Humanized management? Capital and migrant labour in a time of labour shortage in South China
研究了华南一家劳动密集型工厂在劳动力短缺背景下，管理层推行“人性化管理”策略及其与农民工的互动，发现该策略未实质改善专制管理，工人更倾向以离职威胁或集体行动争取权益。
This article explores changing strategies of managerial control in a labour-intensive factory in South China at a time of labour shortage. It describes power relationships between capital and migrant labour under changing labour market conditions, migrant cohorts and global business environment, and analyses a new paternalist managerial strategy named ‘humanized management’ and workers’ reactions to it. Although ‘humanized management’, as part of East Asian paternalism, advocates mutual respect, care and reciprocity between management and labour, it constructs workers as irresponsible, spoiled children needing to be led, moved, touched, taught and ruled. Its human focus notwithstanding, the new strategy did not result in substantial reforms of managerial despotism, nor did the factory institute any welfare programs for workers. Because of these discrepancies between the ideological avowals and practical application of ‘humanized management’, the new approach was disregarded by workers, who preferred to rely on individual measures such as threats to quit, or collective action, to win concessions from management. The study provides new insight into the changing relationship between capital and migrant workers in South China and informs the debate in industrial sociology and human resource management research about the efficacy of East Asian paternalist management in improving capital–labour relationships.