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Originally published in 1979, this reader presents an industrialist
view of the labour market and economics as they stood at the time
in the United States. The essays collated aim to answer
macroeconomic questions on this topic as well as exploring issues
related closely to employment and inflation. This title will be of
interest to students of business and economics.
Originally published in 1979, this reader presents an industrialist
view of the labour market and economics as they stood at the time
in the United States. The essays collated aim to answer
macroeconomic questions on this topic as well as exploring issues
related closely to employment and inflation. This title will be of
interest to students of business and economics.
This book provides a description of a number of institutional
features of the U.S. labor market and prompts an analytical debate
about the origins of the institutions it describes and their
significance for the operation of the U.S. economic system.
This book provides a description of a number of institutional
features of the U.S. labor market and prompts an analytical debate
about the origins of the institutions it describes and their
significance for the operation of the U.S. economic system.
Work is now more deadly than war, killing approximately 2.3 million
people a year worldwide. The United States, with its complex
regulatory system, has one of the highest rates of occupational
fatality in the developed world, and deteriorating working
conditions more generally. Why, after a century of reform, are U.S.
workers growing less safe and secure? Comparing U.S. regulatory
practices to their European and Latin American counterparts,
Root-Cause Regulation provides insight into the causes of this
downward trend and ways to reverse it, offering lessons for rich
and poor countries alike. The United States assigns responsibility
for wages and hours, collective bargaining, occupational safety,
and the like to various regulatory agencies. In France, Spain, and
their former colonies, a single agency regulates all firms. Drawing
on history, sociology, and economics, Michael Piore and Andrew
Schrank examine why these systems developed differently and how
they have adapted to changing conditions over time. The U.S. model
was designed for the inspection of mass production enterprises by
inflexible specialists and is ill-suited to the decentralized and
destabilized employment of today. In the Franco-Iberian system, by
contrast, the holistic perspective of multitasking generalists
illuminates the root causes of noncompliance—which often lie in
outdated techniques and technologies—and offers flexibility to
tailor enforcement to different firms and market conditions. The
organization of regulatory agencies thus represents a powerful
tool. Getting it right, the authors argue, makes regulation not the
job-killer of neoliberal theory but a generative force for both
workers and employers.
Amid mounting concern over the loss of jobs to low-wage economies,
one fact is clear: America's prosperity hinges on the ability of
its businesses to continually introduce new products and services.
But what makes for a creative economy? How can the remarkable surge
of innovation that fueled the boom of the 1990s be sustained?
For an answer, Richard K. Lester and Michael J. Piore examine
innovation strategies in some of the economy's most dynamic
sectors. Through eye-opening case studies of new product
development in fields such as cell phones, medical devices, and
blue jeans, two fundamental processes emerge.
One of these processes, analysis--rational problem
solving--dominates management and engineering practice. The other,
interpretation, is not widely understood, or even
recognized--although, as the authors make clear, it is absolutely
crucial to innovation. Unlike problem solving, interpretation
embraces and exploits ambiguity, the wellspring of creativity in
the economy. By emphasizing interpretation, and showing how these
two radically different processes can be combined, Lester and
Piore's book gives managers and designers the concepts and tools to
keep new products flowing.
But the authors also offer an unsettling critique of national
policy. By ignoring the role of interpretation, economic
policymakers are drawing the wrong lessons from the 1990s boom. The
current emphasis on expanding the reach of market competition will
help the analytical processes needed to implement innovation. But
if unchecked it risks choking off the economy's vital interpretive
spaces. Unless a more balanced policy approach is adopted, warn
Lester and Piore, America's capacity toinnovate--its greatest
economic asset--will erode.
Originally published in 1980, the essays in this volume analyse a
family of phenomena in advanced industrial societies for which
neither liberal nor Marxist theories provide a systematic
explanation. Berger and Piore argue that these phenomena represent
a structural solution to the economic and political problems of
distributing economic uncertainty and preserving political
stability. The discontinuities in industrial societies are not the
product of incomplete modernisation but of political and economic
choices that perpetuate and recreate segmentation to protect
critical political and economic mechanisms. Studies by Piore
examine the labour market and its relationship to technological
innovation and capital investment, whilst those by Berger explore
the social foundation of political parties and the formation of
state policy as it emerges from competitive political forces.
Birds of Passage presents an unorthodox analysis of migration ion
to urban industrial societies from underdeveloped rual areas. It
argues that such migrations are a continuing feature of industrial
societies and that they are generated by forces inherent in the
nature of industrial economies. It explains why conventional
economic theory finds such migrations so difficult to comprehend,
and challenges a set of older assumptions that supported the view
that these migrations were beneficial to both sending and receiving
societies. Professor Piore seriously questions whether migration
actually relieves population pressure and rural unemployment, and
whether it develops skills necessary for the emergence of an
industrial labour force in the home country. Furthermore, he
criticizes the notion that in the long run migrant labour
complements native labour. On the basis of this critique, he
develops an alternative theory of the nature of the migration
process.
Essays in this volume analyze the fundamental macroeconomic and political structures of contemporary society. Studies by Piore examine the labor market and its relationship to technological innovation and capital investment; studies by Berger explore the social foundation of political parties and the formation of state policy as it emerges from competitive political forces.
The Reagan and Bush years have left us with a troublesome dilemma:
how to balance our budget deficit against our social deficit. This
book takes up the urgent question of how, in a time of economic
crisis and constraint, we can meet the pent-up demand for spending
on our nation's neglected poor, infirm, and disadvantaged, old and
young. Michael Piore's ambitious response is to develop a new
social theory that balances individual preferences against the
claims and responsibilities of the community. By explaining the
role of groups in economic and social life, this theory makes sense
of a host of perplexing social phenomena and policy issues, from
equal employment opportunity to international competitiveness to
the decline of organized labor, from multicultural education to
health insurance to the underclass. Piore traces our difficulties
in addressing these issues to the limits of liberal social theory,
particularly its sharp distinctions between individuality and
community. He offers an alternative view of individuality as
emerging through the discussions and debates conducted among a
community's members. These discussions, Piore suggests, have turned
inward, away from the borderlands where social groups and economic
organizations meet-and therein lies the crux of some of the
country's deepest political and economic problems. His book points
beyond the liberal conception of politics as a negotiation among
competing interests and of policymaking as technical
decisionmaking. Instead, it prescribes a politics focused on the
process of discussion and debate itself, a politics that enlarges
the borderlands by broadening the range of people who talk to one
another and the range of topics they address.
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