Papers presented by Catharina Haensel since 2019
2023 Detroit, MI, United States
"A basis for labour-management co-operation”? The ILO Productivity Mission in Ahmedabad, 1954-58"
Catharina Haensel, University of Göttingen & Scuola Normale Superiore
Abstract:
This paper looks at the impact of the ILO Productivity Mission in the context of technological change within the Ahmedabad textile industry during the 1950s. Ideas of “management” in India have often been anaylsed under the framework of the developmental state by juxtaposing “modern” management strategies promoted by international actors vs. “traditional” strategies employed by Indian businesses. However, this becomes a teleological pitfall by suggesting a linear development towards modernism. What can microhistorical perspectives offer to improve our understandings of the relation between the ILO and local actors? The effect of the Productivity Mission will be looked at from three different angles: First, it analyses the implications for shopfloor management within the textile mills. By introducing payment by results, the mission sought to move away from direct, coercive forms of supervision towards greater collaboration and individualised forms of managing working time and productivity. Second, the paper discusses the impact of the ILO mission on business-labour relations in a longer history of “peaceful” conflict resolution in Ahmedabad. Lastly, it highlights the mirroring of management concepts as promoted by the ILO within emerging educational institutions of Ahmedabad, such as the Ahmedabad Textile Industry Research Association (ATIRA) and the Indian Institute of Management (IIM-A).
Keywords:
2022 Mexico City
"'The Ahmedabad experiment' – Technological change and the emergence of scientific wage categories"
Catharina Haensel, University of Göttingen
Abstract:
The 1950s and 1960s saw far-reaching changes in the Ahmedabad textile industry with shifts in production technology from two-sides to four-sides weaving looms. This threatened workers to become retrenched in large numbers. By linking technological changes in textile mills to larger processes of social transformation in Ahmedabad, the presentation looks at this historical juncture from three perspectives. First, it traces the changes in business strategies with regards to research and development as embodied in the emerging Ahmedabad Textile Industrial Research Association (ATIRA) and its transnational networks of management scholarship. As part of such research projects like the “Ahmedabad experiment”, the group systems approach became one of the dominant ideas of workplace re-organisation. This brought ATIRA in close contact of exchange with the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations, London as well as Harvard and the MIT in the US. Second, by looking at the impact of these changes in labour process organisation on the shopfloor, the aim is to analyse the effect on modalities of workers’ wages. Those modifications occurred with regards to (re-) definitions of payment periods, time-rated and piece rated remunerations as well as quality and quantity bonuses. As these new payment structures were linked to efficiency and productivity norms elaborated in studies by ATIRA, they became part of emerging categories of “scientific” wages. This in turn redefined the process of collective bargaining with regards to remuneration between the Ahmedabad millowners and the trade union (Textile Labour Association, TLA). Third, as these changes in wages had an impact on household consumption, such patterns will be traced in budget studies conducted by the Labour Bureau during the same period. Looking at these budgets in relation to wages will illuminate on the implications for social divisions such as caste, class and gender.