Plant closures, temporary workers and a management controlled setting : Further evidence on the Closedown effect

The Closedown effect is a human‐driven productivity increase effect that appears during the process of plant closure. This effect has been reported to exist in multiple cases from various countries. A pattern of explanations to this complex phenomenon is emerging. Burawoy (1979) develops our understanding with an analysis of the “games” that occur regarding a continuous process of negotiating and re‐ negotiating the wage/effort bargain, labor productivity and causes of alienation. In the context of plant closure research results indicate that this “manufacturing consent” is dramatically changed. Recent research point to the explanatory importance of how management and control systems vanish. Following a diminished management and control system the frontiers of control are shifting in the labor process, in the favor of the workers. This shapes a new institutional order, with an “unrestricted

[1]  C. Hardy.  Investing in Retrenchment: Avoiding the Hidden Costs , 1987 .

[2]  Zehava Rosenblatt,et al.  Job Insecurity: Toward Conceptual Clarity , 1984 .

[3]  S. Barley,et al.  Gurus, Hired Guns, and Warm Bodies: Itinerant Experts in a Knowledge Economy , 2004 .

[4]  Magnus Hansson,et al.  Causes and consequences of downsizing: Towards an integrative framework , 2011 .

[5]  M. Burawoy.  Manufacturing Consent: Changes in the Labor Process Under Monopoly Capitalism , 1982 .

[6]  E. Kübler-Ross.  On Death and Dying , 1972, Mental Health.

[7]  C. Hardy.  Strategies for Retrenchment and Turnaround: The Politics of Survival , 1989 .

[8]  A. Weber,et al.  Procedures for Employee Displacement: Advance Notice of Plant Shutdown , 1963 .

[9]  A. Friedman.  Responsible Autonomy Versus Direct Control Over the Labour Process , 1977 .

[10]  T. J. Bergmann,et al.  Corporate Downsizing , 1997, Gaslighted.

[11]  Magnus Hansson,et al.  Closures and downsizing : integrating overlapping literatures , 2007 .

[12]  Joel Brockner,et al.  Survivors' Reactions to Layoffs: We Get By with a Little Help for Our Friends. , 1987 .

[13]  Kim S. Cameron,et al.  Strategies for successful organizational downsizing , 1994 .

[14]  Magnus Hansson,et al.  Identité professionnelle individuelle et processus de fermeture d’usine : disbanding and reconnecting the individual work identity under the process of plant closure , 2012 .

[15]  C. Littler,et al.  The Paradox of Managerial Downsizing , 2004 .

[16]  D. Whetten.  Organizational Decline: A Neglected Topic in Organizational Science1 , 1980 .

[17]  Rune Wigblad,et al.  Recontextualizing the Hawthorne effect , 2006 .

[18]  K. Townsend,et al.  Shifting frontiers of control during closedown processes , 2012 .

[19]  R. Hodson.  Worker Resistance: An Underdeveloped Concept in the Sociology of Work , 1995 .

[20]  Joel Brockner,et al.  Layoffs, Job Insecurity, And Survivors' Work Effort: Evidence Of An Inverted-U Relationship , 1992 .

[21]  Magnus Hansson.  At the end of the road : the process of a plant closure , 2012 .

[22]  Kim S. Cameron,et al.  Making the Impossible Possible: Leading Extraordinary Performance: The Rocky Flats Story , 2006 .

[23]  Casey Ichniowski,et al.  The Effects of Human Resource Management Practices on Productivity , 1995 .

[24]  E. Bell,et al.  Beyond letting go and moving on: New perspectives on organizational death, loss and grief , 2011 .

[25]  James Guthrie,et al.  Causes and Effects of Employee Downsizing: A Review and Synthesis , 2010 .

[26]  Mitchell Lee Marks,et al.  Preparing for organizational death: Proactive HR engagement in an organizational transition , 2008 .

[27]  H. Watts,et al.  Plant Closure and the Multiplant Firm: Some Conceptual Issues , 1986 .

[28]  Andrew Hede,et al.  The Dynamics of Downsizing in Australia and New Zealand , 1997 .

[29]  J. Cunningham.  Feelings and interpretations during an organization’s death , 1997 .

[30]  R. I. Sutton,et al.  Functions of Parting CEremonies in Dying Organizations , 1986 .

[31]  Magnus Hansson,et al.  Reduction-in-force (RIF) : new developments and a brief historical analysis of a business strategy , 2010 .

[32]  Wayne F. Cascio,et al.  Downsizing: What do we know? What have we learned? , 1993 .

[33]  Magnus Hansson,et al.  On closedowns towards a pattern of explanations to the closedown effect , 2008 .

[34]  C. Littler,et al.  Downsizing and Deknowledging the Firm , 2003 .

[35]  R. I. Sutton.  The Process of Organizational Death: Disbanding and Reconnecting , 1987 .

[36]  Richard M. Harris.  Practically Perfect Presentations. , 1994 .

[37]  Wayne F. Cascio,et al.  Costing Human Resources , 1999 .

[38]  Rune Wigblad.  Community turnarounds in declining company towns: A restructuring model , 1995 .

[39]  Magnus Hansson,et al.  A holistic approach to the productivity paradox , 2007 .

[40]  Michael T. Hannan,et al.  Growth and Decline Processes in Organizations. , 1975 .

[41]  Firm Structure, Multinationals, and Manufacturing Plant Deaths , 2006 .

[42]  Clifford E. Young,et al.  Downsizing after all these years: Questions and answers about who did it, how many did it, and who benefited from it , 1999 .

[43]  James B. Shaw,et al.  A Conceptual Framework for Assessing Organization, Work Group, and Individual Effectiveness During and After Downsizing , 1997 .

[44]  G. Blau.  Exploring antecedents of individual grieving stages during an anticipated worksite closure. , 2008 .

[45]  Richard Dunford,et al.  The Dynamics of Delayering: Changing Management Structures in Three Countries , 2003 .

[46]  G. Blau.  Partially testing a process model for understanding victim responses to an anticipated worksite closure , 2007 .

[47]  Magnus Hansson,et al.  Pyrrhic victories – anticipating the closedown effect , 2006 .

[48]  Rune Wigblad,et al.  Workers' Last Performance: Why Some Factories Show their Best Results during Countdown , 1999 .

[49]  D. Kleinbaum,et al.  Applied Regression Analysis and Other Multivariate Methods , 1978 .

[50]  Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld,et al.  The Impact on Economic Performance of a Transformation in Workplace Relations , 1991 .