Historical Interpretations of the Labour Process: Retrospect and Future Research Directions (Essay‪)‬

Labour process research grew dramatically in popularity during the 1970s and 1980s, fundamentally reshaping debates in sociology, industrial relations, organisational behaviour, and business and management studies. Importantly, the study of the labour process has always involved a strong historical and empirical tradition, with researchers grounding their theoretical contributions within a detailed analysis of how employer strategies, technologies and employee skills have evolved over time. Rather than viewing work simply as a feature of contemporary social relations, labour process theorists highlighted the ways in which modern work organisation is the product of a rich history of contestation and conflict; reflecting the basic features of the capitalist economic system. As a result, labour process researchers have provided an excellent demonstration of how historical research can help to make sense of contemporary phenomena, as well as contribute to broader political agendas such as the advocacy for new and better forms of work organisation. (1) Since the 1990s, however, academic research into the labour process, and employer control strategies more generally, has declined in popularity as new academic fashions have arisen. For instance, the rise of post-structuralism in critical management studies and the so-called 'discursive turn' in the social sciences more generally, have led many to dismiss labour process analysis as 'essentialist' and reliant on a crude Marxist interpretation of economic power and worker subjectivity. For many commentators, labour process theory and related research is seen as having run its course and having little to contribute in terms of new conceptual insights. Indeed, during the 1990s it was common to read of labour process theory in a state of 'crisis', 'wreckage' and 'disarray'. (2)