Industrial Change in Europe: The Pursuit of Flexible Specialisation in Britain and West Germany

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Abstract
This paper examines industrial change during the 1980s in two advanced capitalist societies - the Federal Republic of Germany and Britain - and assesses how far the evidence lends support to the Piore and Sabel thesis that a new model of industrial organisation - referred to as `flexible specialisation' - is emerging in advanced societies. The paper concludes that, although some movement towards flexible specialisation is discernible in both societies, the emergent pattern in each case is very different and more complex than suggested by Piore and Sabel. The tendency towards flexible specialisation is found to be more pronounced and more consistent in Germany than in Britain, and the study tries to clarify what aspects of industrial organisation facilitate or impede the adoption of a new manufacturing policy. Lastly, the paper relates the changes in industrial organisation, observed in the two societies, to the debate on the labour process and discusses the different implications in each case for managerial control, costs and benefits to workers, and future economic development.

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