The disintegrated firm.
| Author | Chandler, Dan |
Since the 1980s, vertically integrated firms have increasingly given way to more varied and fissured workplaces, contributing to the growth of poorly paid and precarious work, and to deteriorating working conditions. David Weil's book analyses what can be done.
D. Weil, The Fissured Workplace, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2014
We are living through a transformation of work. Technology is changing the content of the jobs we do, as machines replace humans in some tasks while changing the nature of others, with important consequences for employment and inequality. (1) But technology is also changing the organisation of work: the way that tasks are bundled into jobs, the way that jobs and workers are organised into firms, and the nature of the employment relationship between firms and workers. Changes in the organisation of work, and their implications for inequality, have risen up the political agenda in recent years, spurred by the rise of platforms like Uber and Deliveroo, and of the 'gig economy' more broadly. (2) But these changes are best understood as the latest manifestation of a longer-term transformation which has been underway since the 1980s.
This longer-term transformation is the focus of David Weil's important book, The Fissured Workplace. Weil, an academic and recognised expert in employment and labour market policy, argues that for much of the twentieth century the economic landscape was dominated by large integrated firms ('lead firms'), where most of the activities and workers involved in producing a good or service were located within the boundaries of a single firm. Since the 1980s, lead firms have increasingly shed activities and direct employment through a range of new organisational models, from subcontracting, to franchising, to the development of complex domestic and international supply chains. Weil argues that these changes have delivered benefits to consumers through lower prices, and investors through higher returns. But they have come at a substantial cost to workers, contributing to the growth of poorly paid and precarious work, and to deteriorating job quality and working conditions.
Weil's book is perhaps the first to bring such a wide range of organisational forms within a single descriptive and analytical framework, and its greatest strength is the way he draws out the underlying economic logic which explains both the rise of the 'fissured workplace' and its consequences for workers. Weil...
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