Blackwell Reference Online

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The sociological analysis of the enterprise focuses on the relationships between enterprises and their social environment (Martinelli & Smelser 1990), with specific regard to two major topics: the study of organizational models and social systems of production and the study of the context of entrepreneurship. Since the 1970s the productive model based on mass production and Fordist/Taylorist work organization in the large corporation have undergone crisis and transformation. As a consequence, a new economic sociology has arisen, which centers on the origins and developments of new organizational models of production based on flexibility. These changes at the micro-level of the enterprise's organization were accompanied with parallel changes at the macro-level of the relationships between state and market, as Fordism in the work place was often related to a government's Keynesian policies. The Fordist/Taylorist model was the dominant model of enterprise organization in the twentieth century and reached its peak in the two decades after World War II. Its key distinctive elements were mass production, vertical integration, the use of a low-skilled labor force, and the fragmented organization of working tasks. This model of enterprise organization had been analyzed in the earliest studies of economic sociology (like those of Sombart and Weber), but it became the main object of sociological ... log in or subscribe to read full text