofrimento: a visao de trabalhadores bancarios sobre o discurso da flexibilidade/Entre la recompensa y el sufrimiento: la vision de trabajadores bancarios sobre el discurso de la flexibilidad

The arguments about flexible specialization that Piore and Sabel developed in The Second Industrial Divide present a vision of smallholder democracy that is tailored to contemporary times.

The law and political economy of contemporary food: some reflections on the local and the small

In broad terms, the conceptual point of departure for the analysis is provided by interpretations of industrialization processes as a contest between alternative forms of industrial organization, the polar extremes of which are represented by the standardized mass production model organized by giant firms and a differentiated flexible specialization model organized by networks of small firms (Piore and Sabel 1984).

Domestic timber auctions and flexibly specialized forestry in Japan

The papers have been organized into sections examining Fordism, modes of production originating in the Japanese automobile industry, flexible specialization, and lean production, with a final paper examining the emerging debate over "McDonaldization" of production systems.

The Fordism of Ford and modern management; Fordism and post-Fordism; 2v

The talents of women, the skills of men: Flexible specialization and women.

Losing the "eyes in the back of our heads": social service skills, lean caring, and violence

Flexible specialization allowed them to meet consumer's desires for new styles, in contrast with mass producers who had to generate demand.

A "real man's ring": gender and the invention of tradition

privatization, deregulation, cuts in direct taxation, etc.), with no reference made to the supra-national economic and industrial structural changes which presaged and paralleled these Former changes (shifts from manufacturing to services, Fordism to flexible specialization, mass to batch production, deskilling to knowledge production, and so on).

Graham Beaver (2002) Small Business, Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Development

Building on the legacies of Polanyi, Shonfeld, Chandler, and Williamson, this volume engages these questions via an array of approaches ranging from comparative political institutionalism and flexible specialization to institutional economics and the regulation school.

J. Rogers Hollingsworth and Robert Boyer (eds.): Contemporary Capitalism: The Embeddedness of Institutions

In contrast, under flexible specialization or "postfordism", a combination of universal equipment and versatile workers can produce a wide and changing range of semi-customized goods while reducing the cost of differentiated products through economies of scope.

A Postmodern Theory of Industrial Democracy

In Part II ("The Battle of the Systems"), Alain Dewerpe examines the competition between mass production and flexible specialization during the first few decades of the twentieth century through an in-depth study of Ansaldo, a Genoese engineering and shipbuilding company with a number of factories throughout Italy.

World of Possibilities: Flexibility and Mass Production in Western Industrialization

The Hirst and Zeitlan chapter, "Flexible Specialization: Theory and Evidence in the Analysis of Industrial Cha nge," examines the hypothesis that the world is experiencing a change in basic manufacturing organization from the mass production or Fordist model that had been the norm to a new model labeled "flexible specialization." The chapter by Coriat offers a description of the flexible specialization form of manufacturing organization.

Contemporary Capitalism. The Embeddedness of Institutions J. Rogers Hollingsworth and Robert Boyer, eds. New York, Cambridge University Press; 1997 (493 pages)

After a review of the debate about the Third Italy, Kumar discusses the important connection between flexible specialization and post-fordism.

From post-industrial to post-modern society: new theories of the contemporary world

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