Power, control and resistance in 'the factory that time forgot'

This paper contributes to a developing body of literature which questions t he claim that the 'factory of the future' is a total institution in which s elf-subordination through 'new wave management' is virtually inescapable. I t examines the experience of frustrated management efforts to re-engineer w orking practices, mainly at the point of production, in response to repeate d corporate-driven initiatives designed to implement a range of 'lean manuf acturing' initiatives at 'Northern Plant', a pseudonym. Our findings illust rate how workers can and do employ a variety of individual and collective f orms of resistance involving dissembling cooperation with change initiative s whilst maintaining a distance from them. In accounting for resistance, we note the significance of market conditions but focus primarily upon the im portance of workers' identification with practices that had been establishe d earlier when management were content to indulge self-managing patterns of work in return for securing required levels of output.