Networked Machinists: High Technology Industries in Antebellum America. By David R. Meyer. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006. xi + 311 pp. Figures, maps, tables, notes, index. Cloth, $49.95. ISBN: 0-801-88471-3 (original) (raw)
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Machine tools may be fundamental to metalworking industrial economies, but their Cold War era history in the US has rarely been assessed over the last generation. A quarter century after David Noble's crucial and critical Forces of Production, perhaps a broad-gauged assessment may be timely. This essay aims to offer two theses for discussion. First, it seems that a sector whose enterprises once specialized in one or more tool types reconfigured itself into clusters of firms servicing automotive-based automation demands, aeronautical/aerospace precision and flexibility needs, or providing specialized auxiliary components, especially instrumentation and controls. Second, cascades of new industrial materials and processes generated both opportunities for and constraints on tool firms, as innovations facilitated users' substituting, for example, plastics for metals or material-forming for metal-cutting, quietly shifting the technical and market foundations. Such dynamics set the stage for US machine tool enterprises' decline as the Cold War ebbed, but they did not chiefly derive from technological deflections deriving from military contracting.
1994
Bosch specialized in the design and manufacture of precision diesel fuel injections components. During World War II it employed thousands of skilled machinists. After the war it was purchased by Wall Street investors and in the early 1950s became part of a small corporation headquartered in New York City. By the early 1960s it had become the most profitable firm in the diesel products division of a Fortune 500 corporation. By the time it closed in 1986 Bosch was an aging plant with a few hundred workers owned by a Fortune 100 corporation. From 1950 forward management attempted to implement numerous strategies to reduce costs and maintain market share, including the construction of a low-wage plant in Mississippi, the acquisition of overseas factories, and in-plant schemes to streamline production. The union resisted in-plant restructuring efforts, but offered token opposition to the company's worldwide maneuvers. Throughout, unionists believed their machining skills coupled with their knowledge of the products being produced were assets the company needed to succeed. The company never shared this perspective, and unresolved, this disjuncture contributed to the closing of the plant. It is argued here that management's efforts failed because workers were treated as appendages of their machines. vii
2006
Description American manufacturing is in obvious crisis: the sector lost three million jobs between 2000 and 2003 as the American trade deficit shot to record highs. Manufacturers have increasingly decentralized productive responsibilities to armies of supplier firms, both domestic and abroad. Many have speculated as to whether or not manufacturing is even feasible in the United States, given the difficulties. Josh Whitford's book shows that discussion of this shift, in the media and in the academic literature, hits on the right issues-globalization, de-industrialization, and the outsourcing of production in marketized and in network relationships-but in an overly polarized way that obscures as much as it enlightens. Drawing on the results of extensive interviews conducted with manufacturers in the American Upper Midwest, Whitford shows that the range of possibilities is more complex and contingent than is usually recognized. Highlighting heretofore unexamined elements of constraint, contradiction and innovation that characterize contemporary network production models, Whitford shakes received understanding in economic and organizational sociology, comparative political economy, and economic geography to reveal ways in which the American economic development apparatus can be adjusted to better meet the challenges of a highly decentralized production regime. Reviews "A new economy is being born from in the old rust-belt economy, and Josh Whitford is a terrific chronicler and analyst of this extraordinary transformation-one so important yet so difficult. Anyone interested in the idea of partnership and collaborative community in industry will find this immensely thought-provoking."-Professor Paul Adler, Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California "Josh Whitford here demonstrates the importance of focussed empirical research in challenging stereotypes. The picture presented here of US Metalworking firms is not that of the familiar stylized facts. That is because it is the result of real, on-the-ground research-but driven also by excellent theoretical analysis and reflection."-Professor Colin Crouch, Chair, Institute of Governance and Public Management, Warwick Business School "At the very center of the transformations of contemporary economies is a profound restructuring of the relationships among firms. Josh Whitford's The New Old Economy provides a penetrating analysis of these transformations, showing how new strategies interact with old institutional arrangements to produce novel configurations. It should be read by anyone interested in understanding the dilemmas and dynamics of the American economy."-Erik Olin Wright, Vilas Distinguished Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin-Madison "If you want to understand the past and future of manufacturing in America, read this book. With detailed research and careful analysis, Josh Whitford gets beyond the politically supercharged debate over 'deindustrialization' and 'outsourcing' to show how the increasingly global and decentralized system of production actually works and what business and political leaders can do about it"-Richard Florida, Hirst Professor of Public Policy, George Mason University "Based on rich fieldwork interviews in America's Midwest manufacturing heartland, Josh Whitford develops a novel account of the organizational consequences of outsourcing from large to small firms, which challenges core claims of leading sociological theories of economic coordination.