Labour Process Theory - Essay Example

Evaluate The Strengths And Weaknesses Of Labour Process Theory For Our Understanding Of The Impact Of Information And Communication Technologies In The Workplace Table of Contents Introduction 2 Insights Offered By Labour Process Theory 3 Strengths and Weaknesses of LPT 6 Impact of Information and Communication Technologies in the Workplace 9 Conclusion 14 References 16 Introduction Labour Process Theory (LBT) is a concept that proposes the practices undertaken by the management to control the workforce within the organisational environment and ensure utmost productivity (Mooney & Law, 2007). It is believed that from the past few decades, LPT has been a core subject of the Critical Management Studies (CMS) that was formed by Harry Braverman in the year 1970 using the ideas developed by Karl Marx. Since its introduction in the stream of modern management ideologies, LPT has delivered huge contribution in analysing the work performed within the organisation, as per the desired level of productivity and hence, creating a work organisation (Adler, 2007). LPT was created following the ideologies of Marx that suggest the fundamental aspect for comprehending the work organisation is based upon the structure of the community within which the organisation is functioning instead of human psychology. LPT primarily emphasises on how individuals work in an organisation, what/who controls the work done by these individuals, what are the skills used by these individuals when carrying out their work and in what ways are those individuals remunerated for the work they have done. LBT has been successful in creating a linkage with the management strategy of an organisation through its involvement and set of assumptions. LPT provides an understanding regarding how the management of an organisation limits the power of the working class who have the skills to carry out the given task (Thompson & O’Doherty, 2008). The paper thus intends to provide an evaluation regarding the strengths and weaknesses of LPT in an organisational context. It also provides the partialities of the insights presented in the concept of LPT due to which, it has been a controversial topic. The paper also encompasses the impact of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in the workplace through the initiation of LPT from a managerial perspective. Insights Offered By Labour Process Theory LPT is a conceptual approach that has been in use, as per the capitalist method of production that provides a deep insight about worker management relations in the workplace. Considering its applicability, it is also perceived that LPT causes serious insights in today’s world of work, management control issues and political aspects in the workplace. In relation to the capitalists approach used in LPT, managerial control in the workplace has been a highly debated topic (Adler & et. al., 2007). Correspondingly, it will be worth noting that LPT lacks credential as a best practice in the 21st century, as the theory apparently neglects the political aspects prevalent within the workplace where a degree of coordination is required amid the management and the individual employees. Initiating LPT in the present day organisation might result in workers resistance, as it induces workload pressure for the workers largely (Böhm, 2007). LPT is mainly intended towards surplus value by increasing the level of productivity within an organisation, but there is a huge possibility that the labour might get exploited through intensified pressure. Therefore, numerous researchers have continuously improved LPT to ensure that the theory positively influences the workplace along with its overall organisational performance (Oladeinde, 2011). As per the theoretical underpinning of LPT, control is regarded as one of its key elements to increase the productivity level among employees. In this regard, the process of manufacturing requires the workforce to operate with the machines and equipments along with raw materials to produce the required products or services (Jaros, 2005). Thus, LPT uses control as a key element to bring effectiveness through coordination amid the various facets used in the production process and achieve the desired outcome. In the pre-industrial phase, the capitalists retained ownership of all three factors of production due to which, they could control the labour market (Dow & et. al., 2005). The labour market involves a cycle wherein the worker finds an employer who is willing to provide employment along with attractive wages. Correspondingly, it is observed that most of the employers emphasise on minimising the labour cost while a worker focuses on achieving the best salary along with good working conditions. It is considered that labour process helps in meeting the requirements of both the employees and the employers and hence, a relationship is created amid the labour and the production equipment to yield increased productivity. This labour process cycle was introduced in the pre-industrial phase, which is still being used by the many organisations today. However, LPT has been subjected to huge criticism, primitively owing to the heavy influence of capitalism on it. As the capitalists, with the use of LPT, are alleged to be mainly focused on productivity, continuous pressure on labour productivity, neglecting value to it was viewed that the labours were continuously getting exploited (Land & Bohm, 2009). This in turn created resistance among them to experience and adapt uncertain changes within the workplace. Subsequently, the workers became uncooperative and raised conflicts (Gatta, 2008). Therefore, “labour problem” came into existence, which became one of the major concerns for the capitalists and their management processes, indicating the requirement for a substantial change. As capitalists were only focused towards creating surplus value, LPT played a huge role for the capitalists in achieving the desired results along with solving the labour related problems (Böhm & Land, 2012). Overall, it can be comprehended that LPT helped in shaping the management control process and labour practices within the present day organisations (McGraw-Hill Education, 2004). Strengths and Weaknesses of LPT LPT has undoubtedly been a revolutionary approach in shaping the contemporary structure of organisational labour management techniques. However, this theory, being developed in the 1970s, possesses many loopholes along with a few noteworthy strengths, which become apparent when applied in the 21st century context. One of the major weaknesses of LPT is that it is based on the capitalist notion, wherein labours were not given much priority on the basis of their interests, as the capitalists mainly remained focused on the organisational performances and its profitability. Labourers in the early 19th century were subjected to immense pressure of workload wherein the capitalists were inclined towards obtaining more profit from the labourers. Managers that were using LPT, exercised their authority on the workers for inducing production growth wherein their well-being and self-interests were not given much consideration, which is often criticised to ignite political unrests in the labour market owing to the harm caused to the labourers’ interests. This can certainly be asserted as a major weakness of LPT, owing to the fact that the theory lacked drawing sufficient attention from the management to sustainability issues, fulfilling the interests of the workers (Thompson & Smith, 2009). Instead LPT based organisations believed that obtaining huge profit is the only approach to maintain sustenance in the organisation in the long run, which grounds many criticisms against the theory (Adler, 2004). On the contrary, where scientific management theory offered a focus to labour management strategies applied by the organisations at the point of time, LPT provided a direction to the management towards the focus in a more critical manner. It is worth mentioning in this context that LPT provided a direction to the managerial control over the workers in a more systematised manner. This particular aspect added up to the strength of LPT, as it helped in enhancing the productivity level of various skilled and unskilled labour forces providing a better direction to the workers’ continuous productive developments. LPT helped in ensuring that the decision making process were undertaken by skilled managers who were qualified enough to make decisions. This in turn resulted in inducing organisational growth, as the decision making process was prompt and systematic in nature (Kitay, n.d.). Moreover, LPT is inclined towards addressing the problems associated with labour conflicts, which reduced the possibility of labour unions within the organisation. It is considered that this particular factor was a huge strength of LPT as it mitigated the labour associated problems that helped in meeting the organisational objectives at that moment and thus, proved effective in the short-term. The concept of deskilling was also introduced in LPT that has been used as contemporary management strategies by numerous organisations from the past few years as a means to control the labour process. Therefore, it can be argued that through deskilling techniques, LPT induced flexibility within an organisation, which increased the capability of workers to adopt in the changing business scenario and thereby, contribute to the overall organisational sustainability (O’Doherty & Willmott, 2010). Nevertheless, LPT remains a highly debated topic in the 21st century due to its capitalist notion, which misaligns with the current phenomenon where most of the organisations in the present day context consider workforce as an asset in their business function rather than only a ‘factor of production’. In relation to the weakness of LPT in the 21st century, it has been viewed that the LPT approach is mainly inclined towards profitability, which raises risks for the organisation’s the long-term sustainability. On the other hand, LPT strengthens an organisation as it creates flexibility among the workers to adopt themselves in the changing business situations, which supports organisational growth in terms of performance and profitability emphasising the modern concept of learning, unlearning and relearning (International Labour Process Conference, n.d.). It can also be revealed in this regard that one of the major strengths of LPT is that it facilitates organisational restructuring, which permits a better control on the functioning of the workers in an organisation through effective management processes. However, due to the changing business trends, LPT has been criticised, as it has not been able to suffice the new paradigms introduced in the present day organisations. Although, LPT induces effective control within the management along with cost reduction, there has been a huge difficulty in adopting LPT within an organisation, as it fragments jobs and reduces the extent of skills requirement for the workers in their job role. On one hand, LPT had replaced workers’ independence in an organisation with management control, which further raised huge conflicts among the workers and the trade unions. This is particularly because workload pressure for the workers increased with the replacement of their interdependence on management control. On the other, LPT is considered as a driver for technological change within several organisations, as it helped in shaping the production process along with designing the work structures for the workers through effective division of tasks (Adler, 2004). Impact of Information and Communication Technologies in the Workplace Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) has immensely changed the way organisations undertake their business processes, wherein there has been a strong change observed in the process of production along with the working conditions for the workers. ICT has resulted in empowering the white-collar workers, influencing the labour process in various industries (Liu, 2006). Notably, due to rapid developments in ICT, the entire workplace and the work structure of the employees has been subjected to enormous transformation. Moreover, ICTs have also changed the requirement of skills among the workers along with igniting a transformation in the employee-employer relationship with greater significance to the legitimate rights to workers and the boundaries of managerial control on their performances. The impact of ICTs can also be witnessed in creating numerous job opportunities for individuals in the service sector, due to which, there has been a huge growth in the total number of employees through its improvement in the ICTs. In addition, ICTs has also resulted to change in the skill requirement of the workers wherein the demand for skilful workers has increased. Thus, in the present day context, workers have increased their level of skills by developing themselves in the technological perspective to cope with the changing business requirements for the 21st century organisations. However, huge development in ICTs have also negatively impacted the low skilled labours, as most of the organisations nowadays recruit skilled employees, which reduced suitable employment opportunities for unskilled labourers. In relation to LPT, capitalists mainly focused on increasing the surplus value of their organisation, introducing new kinds of machines and escalating the labour process (Sawchuk, 2005). As governmental policies have set certain limitations for prolonging the number of working days, it has often been witnessed causing an obstruction for the organisation to meet its surplus value. Henceforth, ICTs have resulted in introducing new technologies in the workplace after the period of industrial revolution. In the present day context, workplaces have been highly impacted due to rapid enhancement in ICTs, as organisations mostly focus on increasing the level of productivity making the workers use advanced production machines in their business operations. In addition, ICTs have resulted in reducing the overall cost incurred by the organisations, as most of the labour work is done by machines due to which, there is limited requirement for skilful labour. It would be worth mentioning that ICT’s have highly impacted the workplace, as most of the organisations have become capital intensive instead of labour intensive (Liu, 2006). As referred in Sewell (2005), Braverman, in his research, had identified that due to the initiation of new technologies in the work environment, reinforcement took place, in which “conception and execution” was separated from each other in the labour process. This in turn has resulted in allowing the management of an organisation to capture the element of conception in the labour process and take complete control over the production process. Eventually, after the production process got restored through the initiation of new technologies, most of the job operations became trivialised simply into some physical actions, which requires unskilful or semi-skilful labours (Sewell, 2005). Thus, the concept of deskilling came into existence wherein the work of the entire workforce witnessed decline, fundamentally into two aspects. On one side, the average level of skills among workers in the 20th century was comparatively lower compared to those observed in the 19th century. On the other, most of the workers, due to restoration of new technologies had lost their competency level in "mastery of the conceptual aspect" of their working process in relation to the craft workers whose knowledge and capability is marked as better in the pre-industrial phase (Liu, 2006). It was accordingly viewed that the workers skills in the pre-industrial phase involved the elements of both conception and execution in comparison with the workers’ skills in the capitalist’s approach of production wherein these skills have been just tied to mere physical activities. It was further stated by Braverman that the impact of deskilling not only influenced the blue-collared workers, but also influenced the white-collared workers in the contemporary employment market. In this regard, the low-skilled employees had to face significant challenges due to the introduction of new technologies that resulted in the effects of deskilling. For instance, ICTs in the banking sector on one hand had increased the power in the hands of top-level managers indicating a capitalist union; while on the other hand, it has replaced the lower level and middle level managers with computerised technologies and automated machines. Thus, degradation of work, i.e. deskilling has taken shape of a controversial issue when it is implemented in the work life situation of professional workers (Upchurch, 2014). However, there have been some positive effects of ICTs in the workplace, wherein it has developed advanced workers and resulted in increasing their overall income. Some researchers argue that the impact of ICTs in the workplace have resulted in re-skilling the workers instead of de-skilling them and thus, making them more efficient in facing and adapting the currently observed changes. According to Masip (2007), to become industry appropriate, labour forces are required to be reskilled from a multi-dimensional perspective. This can further be coined as the process of multi-skilling. It is in this context that the process of re-skilling and then multi-skilling the workforce requires effective channelization of knowledge, again prompted towards the notion of learning, unlearning and relearning, wherein deskilling becomes essential to control the learning and adaption behaviour of the labour. Correspondingly, technology influences are apparent in multiskilling a workforce, which has further increased its significance in deskilling the employees too (Masip & et. al., 2007). According to Soete (2001), it is considered that ICT has played a huge role in bring transformation among the workers, wherein ICT has been useful in taking cost effective measures towards labour process. Soete (2001) further asserted that with the introduction of ICTs, inclination of LPT has moved towards a more knowledge centric approach, where the notion of knowledge wok is given prime significance. This further shapes the modern point of view towards employee management with the integration of ICTs in channelizing knowledge within the workplace, emphasising the deskilling and reskilling processes, as was argued in LPT (Hampson, 2008). Nevertheless, inclusion of these factors at multi-level dimensions of contemporary employee management techniques have raised complexity challenges for the management while stimulating its overall efficiency in aligning the goodness of LPT with the advantages of organisational sustainability (Soete, 2001). This is because the entire system in the workplace has been more systematic and has positively influenced the way in which workers perform. Apparently, the process of re-skilling has played a pivotal role in separating the element of conception with that of execution in the workplace (McCann, 2010). To be mentioned in this regard, in the early decades of labour management in commercial organisations, focus was delivered on execution, which made the strategists in businesses to be aimed at yielding highest possible returns through labour performance. This further raised a limitation as the strategists avoided taking into consideration the significance of sustainability when framing the conceptual framework of labour management techniques (Thompson, 2003). However, in the current day context, strategists understand the significance of both conception and execution although these two elements remain separated. This enables the management of labours to be more systematic and measurable owing to the fact that aligning conception with execution was possible through this measure, rewarding better efficiency to the organisational productivity. For instance, computer-programming jobs introduced by ICTs has helped in separating the “brain” and “hand” of the workers in the workplace causing substantial effects on the overall labour process. These jobs have further augmented the managerial control of the top-level managers in the level process, which has resulted in re-organisation along with fragmentation of tasks among workers (Carey, 2007). Correspondingly, LPT has attracted major criticism as it has ignored the aspect of resistance among workers along with political influences working within the workplace, especially among trade unions. Nonetheless, it is argued by researchers that in order to secure surplus value, workers must be provided interdependence instead of capitalist’s coercion. Michael Burawoy, who is an author and sociological Marxist from Britain emphasises on the significance of political and ideological facets while analysing the LPT wherein he states that "Any work context involves an economic dimension (production of things), a political dimension (production of social relations), and an ideological dimension (production of an experience of those relations). These three dimensions are inseparable" (Freeman, 2000). It is worth mentioning in this context that Burawoy identifies that Braverman's LPT does not take into account the political and ideological facets, due to which, the notion of de-skilling becomes prone to certain deficits while applying it in the workplace. Thus, Burawoy emphasised on developing the LPT through shifting from the aspect of production to the political aspect in the labour process, which also signifies the separation of two elements, conception and execution in contemporary labour management techniques. For instance, contemporary organisations require considering government intervention and labour unions while initiating new equipment within the workplace. This in turn has been a remedy to the deficits in the de-skilling thesis of the LPT developed by Braverman (Mahoney, 2000). Conclusion LPT is an approach adopted by the organisation in order to control the entire workforce. LPT focuses on how workers function in an organisation, which provides direction to the workers and the work done by them, what skills are used by the workers while operating and how those workers are paid for the job done. It has been mentioned above that LPT approach includes certain strengths and weaknesses and these factors have highly influenced the labours. As LPT has been developed under the capitalist notion, its major weakness was that the theory only considered the organisational profitability and enhanced performance instead of its long-term sustainability. It was also believed that LPT induced huge extent of pressure among the workforce in an organisation, which hampered their production capability. Moreover, LPT does not considered interest of the workers as an important aspect in the labour process which added up to its weaknesses as the long term stability of the organisation was not given any consideration in this theory. In relation to the strengths of LPT, it was considered that the theory initiated a better managerial control along with flexibility that resulted in increasing the productivity level of the workers. However applying LPT in the 21st century organisations in considered being quite problematic as it creates a threat for the organisational long-term sustainability. ICTs have contributed towards changing the entire demographics of the production process along with the workplace situations. 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