Matt Vidal
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 254161 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Matt Vidal |
| NOMBRES | Matt |
| APELLIDO | Vidal |
| FIRMA | VIDAL M |
| AFILIACIONES | King's College London |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7189-7482 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 28 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 143 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 26 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 2 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2006 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2025 |
| ÍNDICE H | 7 |
Religious Conservatism versus Elite Professionalism
The literature on elite schools seeks to understand the role of elite socialisation in reproducing inequality and the role of symbolic boundary work in legitimating privilege. This article presents an ethnographic study of an elite Islamic school in Iran. We ask what do elite making, cultural capital (re)production and boundary work look like at an elite school in a semi-authoritarian, theocratic context? We introduce the concept of a contradicto…
From Labour Process Theory to Organisational Political Economy
I am grateful to Critical Sociology for hosting this review symposium and to Benassi, Ikeler and Wood for their deep engagement with my book. Management Divided (hereafter, MD ) presents a synthetic theory – which I call organisational political economy – integrating key concepts from organisation theory into a historical materialist foundation. MD is thick and dense, so it would be difficult to address all the arguments and evidence in a short b…
Inequality, Class, and Economics
Routine politics of production in post-Fordist manufacturing
This article presents a theory of routine politics of production, which was inductively developed based on a case study of 22 supplier factories in the USA, including in-depth interviews with 31 managers and 52 workers. All factories had implemented lean production. The findings show that (i) some managers prioritise the qualitative upgrading of organisational capabilities over quantitative work intensification, (ii) this includes objective forms…
Management Divided
This richly evidenced study of American manufacturing documents how one of the central dynamics shaping organizations today is a contradiction managers face between ensuring workforce discipline and harnessing worker creativity. This contradiction has been intensifying over the last four decades as employee involvement has become increasingly important in response to rapid technical change, requirements for flexibility, and demands for continuous…
Geriatric Capitalism
.
Another Marx
The Oxford Handbook of Karl Marx
The Oxford Handbook of Karl Marx provides an entry point for those new to Marxism. At the same time, its chapters, written by leading Marxist scholars, advance Marxist theory and research. Its coverage is more comprehensive than previous volumes on Marx in terms of both foundational concepts and empirical research on contemporary social problems. It also provides equal space to sociologists, economists, and political scientists, with substantial …
Contradictions of the Labour Process, Worker Empowerment and Capitalist Inefficiency
I articulate a classical-Marxist theory of technical change in the capitalist labour process, highlighting two contradictions. The management contradiction is the conflict managers experience between coordination (to increase efficiency) and discipline (to ensure valorisation). The workforce contradiction is the tension workers experience between productive socialisation and alienation. I submit that both contradictions were substantially muted f…
The Enduring Relevance of Karl Marx
This chapter is the introduction to The Oxford Handbook of Karl Marx. It demonstrates the continuing applicability of Marx’s concepts and theories to understanding twenty-first century capitalism, its crises, and the historical development of human society across varying modes of production. It presents an intellectual biography linking the major moments in Marx’s life to his ideas and theories. The biography also gives insight into Marx’s approa…
Geriatric Capitalism
This entry presents a variegated capitalism analysis of Atlantic capitalism. We trace the development of the national accumulation regimes in the United Kingdom, United States, and Germany from the nineteenth century to the present. Following the Great Depression and World War II, policymakers, reformers, and business leaders explicitly crafteda framework for regulating North American and Western European capitalism . The national Fordist accumul…
Work and Exploitation in Capitalism
Labor process theory has produced important typologies of managerial control and a rich body of empirical case studies. However, it has struggled to deal with genuine cases of upskilling and worker empowerment. This chapter revisits Marx to show that he theorized economic development, technological change and the capitalist labor process as contradictory processes evolving across distinct stages. While Marx saw deskilling as dominant in the earli…
Lean Enough
Rational choice theory has been widely criticized for its unrealistic assumptions that individuals have perfect information and computer-like information processing capability, which are used to maximize utility. Sociological institutionalism and the behavioral theory of the firm have developed complementary alternatives. I combine the two into a single model of information processing. Institutional logics are central to top-down (schema-driven) …
Customer-driven management models for choiceless clientele? Business process reengineering in a California welfare agency
Business process reengineering and lean are increasingly used to restructure public sector work. This article presents a case study of reengineering in a California welfare agency. It finds extensive work intensification and reduced autonomy for the workforce, and deteriorating service for the clientele. Rather than attribute these outcomes as inherent to the business process reengineering model, this article emphasizes how cost cutting and quant…
Marxism in Contemporary Sociology
Fordism and the Golden Age of Atlantic Capitalism
Comparative Political Economy of Work
1. Comparative Political Economy and Labour Process Theory: Toward a Synthesis Matt Vidal and Marco Hauptmeier 2. Varieties of Capitalism Reconsidered: Learning from the Great Recession and its Aftermath Jason Heyes, Paul Lewis and Ian Clark 3. Do the UK and Australia Have Sustainable Business Models? John Buchanan, Julie Froud, Sukhdev Johal, Karel Williams and Serena Yu 4. Incoherence and Dysfunctionality in the Institutional Regulation of Capi…
“Good” Employment Model, Rise and Erosion of
Fordism and Post-Fordism
Low-autonomy work and bad jobs in postfordist capitalism
In this article I present a critical reconstruction of the concept of postfordism, arguing for a regulation-theoretic approach that views Fordism and postfordism not in terms of production models based on a particular labour process but as institutional regimes of competition, within which there are one of four types of generic labour process: high-autonomy, semiautonomous, tightly constrained and unrationalized labour-intensive. I show that over…
Postfordism as a dysfunctional accumulation regime
The article seeks to reanimate the early regulation theory project of building Marxist political economy through the development of mid-range institutional theory. The concept of a mode of regulation - central to the Parisian wing of regulation theory - is rejected in favour of a distinction between functional and dysfunctional accumulation regimes. The Fordist regime of accumulation provided a unique institutional context allowing an extraordina…
Sociological Institutionalism and the Socially Constructed Economy
On the Persistence of Labour Market Insecurity and Slow Growth in the US
In this article I systematically incorporate empirical work on rising income inequality and wage stagnation into a regulation theoretic framework for analysing macroeconomic growth. The rise of job polarisation and income inequality coincides with a long period of macroeconomic stagnation, both continuing through to the present (with the exception of a brief period of strong growth and declining inequality in the second half of the 1990s). The co…
Reworking Postfordism
The Fordism/postfordism framework has been widely used, but also heavily criticized, in the social sciences. I outline the central points of debate over the use of this framework for analysis of work organization, including the range of models offered as successors to Fordism. I then suggest that, while some criticisms of the concept of postfordism have highlighted important problems and issues, the Fordist/postfordist framework can be elaborated…
Organizational Pathology
Postfordism as a dysfunctional accumulation regime
The article seeks to reanimate the early regulation theory project of building Marxist political economy through the development of mid-range institutional theory. The concept of a mode of regulation - central to the Parisian wing of regulation theory - is rejected in favour of a distinction between functional and dysfunctional accumulation regimes. The Fordist regime of accumulation provided a unique institutional context allowing an extraordina…
Low-autonomy work and bad jobs in postfordist capitalism
In this article I present a critical reconstruction of the concept of postfordism, arguing for a regulation-theoretic approach that views Fordism and postfordism not in terms of production models based on a particular labour process but as institutional regimes of competition, within which there are one of four types of generic labour process: high-autonomy, semiautonomous, tightly constrained and unrationalized labour-intensive. I show that over…
The Great Financial Crisis
Manufacturing empowerment? ‘Employee involvement’ in the labour process after Fordism
This is a pre-copyedited, author-produced version of an article accepted for publication in Socio-Economic Review following peer review. The version of record VIDAL, M., 2007. Manufacturing empowerment? 'Employee involvement' in the labour process after Fordism. Socio-Economic Review, 5(2), pp. 197-232. is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1093/ser/mwl005
Reworking Postfordism
The Fordism/postfordism framework has been widely used, but also heavily criticized, in the social sciences. I outline the central points of debate over the use of this framework for analysis of work organization, including the range of models offered as successors to Fordism. I then suggest that, while some criticisms of the concept of postfordism have highlighted important problems and issues, the Fordist/postfordist framework can be elaborated…
Lean Production, Worker Empowerment, and Job Satisfaction
Many argue that increased employee involvement in manufacturing is central to lean production. Increasing the responsibilities and abilities of front-line workers has been labeled empowerment. Such empowerment is said to increase job satisfaction. Yet, there is surprisingly little qualitative research directly addressing the relationship between participatory work arrangements and job satisfaction, and the quantitative evidence is much less clear…
Contradictions of the Labour Process, Worker Empowerment and Capitalist Inefficiency
I articulate a classical-Marxist theory of technical change in the capitalist labour process, highlighting two contradictions. The management contradiction is the conflict managers experience between coordination (to increase efficiency) and discipline (to ensure valorisation). The workforce contradiction is the tension workers experience between productive socialisation and alienation. I submit that both contradictions were substantially muted f…
Lean Enough
Rational choice theory has been widely criticized for its unrealistic assumptions that individuals have perfect information and computer-like information processing capability, which are used to maximize utility. Sociological institutionalism and the behavioral theory of the firm have developed complementary alternatives. I combine the two into a single model of information processing. Institutional logics are central to top-down (schema-driven) …
Customer-driven management models for choiceless clientele? Business process reengineering in a California welfare agency
Business process reengineering and lean are increasingly used to restructure public sector work. This article presents a case study of reengineering in a California welfare agency. It finds extensive work intensification and reduced autonomy for the workforce, and deteriorating service for the clientele. Rather than attribute these outcomes as inherent to the business process reengineering model, this article emphasizes how cost cutting and quant…
On the Persistence of Labour Market Insecurity and Slow Growth in the US
In this article I systematically incorporate empirical work on rising income inequality and wage stagnation into a regulation theoretic framework for analysing macroeconomic growth. The rise of job polarisation and income inequality coincides with a long period of macroeconomic stagnation, both continuing through to the present (with the exception of a brief period of strong growth and declining inequality in the second half of the 1990s). The co…
Another Marx
Organizational Pathology
Manufacturing empowerment? ‘Employee involvement’ in the labour process after Fordism
This is a pre-copyedited, author-produced version of an article accepted for publication in Socio-Economic Review following peer review. The version of record VIDAL, M., 2007. Manufacturing empowerment? 'Employee involvement' in the labour process after Fordism. Socio-Economic Review, 5(2), pp. 197-232. is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1093/ser/mwl005
Lean Production, Worker Empowerment, and Job Satisfaction
Many argue that increased employee involvement in manufacturing is central to lean production. Increasing the responsibilities and abilities of front-line workers has been labeled empowerment. Such empowerment is said to increase job satisfaction. Yet, there is surprisingly little qualitative research directly addressing the relationship between participatory work arrangements and job satisfaction, and the quantitative evidence is much less clear…
The Great Financial Crisis
Reworking Postfordism
The Fordism/postfordism framework has been widely used, but also heavily criticized, in the social sciences. I outline the central points of debate over the use of this framework for analysis of work organization, including the range of models offered as successors to Fordism. I then suggest that, while some criticisms of the concept of postfordism have highlighted important problems and issues, the Fordist/postfordist framework can be elaborated…
Organizational Pathology
Sociological Institutionalism and the Socially Constructed Economy
On the Persistence of Labour Market Insecurity and Slow Growth in the US
In this article I systematically incorporate empirical work on rising income inequality and wage stagnation into a regulation theoretic framework for analysing macroeconomic growth. The rise of job polarisation and income inequality coincides with a long period of macroeconomic stagnation, both continuing through to the present (with the exception of a brief period of strong growth and declining inequality in the second half of the 1990s). The co…
“Good” Employment Model, Rise and Erosion of
Fordism and Post-Fordism
Low-autonomy work and bad jobs in postfordist capitalism
In this article I present a critical reconstruction of the concept of postfordism, arguing for a regulation-theoretic approach that views Fordism and postfordism not in terms of production models based on a particular labour process but as institutional regimes of competition, within which there are one of four types of generic labour process: high-autonomy, semiautonomous, tightly constrained and unrationalized labour-intensive. I show that over…
Postfordism as a dysfunctional accumulation regime
The article seeks to reanimate the early regulation theory project of building Marxist political economy through the development of mid-range institutional theory. The concept of a mode of regulation - central to the Parisian wing of regulation theory - is rejected in favour of a distinction between functional and dysfunctional accumulation regimes. The Fordist regime of accumulation provided a unique institutional context allowing an extraordina…
Comparative Political Economy of Work
1. Comparative Political Economy and Labour Process Theory: Toward a Synthesis Matt Vidal and Marco Hauptmeier 2. Varieties of Capitalism Reconsidered: Learning from the Great Recession and its Aftermath Jason Heyes, Paul Lewis and Ian Clark 3. Do the UK and Australia Have Sustainable Business Models? John Buchanan, Julie Froud, Sukhdev Johal, Karel Williams and Serena Yu 4. Incoherence and Dysfunctionality in the Institutional Regulation of Capi…
Marxism in Contemporary Sociology
Fordism and the Golden Age of Atlantic Capitalism
Customer-driven management models for choiceless clientele? Business process reengineering in a California welfare agency
Business process reengineering and lean are increasingly used to restructure public sector work. This article presents a case study of reengineering in a California welfare agency. It finds extensive work intensification and reduced autonomy for the workforce, and deteriorating service for the clientele. Rather than attribute these outcomes as inherent to the business process reengineering model, this article emphasizes how cost cutting and quant…
Lean Enough
Rational choice theory has been widely criticized for its unrealistic assumptions that individuals have perfect information and computer-like information processing capability, which are used to maximize utility. Sociological institutionalism and the behavioral theory of the firm have developed complementary alternatives. I combine the two into a single model of information processing. Institutional logics are central to top-down (schema-driven) …
The Enduring Relevance of Karl Marx
This chapter is the introduction to The Oxford Handbook of Karl Marx. It demonstrates the continuing applicability of Marx’s concepts and theories to understanding twenty-first century capitalism, its crises, and the historical development of human society across varying modes of production. It presents an intellectual biography linking the major moments in Marx’s life to his ideas and theories. The biography also gives insight into Marx’s approa…
Geriatric Capitalism
This entry presents a variegated capitalism analysis of Atlantic capitalism. We trace the development of the national accumulation regimes in the United Kingdom, United States, and Germany from the nineteenth century to the present. Following the Great Depression and World War II, policymakers, reformers, and business leaders explicitly crafteda framework for regulating North American and Western European capitalism . The national Fordist accumul…
Work and Exploitation in Capitalism
Labor process theory has produced important typologies of managerial control and a rich body of empirical case studies. However, it has struggled to deal with genuine cases of upskilling and worker empowerment. This chapter revisits Marx to show that he theorized economic development, technological change and the capitalist labor process as contradictory processes evolving across distinct stages. While Marx saw deskilling as dominant in the earli…
The Oxford Handbook of Karl Marx
The Oxford Handbook of Karl Marx provides an entry point for those new to Marxism. At the same time, its chapters, written by leading Marxist scholars, advance Marxist theory and research. Its coverage is more comprehensive than previous volumes on Marx in terms of both foundational concepts and empirical research on contemporary social problems. It also provides equal space to sociologists, economists, and political scientists, with substantial …
Contradictions of the Labour Process, Worker Empowerment and Capitalist Inefficiency
I articulate a classical-Marxist theory of technical change in the capitalist labour process, highlighting two contradictions. The management contradiction is the conflict managers experience between coordination (to increase efficiency) and discipline (to ensure valorisation). The workforce contradiction is the tension workers experience between productive socialisation and alienation. I submit that both contradictions were substantially muted f…
Geriatric Capitalism
.
Another Marx
Routine politics of production in post-Fordist manufacturing
This article presents a theory of routine politics of production, which was inductively developed based on a case study of 22 supplier factories in the USA, including in-depth interviews with 31 managers and 52 workers. All factories had implemented lean production. The findings show that (i) some managers prioritise the qualitative upgrading of organisational capabilities over quantitative work intensification, (ii) this includes objective forms…
Management Divided
This richly evidenced study of American manufacturing documents how one of the central dynamics shaping organizations today is a contradiction managers face between ensuring workforce discipline and harnessing worker creativity. This contradiction has been intensifying over the last four decades as employee involvement has become increasingly important in response to rapid technical change, requirements for flexibility, and demands for continuous…
Economics (25 obras) · Political science (18 obras) · Political Economy and Marxism (14 obras) · Sociology (14 obras) · Fordism (12 obras) · Capitalism (10 obras) · Law (10 obras) · Politics (10 obras) · Business (8 obras) · Market economy (8 obras)