michael perelman edu> wrote:
> Greg Clark proposed that "factory discipline [was] successful because it
> coerced more effort from workers than they would freely give .... The
> empirical evidence shows that discipline succeeded mainly by increasing work
> effort. Workers effectively hired capitalists to make them work harder"
> (Clark 1994, p. 128).<
this is the standard neoclassical theory of management: as a group,
workers have a collective good (a small-scale public good) in having
everyone work hard (avoiding "shirking"), likely because of the
interdependence of individual efforts. They thus hire a boss to
provide that good. Presumably, they "pay" for this boss by accepting
wages less than they could make if they didn't pay for the management.
This assumes that somehow workers get together to hire a boss. This
ignores the way that the collectivity of workers is often fragmented
and individualized by competition in labor-power markets and the way
in which bosses make efforts to preserve and increase this
fragmentation ("divide and conquer"). It totally misses the "free
rider" problem that neoclassicals usually invoke when dealing with
collective goods problems.
> Greg Clark was referring to the sort of theory earlier proposed by Clark
> Nardinelli, who, presumably in all seriousness, declared that children in the
> factories would voluntarily choose to have their employers beat them. In his
> words: "Now if a firm in a competitive industry employed corporal
> punishment the supply price of child labor to that firm would increase. The
> child would receive compensations for the disamenity of being beaten"
> Nardinelli 1982, p. 289). Does any parent seriously believe that children
> would make such a calculation? Similarly, Steven Cheung maintains that
> riverboat pullers who towed wooden boats along shore line in Pre-communist
> China agreed to hire monitors to whip them to restrict shirking (Cheung 1983,
> p. 5). <
Nardinelli throws in Adam Smith's theory of compensating wage
differentials. That theory does not work because of the existence of
unemployment, frictions, efficiency wages, etc. Back when I did an
empirical survey of evidence for the compensating wage differential
theory, the literature said that the only time it worked was when
labor unions were present (the United Mine Workers won compensation
for dangerous/deadly jobs, etc.) I've done a smaller survey since and
asked labor economists about this. It's confirmed my earlier survey.
--
Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own
way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante.
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