Management Divided: Contradictions of Labor Management

Matt Vidal

Jun 2022 · Gildan Media · Narrated by Tom Beyer

About this audiobook

One of the central dynamics shaping organizations today is a contradiction managers face between ensuring workforce discipline and harnessing worker creativity. In manufacturing, global best practice includes lean production with substantive worker empowerment; cross-training in enlarged tasks and inclusion in problem solving and decision making. Yet, many managers instead face these conflicting pressures by training workers in narrow tasks and using them exclusively for manual labor. In this richly evidenced study of American manufacturing, Matt Vidal presents a synthetic theory called "organizational political economy," integrating concepts from organization theory into a classical marxist framework. This theory emphasizes how contradictory developments-conflicting pressures and competing logics of labor management-lead management to be divided. Some managers adopt best practice by substantively empowering their workforce while others settle for good enough. Capitalist management is increasingly a source of organizational inefficiency. This argument is not limited to manufacturing. Managers experience contradictory pressures-for standardization versus discretion, deskilling versus upskilling-in a wide range of occupations, including education, healthcare, software development, and many more.

About the author

Matt Vidal is Reader in Sociology and Political Economy in the Institute for International Management, Loughborough University London. He is coauthor of Organizing Prosperity and coeditor of The Oxford Handbook of Karl Marx and Comparative Political Economy of Work.

Tom Beyer is a character actor who has appeared in over 100 TV shows, films, and commercials; has performed in innumerable plays and musicals; and has narrated many audiobooks. He has won awards for his stage work as both an actor and a director, and has adapted classical literature for the theater.