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Authority and Efficiency: The Labor Market and the Managerial Revolution of the Late Nineteenth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Gregory Clark
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Abstract

The managerial revolution resulted in the concentration of production decisions in the hands of management. Radical economists and historians have disputed the conventional view that these changes in work organization were necessary to increase production efficiency. Yet curiously there seem to be few issues of fact in dispute between the radical and the conventional accounts. I offer here an interpretation of the radical position which explains why this is so, and why profitable and efficient organizations of work will differ in capitalist economies. The argument hinges on the conditions under which workers were able to act collectively.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 44 , Issue 4 , December 1984 , pp. 1069 - 1083
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1984

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References

1 See David Montgomery, Workers' Control in America (Cambridge, 1976), pp. 11–15.

2 Ibid., pp. 11–12.

3 These works include Stone, Katherine, “The Origin of Job Structures in the Steel Industry,” Review of Radical Political Economics (Summer 1974);Google Scholar and Lazonick, William, “Production Relations, Labor Productivity and the Choice of Technique: British and U.S. Cotton Spinning,” this JOURNAL, 41 (09 1981), “Technological Change and the Control of Work,” Harvard Institute of Economic Research, Discussion Paper No. 821 (April 1981), and “Production Productivity and Development: Theoretical Implications of Some Historical Research,” Harvard Institute of Economic Research, Discussion Paper No. 876 (Jan. 1982).Google Scholar

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58 The lack of social distinctions between managers and employers may explain why cooperatives of professionals can be very successful. The London Symphony Orchestra has been a successful workers' cooperative since 1904. The members elect the conductor and the directors, and participate in a production process which is complex and requires a high degree of cooperation between participants. The possibilities for opportunistic behavior and for collective restrictions by workers are as great as in any enterprise.Google Scholar