Post-Fordist economy [encyclopaedia entry]

A post-Fordist economy is one in which the dominant production processes, strategies, and paradigms within the economy are characterized by high levels of product innovation, process variability, and labor responsibility. The main points of contention in debates over post-Fordism concern the criteria of dominance, definitions of levels, extent of integration posited between product innovation, process variability and labor responsibility, and the significance and degree of alignment between processes, strategies, and paradigms. Such issues and debates were at their height during the 1980s and early 1990s, but they are of more than historical significance for much of their substance is continued in contemporary discussions of postmodernity and post-bureaucracy and the spread of informated, virtual, networked, knowledge-based, flexible, or learning organizations.3 page(s