The textile firm and the management of labour

Recently, the scope of labour history has widened to incorporate the study of employers, firms and management and there has been a sharper recognition of the need to critically analyse the nature of capitalism in order to understand social and labour relations. ¹ Research on the behaviour of firms has demonstrated a far more complex vision of the importance of different management policies and practices over time, divisions between different factions of capital, the often contradictory nature of employer strategy and the close interaction between capital and labour, resulting in a more nuanced and diverse history of workplace relations across time and space. ² However, while the historical studies of employers within particular country settings have increased, international comparative historical analysis of employer practice has been rare. Such approaches are important in developing theoretical conceptions of employer practice beyond the contexts of specific national economic settings. Two studies that stand out in this respect are Littler's The Development of the Labour Process in Capitalist Societies and Tolliday and Zeitlin's edited volume The Power to Manage? Both provide historical and comparative analysis of employer policy and practice in a range of different country settings. A key finding from these studies is that rather than a single means of capitalist control, employers have diverged significantly between countries in their labour management policies as well as in the timing of the evolution of control from indirect, simple and more coercive means to more sophisticated, bureaucratic and consensual practices. Moreover, what these comparative studies reveal is a more complex interpretation of factors which have shaped such variation, with both economic contexts and differing institutional environments playing important roles in shaping employer strategies and behaviour. ³