From Zlín to the world: the Bata system of work’s management
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5007/1984-9222.2024.e96604Keywords:
rationalization of work, monopoly capitalism, corporate totalitarianismAbstract
In this article, I interpret the Bata system in terms of the work’s management methods formulated and put into practice in Zlín, Czechoslovakia, in the 1920s, and spread through the internationalization of shoe production and sales that began in the 1930s. The empirical study of the transfer of the original management principles to other locations focused on the cases of Brazil and Chile between the 1940s and 1970s. Using different sources, I present the meanings of the rigid control of working time – based on planning, in the “autonomy of workshops” and in a wage system with premiuns conditioned on the execution of daily production plans – and their impacts on the workers at one of the world's largest footwear producers in the 20th century.
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