In Search of Competitive Efficiency: Labour Process Flexibility in Canadian Newsprint Mills

This paper focuses on the strategies for production and work reorganization pursued in the Canadian newsprint industry during the 1990s. Many newsprint mill managers view new pulping technologies and increased labour process flexibility as the important keys to success in their never-ending quest to remain competitive in the U.S. market. These strategies are discussed in the context of two underlying themes: the nature of the particular competitive pressures faced by Canadian newsprint producers in the early 1990s and the specific nature of the labour process in newsprint mills. Evidence points to the central importance of achieving functional labour flexibility in newsprint mills and to the fact that numerical labour flexibility is not a viable strategy, given the continuous-process nature of the industry.
The Economics of Production, Technological Change, and Cost Competitiveness in the Newsprint Industry
Work Practices and Labour Conventions in the Newsprint Industry
Flexibility and the Quest for Competitive Efficiency in Canadian Newsprint Mills     

From flexibility to accommodation? Disabled people and the reinvention of paid work

Scholarship on 'flexible' work and changing organizational cultures has had little to say about the implications of these developments for disabled people. Drawing on in-depth interviews, this paper examines the ways in which disabled workers struggle over accommodations in contemporary workplaces. Analysis reveals a number of themes concerning training, speed at work, and emotional and aesthetic labour. At their core, these themes concern the ability of workers to exercise control over the labour process. Efforts to obtain accommodation are frustrated by multiple strategies that include people's propensity to self-discipline in the interests of achieving a valued identity through paid work. The paper argues in conclusion that accommodation, as both discourse and practice, offers a conceptual resource for rethinking contemporary employment with implications for both disabled and non-disabled workers.     

Professional Workers in a Risk Society

This paper contributes to the debate on the utility of Ulrich Beck's (1992) notion of the 'risk society' for understanding the positions and experiences of workers who are negotiating more 'flexible' employment contracts. Whilst previous articles in this journal have concentrated upon the lower end of the employment market, I aim to broaden the scope of the discussion by focussing upon professional freelance magazine workers, and ask whether Beck's framework has a different utility in terms of understanding their employment security and risk.¹     

动态环境中的企业战略柔性

随着技术创新的加速和经济全球化的日益扩展,变化已成为企业外部环境的基本特征,战略柔性的重要性日益凸显。本文详细分析了动态环境的涵义,探讨了动态环境中战略柔性的理论内涵,并提出了在动态环境下企业增强战略柔性的基本途径。     

1957年“毛罗对话”版本比较及解读

早在1957年整风前的全国宣传工作会议期间,毛泽东就曾三次公开回答过倘若鲁迅活着敢不敢写的问题,因而在其后反右派斗争期间再次回答这个问题合乎情理。在目前流传的三种毛罗对话版本中,贺圣谟版本提到的顾全大局四个字至关重要,最能体现毛泽东对鲁迅杂文立场的深刻了解和对知识分子政治态度的深切期盼。在他看来,凡事有经有权——鲁迅式杂文是永远需要的,但要站在人民立场上用保护和教育人民的满腔热情来写,这是经,是原则性;而当社会上出现否定党和社会主义的错误言论并使整风转入反右斗争后,原本在开门整风时用来讽刺自己队伍的杂文就不合时宜了,要顾全反右斗争大局,改变讽刺批评对象,这是权,是灵活性。这种思维体现了马克思主义政策策略原理与中国传统经权思想的有机结合。     

WORKING WITH 'WILD ROSE I': LEAN PRODUCTION IN A GREENFIELD MILL

The Alberta Newsprint Company mill in Whitecourt, Alberta, with its state-of-the-art paper machine dubbed Wild Rose I' is one of the most efficient newsprint mills in North America. This paper documents the systematic drive by the Alberta Newsprint Company to achieve lean production by the use of flexible work practices in a greenfield mill, which began production in 1990. The analysis begins by examining the way in which the workforce for the new mill was recruited as the first step to creating a flexible workplace. Information from questionnaires completed by 96 employees, who represent approximately half the total labour force, and semi-structured interviews with managers and employees, is used to describe the extent to which the anc mill has achieved various forms of labour flexibility. The nature and extent of these new work arrangements are compared among departments within the mill. Finally, we explore the recent restructuring of wages in the mill. These events illustrate some of the unanticipated consequences arising from the implementation of lean production in a remote geographical setting.     

Reshuffling Paperworkers: Technological Change and Experiences of Reorganization at a Québec Newsprint Mill

This article offers an historical-geographical account of how an aging newsprint mill located in Gatineau, in the Outaouais region of western Québec, with serious obstacles to cost-effective production, came to be chosen for a complete in situ technological reorganization project in the early 1990s. This apparent paradox is explained by locating the mill with respect to the production system and corporate strategy of its parent company, with respect to changing production and demand requirements, and with respect to its particular labour relations history. We focus on the process through which this drastic reorganization was implemented at the mill, showing how logistical considerations particular to this type of continuous-process industry, as well as procedures laid out in the labour contract, influenced the company's timetable and labour deployment strategies during this period. We show how the process of technological reorganization helped create the conditions for the subsequent implementation of functional flexibility. We also refer to the unpredictable contingencies that necessitated building flexibility into the timetable for downsizing the workforce by some 450 jobs. As well as considering the constraints faced by local management, we explore how the reorganization process was experienced by workers, especially those facing prolonged uncertainty as to their future at the mill. We examine the seeming paradox of the prevalence of overtime at the mill even as workers were being laid off. In conclusion, we critically discuss the appropriateness of concepts such as management strategy and numerical flexibility and point to the need for further concept development to facilitate analyses of labour deployment strategies adopted during periods of production reorganization.     

Mediating messiness: expanding ideas of flexibility,reflexivity, and embodiment in fieldwork

This article aims to help researchers think about some big-picture challenges that occur in the early stages of fieldwork. In particular, we address the transition from a clear, concise research proposal to the often complicated, messy initiation of a project. Drawing on autobiographical accounts of our own PhD research projects, we focus on dilemmas that may arise for researchers guided by feminist epistemology and methodology. First, we discuss parameters regarding acceptable changes to original research plans and questions. Noting that the carefully planned proposal may dramatically change as fieldwork begins, we draw on feminist literatures to expand and concretize the notion of flexibility in the research process. Second, we puzzle out the relationship between theory, epistemology, and method as the researcher delves into her fieldwork. As logistical challenges may take priority, theoretical and epistemological concerns may temporarily wane. Third, we consider the many ways in which the researcher's personal and field life bleed into each other to shape the conduct of research. We emphasize the importance of considering – prior to research as well as during – what the concepts of reflexivity and embodiment mean in fieldwork, especially for the researcher in terms of personal needs and logistical realities. Finally, while we suggest that there are certain unique pressures that shape the early stages of the field research period for PhD students, we conclude the article by focusing on ways in which lessons learned during our own experiences might be broadly useful for any researchers in the beginning stages of fieldwork.     

Flexibility Meets Accountability: State Charter School Laws and Their Influence on the Formation of Charter Schools in the United States

Using an original and unique database of state charter school laws that we have developed, we analyze how state policymakers have incorporated two key values into state charter school laws: flexibility and accountability. We supplement this database with other state‐level measures to answer two specific questions: What factors influence the degree of flexibility and accountability in state charter school laws? How does the content of state charter school laws, and the different values those laws embrace, affect the formation of charter schools in the United States? Overall, we show that state political and contextual factors help account for the degree of flexibility, but not accountability, in state charter school laws. Further, we show that the degree of flexibility, accountability, and political and contextual factors influence the number of charter schools that form in the states.