Notesale: Turn your study into money

Document Preview

Extracts from the notes are below, to see the PDF you'll receive please use the links above

---

Organised Global Capitalism
(c
...

• Internationalisation of economic activity
• Global Fordism
• TNCs
F W Taylor (1856 - 1915)
• One of the first people doing work in business and management studies, before it
was even an official academic subject to be studied - work known as Taylorism

• Standardisation & de-skilled labour process

• Re-integration of the production process - all processes occurring under one roof
• Time & motion analysis of production - analysis of what was happening on the
factory floor could be used to improve efficiency of production and therefore
increase profit margins

• Technical division of labour
• F
...
Taylor, The Principles of Scientific Management, 1911
Henry Ford
• USA’s greatest industrialist? - one of the most important figures in economic history
• Founded the Ford Motor Company in 1903
• By 1918 50% of all cars in the USA were ‘Model-T’ Fords - all completely identical,
one colour, relatively cheap (due to reduced costs from mass production)
• Anti-trade union, anti-strike, anti-organised labour, yet a welfare capitalist, believed
in paying workers a fair wage, etc
...
)

Characteristics of Fordism
• The Production Process

• Economies of scale

• Mass production of homogenous products

• Uniformity and standardisation

• Large buffer stocks

• Cost reduction through wage control

• Labour

• Single task performance

• Payment per rate per job

• High job specification

• Bureaucratic labour hierarchy

• Discipline through pacing the assembly-line


• Space

• Functional spatial hierarchy

• Spatial division of labour

• Consumption organised through urbanisation

• State

• Collective bargaining

• Socialisation of the welfare state

• Ideology

• Mass consumption

• Modernism

• Organisation, scale, rationality

Fordism…So What?! 
• Enabled commodities to be produced en masse and to a guaranteed standard
• Production of goods could occur ‘under one roof’ rather than being spatially
dispersed (eg: vertically integrated)
• Production/labour was fragmented and de-skilled
• Mass production in this fashion enabled and drove mass consumption
• Keynesianism seen as being important in governing associated post-WW2 growth
Geographical Implications
• Mass production diffused across the globe but became concentrated in certain
cores (e
...
major cities such as Birmingham/Detroit/etc
...
7%

• USA - 53%

• Trade was a product of economic success or failure rather than the cause

• Networks of trade were definitely international but not necessarily global (extensity)

• Intensity varied geographically

• time of fairly stagnant international trade

Bretton Woods and Gatt
• Bretton Woods agreement recognised the need for a multi-lateral global trading
order - one of the first attempts at creating an international free trade market
situation

• Prior to this, trade negotiations were carried out between two countries (bi-lateral)

• Based upon 4 core principles for the signatories:

1
...
Reciprocity - tariff reductions should be matched

3
...
Fairness - predatory pricing seen as unfair and countries allowed recourse to
protection


So what were the Geographical Impacts?
• Lowered trade tariffs universally thereby liberalising trade and allowing more NIC
and developing country participation

• Extended trade (by 1970 over 80 countries were in GATT)

• Intensified trade

• Eventually morphed into the World Trade Organisation (WTO)

Global Integration Mirrored by Regional Integration
• Development of trading blocs:

• 1949-1990: COMECON (Socialist States)

• 1957: European Economic Community (EEC)

• 1967: Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN)

• 1992: North American Free Trade Association (NAFTA)

• Therefore a complex geography of global interconnectedness and regionalisation

The Geographies of This
• States across the world becoming more and more interlinked through trade increasing globalisation as well as increasing regionalisation due to the emergence
of more and more trading blocs

• Regions becoming more cohesive in terms of forming trade alliances (EEC/EU,
NAFTA, etc
...
g
...


• Demand structure for product

• A decent example would be China’s rise as a manufacturing centre with an emerging
(and wealthy) middle class

Asset-Oriented Production
• The assets need for a firm to produce and sell in a foreign country are not evenly
distributed

• For example, if Henry Ford wanted to set up a factory in Europe he would have to
consider the following assets:

1
...
Wage costs - the lower the better

3
...
Labour controllability - is labour militant? unionised?

5

---