Implementing Lean Production in an Old Industrial Space: Restructuring at Corner Brook, Newfoundland, 1984–1994

Kruger Incorporated purchased the aging pulp and paper mill in Corner Brook in 1984, armed with a federal-provincial modernization agreement and a pattern-breaking contract with the mill unions. It is argued that changes made in the decade since then correspond most closely with a form of lean production. Six elements of lean production are found at Corner Brook: tighter coordination of production and automation; a continued concentration on core activities; the farming out of ancillary activities; shrinking and segmentation of the workforce; environmental compliance, increasing technical efficiency; and the co-opting of the workforce into the mission of the firm.     

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     

政治体制改革的动力机制探析

政治体制改革的核心问题依然是解决动力问题,动力机制是政治体制改革的生命之所在。经济体制改革的深入推进及经济的高速发展是政治体制改革的物质推动力;公民社会的发育是政治体制改革的本源推动力;借鉴人类政治文明是政治体制改革的外在推动力;基层民主实践是政治体制改革的直接推动力;迅速普及的互联网是政治体制改革的技术推动力;政治体制改革的制度化是政治体制改革的长效推动力。     

Towards an understanding of local protest: hospital closure and community resistance

The aim of this paper is to suggest an analytical framework through which the complex question of hospital closure and local protest can be further explored. The significance of this area of study lies with the extraordinary events that surrounded a campaign to save the Kidderminster General Hospital from downsizing. Whilst the hospital was not saved, the local campaign committee organizing the protest took their fight into the political arena and were successful in gaining a parliamentary voice in the 2001 general elections. Such an achievement has had considerable political implications, however, the question asked here is how might we begin to interpret the events that took place. To this end, the paper draws on current geographical literature in an attempt to construct a framework that accounts for both national policy debates and the local context within which such campaigns emerge.     

Amid the snows of Baltistan

Scottish carrier trade declined rapidly in the period 1820–60, but the pattern is complex and growth co‐exists with contraction. Total volume of traffic is halved, but in areas peripheral to the thin rail net there are increases. Glasgow was the main carrier centre, and saw not only contraction but a change from regional to local functions.     

Gentrification Interrupted in Salford,UK: From New Deal to “Limbo‐Land” in a Contemporary Urban Periphery

This paper examines two potential lacunae in understanding low‐income residents’ experiences of contemporary state‐led gentrification via a study of neighbourhood restructuring in Salford, UK, 2004–2014. The first is the localised politics preparing the ground for neighbourhood “redevelopment” and housing demolition. The second is the blighted social landscape which emerges with the subsequent stalling of this project. A focus on “before” and “after” is adopted in order to disrupt the linear policy and “effects” temporalities that much qualitative gentrification research tends to inhabit. We see how state‐led neighbourhood restructuring does not simply displace, but carries residents from “empowerment” to abandonment and transfers them from active struggle into devitalised limbo. As such, the paper demarcates challenges and opportunities for resident mobilisation inherent in a vacillating urban renewal programme, powerful in its inception but which has since “hit the buffers” (Lees 2014, Antipode 46(4):921–947) in light of global and municipal fiscal crises.     

Refractions and recombinations of the ‘economic’ and the ‘social’: a personalized reflection on challenges by—and to—feminist urban geographies

This invited essay responds to requests by the Suzanne Mackenzie Memorial Lecture Nominating Committee and by the former Editor of this journal to take stock of and provide intellectual‐historical context for the major preoccupations that characterized feminist urban geography in its early years, by means of a personalized reflection in light of the author's own positioning in those debates and interventions. The thread running through the article is that of the relationship between the ‘economic’ and the ‘social’ in urban geography. The last section briefly considers new challenges that neoliberalism poses for critical feminist urban geographies.     

1978～1984年中国经济体制改革思路的演进--决策与实施

中国的改革不是依据理论预设,而是诉诸实践和试验,从局部开始,"撞击-反射"式地推进.改革初期,从最初的放权让利到确立"有计划的商品经济"的改革方向,经历了重大的观念和理论的突破,包括激烈的争论.这种突破得益于理论界的不懈探索和领导人的正确决断.国际交往的扩大拓展了人们的视野,为反思中国体制弊端、探寻改革之道提供了多样性的参照物和丰富的思想资源.但是,对改革思路突破最有力的推动,还是实践本身.正是在总结中国自己的历史经验,同时吸收国外经验,了解和研究国外各种经济理论,特别是比较系统地汲取东欧国家改革经济学的成果的基础上,逐步形成了中国的改革学派,形成了以建立"社会主义商品经济"体制为核心的整套观点和政策主张.中共十二届三中全会通过关于经济体制改革的决定,标志着中国改革总体思路的一次重大突破.     

Working in a Risk Society

Through much of the 1980s, discussions of transformations within work and employment debated the emergence of a new, more 'flexible' era - or, at a different level of analysis, the growth of more 'flexible' working practices. Recent accounts of contemporary socio-economic change have been framed within new sets of theoretical contexts, such as Ulrich Beck's notion of 'social risk'. The central aim of this paper is to evaluate the utility of such an approach, drawing upon empirical work which has investigated changes to terms and conditions of manual employment in British local authorities as a result of the introduction of compulsory competitive tendering.     

“第七次革命”:政府机构改革进展态势及问题

从建国到现在 ,已经过去了的机构改革有六次 ,加上现在正在进行的一共七次。第七次政府机构改革从 1 998年开始 ,舆论称之为“第七次革命”。总起来看 ,以前的六次行政机构改革尽管力度各不相同 ,裁员、缩编和机构撤并情况不大一样 ,但是它们却有一个共同特点 ,即那些改革不是旨在通过精简机构和裁减人员来达到调整行政机构整体功能和职能的过程 ,而仅仅停留在对机构和人员数量的简单减少上 ,人们称之为“机械式”改革。因为没有改革政府运行机制和职能 ,因而就不可避免地导致“精简———膨胀———再精简———再膨胀”和“越精简越膨胀”的逆向恶性循环现象