Fordism, post-fordism, and cyberfordism: the paths and detours of Industry 4.0

Abstract

This article approaches Industry 4.0 as the core of cyberfordism, a new production paradigm that emerged amid the ultra-neoliberal stage of capitalism. The first part of the study presents the characteristics of Industry 4.0, showing how it radicalizes production automation and inserts artificial intelligence in decision-making processes. The second part returns to the Fordist and post-Fordist production paradigms, demarcating the continuity between them and cyberfordism. We point out the deconstruction of the Fordist commitment and the welfare state during the transition to post-Fordist and neoliberal flexibilization models. In the third part, we discuss the characteristics of the cyberfordist paradigm, which maximizes the purposes of classic Fordism since it tends to make skilled labor and managers unnecessary. In the conclusion, we highlight the contributions and recommendations for future research.

Keywords:
Fordism; Post-Fordism; Cyberfordism; Industry 4.0

Resumo

O objetivo deste artigo é abordar a Indústria 4.0 como o cerne de um novo paradigma de produção - o ciberfordismo - que emergiu no bojo do estágio ultraneoliberal do capitalismo. Primeiramente, apresentamos as características da Indústria 4.0 para evidenciar como ela radicaliza os processos de automação da produção e de inserção da inteligência artificial nos processos decisórios. Em seguida, retomamos os contornos dos paradigmas fordistas e pós-fordistas de produção, demarcando a continuidade entre estes e o ciberfordismo, bem como apontando a desconstrução do compromisso fordista e do Estado de bem-estar em sua transição para os modelos de flexibilização pós-fordistas e neoliberais. Discutimos também as características do paradigma ciberfordista, que maximiza os propósitos do fordismo clássico, uma vez que tende a tornar prescindíveis a mão de obra qualificada e até mesmo os próprios gerentes. Na conclusão, destacamos as contribuições do artigo e recomendações para futuras pesquisas.

Palavras-chave:
Fordismo; Pós-fordismo; Ciberfordismo; Indústria 4.0

Resumen

El propósito de este artículo es abordar la Industria 4.0 como el núcleo de un nuevo paradigma de producción, el ciberfordismo, que surgió en medio de la etapa ultraneoliberal del capitalismo. En la primera parte, presentamos las características de la Industria 4.0 para mostrar cómo radicaliza los procesos de automatización de la producción y de inserción de inteligencia artificial en los procesos de toma de decisiones. En la segunda parte, volvemos a los contornos de los paradigmas de producción fordista y posfordista, delimitando la continuidad entre estos y el ciberfordismo, y señalando la deconstrucción del compromiso fordista y el estado de bienestar en su transición a modelos de flexibilización posfordistas y neoliberales. En la tercera parte, discutimos las características del paradigma ciberfordista, que maximiza los propósitos del fordismo clásico, ya que tiende a hacer innecesaria la mano de obra calificada e incluso los propios gerentes. En las conclusiones destacamos los aportes del artículo y las recomendaciones para futuras investigaciones.

Palabras clave:
Fordismo; Posfordismo; Ciberfordismo; Industria 4.0

INTRODUCTION

Over the past few years, Industry 4.0 has emerged as a sort of panacea of the industrial and corporative world and has been responsible for the emergence of revolutions in production and in other derivatives, such as Management 4.0, Production 4.0, Quality 4.0, and Economy 4.0. Generally speaking, Industry 4.0 (Oesterreich & Teuteberg, 2016; Zawadzki & Żywicki, 2016) targets the transformation of communication between men and machines and among machines through the use of information to optimize productive processes aiming at a greater degree of use of digital technologies and automation, resorting to artificial intelligence, big data and machine learning in order to make production more agile, economical, and autonomous.

The phenomenon may be considered another representation of the process of Industrial Revolution, which began at the end of the 18th century and marked the transition from artisanal production methods to mechanized production processes. These progressive changes revolutionized not only people’s daily lives, but the economy due to increased productivity. Since then, modern societies have been going through several cycles of transformation, not only in economic systems, but also in production and management. According to Hermann, Pentek and Otto (2016), we have gone through four industrial revolutions; the last refers to Industry 4.0.

In literature, concerning the scope of this research as well as the scarce investigations found, analyzes on the phenomenon of Industry 4.0 in the field of organizational theory and administration are still rare since its activities and characteristics are mainly assessed by the fields of engineering, operations management, and computer science. However, the emergence of the topic has been calling the attention of undergraduate and graduate students, who are eager to know how Industry 4.0 fits the existing organizational and production models; thus, the absence of specific approach and literature on the topic has been creating a few didactic difficulties for teachers in the area.

In this article, our aim is to fill such gap by approaching Industry 4.0 as the manifestation of a new production paradigm, which emerged in the midst of the ultraliberal state of capitalism and which we will call Cyber Fordism. In this way, more than a potential new “management fad”, Industry 4.0 represents a new way to organize and optimize work and is the result of a specific economic, social, and political worldview inserted in a new cycle of “industrial and technological revolution”.

Considering the aim to theorize Cyber Fordism, this article was structured as follows: in the second section, we take the bibliographic review as a starting point to discuss the main characteristics of Industry 4.0 in order to demonstrate how it revolutionizes the use of automation in production processes and the insertion of artificial intelligence in decision-making processes. In the third section, we resort to Fordism and Post-Fordism production paradigms to indicate the continuity between them and Cyber Fordism and we point out the deconstruction of Fordism and the welfare state towards the Post-Fordist and neoliberal flexibilization models, which affect not only productive processes, but also the economic, social, and political aspects of society. In the fourth section, we will present the main characteristics of the so-called Cyber Fordism paradigm, which emerges under an ultra-neoliberalism context and maximizes the objectives of classic Fordism, considering it tends to make skilled labor and even managers unnecessary. In addition, we have elaborated a comparative table of Fordism, Post-Fordism, and Cyber Fordism in order to emphasize the differences and similarities among them. Finally, we present the conclusions of the article, highlighting the main contributions and recommendations for future research.

ABOUT INDUSTRY 4.0

The bibliographic survey carried out in the online databases (Portal Capes, Google Scholar, Ebsco, and Scopus-Elsevier) with the keyword ‘Industry 4.0’ aimed at locating the main articles and research on the theme, thus establishing a starting point for discussion. It is important to emphasize that our aim was not to accomplish a statistical analysis, neither systematic nor bibliometric reviews, but to emphasize the most relevant and cited works by researchers. Such methodological delimitation has didactic nature, considering the existing gaps in literature regarding the discussion of the theme in the classroom, as this article aims to answer a few basic questions from students about the concept and scope of Industry 4.0 in organizational theory and administration disciplines.

By performing these searches, we found some key-articles used by most researchers, especially in fields where Industry 4.0 is mostly perceived, such as engineering, operations management, and computer science, as well as articles that bring about systematized literature on the theme. There are, however, only a few rare references to the field of organizational theory and administration. Thus, despite a considerable number of publications about Industry 4.0, even internationally, they are dispersed in journals with different qualification levels, impact factor, and in different fields of knowledge.

The research carried out by Piccarozzi, Aquilani and Gatti (2018), who accomplished a systematic literature review on Industry 4.0 in the field of administration through a survey in three different databases (Scopus-Elsevier, Web of Science, and JStor) and a search engine (Google Scholar) with the keyword “industry 4.0”, confirms our statements. In the 68 articles identified by them, none addresses the managerial and organizational aspects of Industry 4.0; technical aspects and factors related to the field of engineering are predominant, which indicates that this is an emerging theme and still little explored in the field of administration. Sigahi and Andrade (2017), for instance, ratify such statement through a bibliometric analysis that verified conference papers published between 2011 (the year that has marked the emergence of the expression “Industry 4.0” in Germany) and 2016 at ENEGEP (National Meeting of Production Engineering, in English) and at SIMPEP (Production Engineering Symposium, in English). The authors stated that 72% of the articles were concentrated in the areas of Production Management, Organizational Knowledge Management, Product Management, and Operational Research, and that 70% of the articles addressed especially themes related to computer science, such as artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and internet of things.

The survey performed by Assad, Pereira, Drozda and Santos (2018), who carried out an integrative bibliographic review of Industry 4.0 in the Scoups-Elsevier database, shows a German leadership in academic production - which is in accordance with the origins of the phenomenon - followed by the United States and China. In addition, the researchers concluded that there is still an imprecision in the scientific definition of Industry 4.0, which has not yet achieved a solid identity, hindering the delimitation of the “state of the art” on the theme. In turn, Tessarini and Saltorato (2018) accomplished a systematic literature review on the impact of Industry 4.0 on the organization of work and concluded that research generally emphasizes much more technological innovations than their implication for work relationships. In this way, what literature indicates is that most studies are still to be found at their most initial stage; this is a field under construction still seeking description and definition of the phenomenon. Subsequently, in order to cover the didactive aspect of this article, as well as placing the essential concepts of the theme under investigation, we present in a concise form the main characteristics of Industry 4.0 and some of its repercussions in the industrial sector based on the key articles examined herein.

According to Anderl (2014) and Silva, Santos and Miyagi (2015), Industry 4.0 seeks the integration between humans and machines affecting the entire organizational chain as such integration affects manufacturing, projects, products, and operations through systems that access real-time data to carry out autonomous actions. Object of recent studies (Gentner, 2016; Qin, Liu & Grosvenor, 2016; Roblek, Mesko & Krapez, 2016), Industry 4.0 constitutes a field of knowledge that covers administration, engineering, computer science, among others, representing, according to Bitkom, Vdma and Zvei (2016), Drath and Horch (2014), Hermann, Pentek and Otto (2015), Kubinger and Sommer (2016), and Schwab (2016), a Fourth Industrial Revolution, which emerged in Germany with the support of the federal government.

Schwab (2016) characterizes the Fourth Industrial Revolution as a new technological era that implicates the robotization of humanity, transforming traditional institutions, such as work, family, community, and identity. For the author, the distributive effects of such change may favor capital, but he wonders if this “precariat” world would be interesting for humanity since this new scenario would entail a great source of social and political unrest. Antunes (2019) is less optimistic about this and affirms that, during the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the Industry 4.0 arose with the intention of creating an overlap between the financialization of the economy and an exacerbated neoliberalism, intensifying digital technologies in production in this new phase of capitalism, in which forms of social control will be reaccommodated.

From a technical perspective, Santos, Alberto, Lima and Charrua-Santos (2018) state that Industry 4.0 represents a natural evolution of previous industrial systems, since the mechanization of work in the 18th century until the current automation of production. With the evolution of automation and information systems through Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Manufacturing Execution System (MES), productivity in factories has improved significantly, but there is still a gap in the communication between ERP and the manufacturing floor, whose solution may be the improvement of real-time decision making provided by Industry 4.0, which pledges itself (Kargermann, 2014; Kargermann, Wahstler & Helbig, 2013) to greater operational efficiency and gains in productivity, growth, and competitiveness, in addition to the development of new business models, services, and products.

According to Hermann, Penteck and Otto (2016), Industry 4.0 is composed of:

• Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS): They integrate physical objects and their models, represented through networks, as well as services based on data available;

• Internet of Things (IOT): It creates a communication network between people and devices using everyday objects in order to make internet ubiquitous;

• Internet of Services (IOS): It utilizes the internet structure to enable the offer and demand for services;

• Smart factories: They are based on IOT connectivity and on the availability of IOS and manage complex systems that integrate machines and humans in a network, whose designs have their demands carried out by CPS and communicate through IOT.

In this way, Industry 4.0 mobilizes concepts like self-organization, new distribution and procurement systems, new systems in the development of products and services, and adaptation to human needs and corporate social responsibility (Lasi, Fettke, Kemper, Feld & Hoffmann, 2014). Industry 4.0 demands transformations in the organization of work regarding the flexibilization of production for customization and cost reduction, in addition to abilities of workers before the new man-machine interfaces, which require gesture and voice recognition (Khan & Turowski, 2016).

In addition, Industry 4.0 is based on nine technological pillars (Rübmann et al., 2015):

• Big data and analytics (obtained from different sources and used and utilized in real-time decision making);

• Autonomous robots working side by side with humans;

• Simulation for decision making;

• Horizontal and vertical system integration that enables cross-company networks and automation;

• IOT used to obtain real-time responses;

• Cybersecurity;

• Cloud;

• Additive manufacturing (customized products and 3-D printing); and

• Augmented reality, in which decision making and procedures are supported by a variety of systems acting together.

According to Pereira and Simonetto (2018), a publication by the Industry Federation of the state of Rio de Janeiro (Firjan, 2016) showed that Brazil is still between the Second and the Third Industrial revolution - the automotive industry is the most advanced in relation to Industry 4.0. The challenges for its implementation in the country involve strategic government policies and incentives, proactive entrepreneurs and managers, and the development of technologies and training of professionals aligned with such industry (Vermulm, 2018). Conforming to Kupfer (2016), despite the shy debate in Brazil, fewer initiatives, and the fact that national industry is still to be found in stage 2.0, Industry 4.0 is simple to be implemented because it deals mostly with the scalation and massification of the use and integration of already existing technologies and less with innovative development per se.

From an operational performance perspective of Industry 4.0, Tortorella, Fetterman, Giglio and Borges (2018) claim that, for researchers like Marodin and Saurin (2013), Shah and Ward (2003), and Jasti and Kodali (2016), lean and overlapping practices applied in the organization and in the supply chain could bring a few improvements. However, Tortorella et al. (2018) have examined the relationship between the implementation of lean production practices and Industry 4.0 to verify its influence on the organizational and operational performance. The authors have concluded that it is not yet possible to determine a relevant improvement possibly due to flaws in the implementation and negative contextual variables. Thus, the integration between lean production practices and Industry 4.0 technologies, which theoretically enables greater flexibility and information flow and has been increasingly known as “lean automation”, still lacks further investigation, as advocated by Erol, Schumacher and Sihn (2016) and Sanders, Elangeswaran and Wulfsberg (2016).

In contrast, Saltiél and Nunes (2017) affirm that automation is a way to minimize dependence on workers in a context in which the relationships between capital and labor are increasingly unstable, in addition to the possibility of dispensing human abilities. Thus, Industry 4.0 is established as a new industrial revolution since it mobilizes three main elements - production and product network, product lifecycle, and cyber physical systems - resulting in increasingly smaller cycles, which can be managed technically and economically.

Tessarini and Salltorato (2018) have analyzed the discussion in literature about the impacts of Industry 4.0 on the organization of work and observed the increase of technological unemployment, which indicates the need for new competencies to maintain employability conditions. In addition, the authors have verified an increase in the interaction between man and machine, as well as transformations in socio-professional relations. They still point out, based on Caruso (2018), that the tendency is for the decision-making power and autonomy of workers to decrease, intensifying the reduction of workforce and of workers’ rights and guarantees while concentrating capital and the monopoly of productive forces with the increasing precarization of work relations and hegemony of machines.

In summary, we can say that Industry 4.0 represents:

• A manifestation of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, which establishes technological changes mediated by robotization and artificial intelligence, implying great transformations in production and labor and the re-elaboration of distributive effects in the society, strengthening a new cycle of capitalism;

• An integration between cyber physical systems and internet of things and services, promoting a technological leap that enables the operation of smart factories through the use of autonomous robots and decision-making simulation, increasingly dispensing human labor;

• A challenge in several countries, including Brazil, to promote a connection between automated and digital systems of Industry 3.0, which engender “lean automation” and internet mediations brought by Industry 4.0, which promote new forms of production and distribution of products and services, as well as new business models.

FORDISM AND POST-FORDISM

Even though the theme has not been sufficiently explored in the field of organizational theory and administration because, as previously mentioned, the studies found predominantly refer to the field of engineering, operations management, and computer science, some researchers have already started to refer to Industry 4.0 as a “new production paradigm” (Lima & Pinto, 2019; Silva et al., 2015), i.e., a new production logic that resorts to new technologies and forms of organization.

The bibliographic survey revealed a very emblematic article in the organizational field: the study of Wood (1992) compared the classical production paradigms based on the automotive industry: Fordism, Toyotism, and Volvism. Generally, Toyotism, anchored in the Japanese administration model, is considered in literature a Post-Fordist or Neo-Fordist production model. Alves, Marx and Zilbovicius (1992), for instance, questioned whether the changes introduced in industrial production lines were in fact a radical transformation of the Fordist paradigm or if they represented a gradual evolution of the same paradigm. According to Kupter (2016), it is possible to make an analogy between Industry 4.0 and the 1980s Post-Fordism, Toyotism, lean production, or total quality, organizational technologies that refer to the way through which things are produced. For Tenório and Valle (2012), there is a continuum between Fordism and Post-Fordism that encompasses several technological possibilities and combinations, alternating rigidity and flexibility; more than an antithesis, there is a synthesis between them, which was exemplified by the authors with the software factory example. In this way, based on literature, we affirm that, in addition to the idea of innovation and transformation of paradigms, there is a continuum between Fordism, Post-Fordism, and Industry 4.0.

The emergence of Fordism is strictly related to Taylorism, which established the classical separation between planning and execution, in addition to a detailed division of labor for efficiency and productivity gains in factories. These principles comply with a strong standardization of times and movements, a strict separation between intellectual and manual work, the controlled time of each operation, among other techniques and work processes.

This production model was considered hegemonic until the 1970s; its development was supported by Keynesian macroeconomic policies. Moreover, after World War II, Fordism ensured one of the longest periods of stable growth in the capitalist system; after approximately 30 years, the model started to show signs of exhaustion. It is worth mentioning that, during the expansion of Fordism, the productivity gains of the model were to a large extent passed on to employees directly - through increase in wages - and indirectly - through the Keynesian Welfare State (Lipietz, 1991).

As previously mentioned, the Fordist management model was also the target of several studies in the field of administration for bringing important innovations for productivity gains (Wood, 1992). These innovations allowed the reduction of human effort in assembly, increases in productivity, and reduction of costs. In addition, the model was capable of drastically reducing the preparation time of the machines, allowing the execution of one task at a time snice they were placed according to a logical sequence; thus, the main problem was the lack of flexibility. Fordism, according to Harvey (1993), was successful because it recognized that mass production meant mass consumption and entailed the creation of a new type of organization of work and society.

As we pointed out previously, the Fordist productive system started to show signs of exhaustion from the 1970s onwards. Conforming to Antunes (1995), this was a structural crisis characterized by a drop of profitability, structural unemployment caused by consumption retraction, and the crisis of the welfare state. Such crisis occurred due to the fiscal crisis of the capitalist state, which engenders the neoliberal minimal state. Thus, the 1980s witnessed profound changes in the productive structure with the insertion of new technologies, such as automation, robotics, and microelectronics. It was a time of great experimentation in the world of work, in which Fordism and Taylorism were no longer unique and ended up mixing with other productive processes, later known as post-Fordism.

According to Lipietz (1991), the post-Fordist production model, Toyotism more specifically, emerged in the end of the 1970s with the outbreak of the so-called Third Industrial Revolution, which was implemented with Margaret Thatcher in England and Ronald Reagan in the United States. Both prepared the ground for the establishment of the minimum state, marked by processes of privatization, outsourcing, and fiscal adjustments. This new production paradigm leaned on a Fordism in crisis to give rise to a technological revolution of productive processes.

Antunes (1995) affirms that, generally, Toyotism is a model of work organization that arose in the Toyota factory in Japan, which later expanded through the capitalist West in developed and developing countries. Toyotism represented an opposition to the rigidity of Fordism and adopted flexible specialization in the search for new productivity standards, for new ways to adapt production to the logic of the market. As consequence, one may notice the emergence of new forms of workforce management, among which quality control and participatory management stood out not only in Japan, but in several Western countries.

The expansion of Post-Fordism is accompanied not only by the so-called flexible specialization in the productive field, but also by the end of the welfare state and the search for flexibilization of work relations through neoliberal economic practices. Thus, labor rights were deregulated to better adapt to the new forms of work organization. Moreover, workers’ rights and historic achievements were replaced and eliminated from the world of production.

It is important to notice that both Fordist and Post-Fordist production models are closely related with the technological achievements of the Second and Third Industrial Revolutions (Lipietz, 1991), in which the use of technological resources on a geometric scale has been transformed into the productive force itself in a world where human activity gets increasingly dispensed. As consequence, one notices the emergence of structural unemployment, as jobs and functions are extinguished due to the automation in work processes.

In this way, as observed by Antunes (1995), in order to meet the most individualized demands of the market, production had to be supported by a flexible productive process that allowed a worker to operate with several machines (on average, five machines at Toyota), breaking with the one man-one machine relationship that supported Fordism. The relationship between man and machine and the wide use of technology, typical features of Fordism and post-Fordism, reaches its peak in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, from which Industry 4.0 derives. In this new industrial phase, the interaction that really matters is “machine-machine” (M2M). The M2M dynamics moves in the direction of what we call herein Cyber Fordism.

THE EMERGENCE OF A NEW PRODUCTION PARADIGM: CYBER FORDISM

Considering the continuum between Fordism, Post-Fordism, and Industry 4.0, we characterize the latter as a manifestation of a new production paradigm, which also emerged in the automotive industry, that we will call Cyber Fordism. Our aim is to discuss Cyber Fordism as an ultra-Fordist model of production, in which the principles of Fordism are maximized with the support of automation, cybernetics, and other characteristics inherent in the emerging Industry 4.0. From an economic and social perspective, as pointed out by Antunes (2020a), a new morphology of work - characterized by “invisibility” - arises, implying the precarization of relationships and of new forms of exploration potentialized by the ultra-neoliberal state of capitalism.

We refer to this new stage of capitalism as ultra-neoliberal because, according to Dardot and Laval (2016), between the 1980s to the present-day neoliberalism has acquired new facets, extrapolating neoliberal politics and the economy to create a “neoliberal society” that radically affects production systems. Thus, the neoliberalism, i.e., a decantation of the “new liberalism” that came out in the 1930s, in its “ultra” phase is the result of the consolidation of a rationality developed between the 1980s and the 1990s that gave rise to a new entrepreneurial and government rationality founded on a few principles of the state, which becomes a guardian of the market, namely economic and political stability, monetary stability, open markets and competition, private property, freedom of contract, and responsibility of economic agents.

This gives rise to what Dardot and Laval (2016) call “social market economy”, which is opposed to welfare state as it holds citizens individually responsible for their social status while encouraging entrepreneurship. In this way, the market is understood as a process of self-training of the economic subject, a subjective self-educating and self-disciplining process through which the individual learns to conduct him/herself (p.140). There is also a shift from neoliberal capitalism to financial capitalism, making room for an “unproductive capitalism”, as pointed out by Dowbor (2017), whose basis is in the “financialization of the economy”, i.e., a capital “out of use” that, despite not being used in productive networks, generates income through speculative investments in stock markets.

According to Wood (1992), the Fordist manufacturing system, when introducing the assembly line, reduced the human effort employed, increased productivity, and reduced costs, but resulted in the overspecialization of workers. It was a production model based on Taylorism and mechanization with a precise interaction between man and machine, verticalization of production, and bureaucratic control system.

In contrast, Post-Fordism involved several technical innovations that resulted in a drastic reduction of the time required to change molding equipment, enabling the relationship between “one man” and “several machines”, as well as the “flexibilization” of production, and serving a consumer market eager for product differentiation - it was, for instance, cheaper to produce small batches of stamped parts different from one another than large homogeneous batches. In addition, inventory costs were reduced (just-in-time system), enabling continuous improvements in production and eliminating quality-related problems, which required, therefore, well-trained and motivated workers. The supply chain was marked by horizontalization and decentralization as many suppliers were used in partnership relationships.

What we call Cyber Fordism arising from Industry 4.0 is a production model that preserves flexibilization and the pursuit of quality, as well as cost reduction, which requires, though, new interfaces between man and machine and among machines, taking up a classic Fordist pattern since the need for qualified - and human - work is reduced. As pointed out by Toni (2019), in the context of Industry 4.0, with the use of highly computerized and robotic processes and control systems that centralize managerial processes, organizations may start to dismiss not only the individuals that perform unqualified tasks, but also those with more specialized roles. This is as if the ideal mechanistic Fordist model would be finally fulfilled through the use of autonomous robots and simulation for decision-making.

Conforming to Kupfer (2016), such ideal scenario is not that far from organizations, as it does not entail an innovative development, but scaling up the mass integration of already existing technologies stemming from Post-Fordist production models that culminated in Industry 4.0. Saltiél and Nunes (2017), in turn, also admit that cyber physical systems minimize the participation of workers, who start to perform simpler functions - this may, however, be understood as an advantage since it is no longer possible to voluntarily extract the maximum yield from the workforce. The film “American Industry”, a 2020 Oscar winning documentary produced by Jeff Reichert and Julie Parker Benello and directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert (2019), clarifies such phenomenon by showing that, before the impossibility of obtaining from American workers the same performance they obtained from the Chinese, Fuyao executives started to replace them with autonomous robots.

According to suggestions by Hermann, Penteck and Otto (2016), “smart factories” use IOT connectivity and rely on the availability of IOS to manage complex systems that integrate the network of machines and humans through CPSs. The word cyber, originating from the term cybernetics, means a “great concentration of advanced technology” and synthetizes the motto of this new production paradigm - called by us Cyber Fordism -, which symbolizes the realization of the ultimate intent of Fordist mechanistic and represents a new stage of the continuum of production paradigms: the ultra-Fordism.

References to Cyber Fordism are practically nonexistent in academic literature; it is, therefore, a challenge for us to bring it into debate and to characterize it. Our online research and in bibliographic databases with the keyword “Cyber Fordism” (Portal Capes, Google Scholar, Ebsco, and Scopus Elsevier) resulted in only one work that made use of the term: a review by Toni (2019), who carried out a book review of Astrologo, Suborne and Terna (2019). The author utilizes the term in a similar sense to what we present in this paper. His argument is that, on the one hand, Industry 4.0 walks away from the classical assumptions of Taylorism and Fordism based on hierarchy and overspecialization of tasks, but, on the other, it maximizes Taylor’s memory with a cyber Fordist model that implies the use of artificial intelligence to carry out hierarchical control and decision-making chains with great efficiency and drastic reduction of labor costs.

The differential of artificial intelligence’s systems, typical of Industry 4.0, is the use of intelligent machines that can reorganize both material and intellectual workforce even replacing human beings in more complex tasks. In this context, Astrologo, Suborne and Terna (2019) predict the emergence of a subproletariat destined to occasional and unskilled tasks that cannot be performed by machines and the replacement of technicians and workers who used to perform managerial functions and specialized tasks by intelligent machines and generalized control systems.

Thus, based on the Fordist commitment with Keynesian bias that connected mass production and consumption with the support of the welfare state, whose peak occurred in the 1960s, we went from neoliberal-inspired Post-Fordism, which involved the flexibilization of production and intense outsourcing of work processes with the dismantling of the state’s social security apparatus in Western countries, towards the ultra-neoliberal cyber Fordist stage, delimited by Industry 4.0. Such stage mobilizes, as pointed out by Antunes (2020a), a manufacturing proletariat performing part-time precarized services and temporarily employed, as well as an informal proletariat - a segment of workers known as “uberized” (e.g., application drivers and product deliverers). Both are affected by a few formative elements, namely neoliberal ideology, which destroys protective labor regulations favoring the market, and a technological revolution aimed at capital instead of humanity.

In this way, the ideology of Industry 4.0 reaches both the industrial and services sector, stretching to home office workers and precarized service providers managed by “digital platforms”. In the Brazilian case, regarding advances in the industrial sector, research has shown that the paradigms 2.0 and 3.0 still prevail. However, the new ideology has been taking root at an accelerated pace in the service sector with new information and communication technologies. Antunes (2020b) calls this phase informational-digital and cyber-industrial hegemony and claims it is permeated by an “entrepreneurial” discourse that is building a new social engineering to reduce as much as possible the human work necessary for production and to replace it with new digital technologies that engender the “internet of things”, big data, and artificial intelligence, thus promoting the “deanthropormorphization of work”, as it subordinates real work to “informational machine-tools”.

In short, Box 1 presents the comparison between the production paradigms (Fordism, Post-Fordism, and Cyber Fordism) to help visualize the differences and continuities among them.

Box 1
Comparison: Fordism, Post-Fordism, and Cyber Fordism

By indicating the transition from “deregulation of work” to “post-work”, we indicate that outsourcing, informality, flexibility, intermittence and precarization will reach their peak, mischaracterizing the classic establishment of paid employment regulated by the state’s social protection to give way to what Antunes (2020b) calls a “real subsumption of labor to capital”. In this context, ultra-neoliberalism establishes itself and aims to promote the near disappearance of the state, which no longer acts as a regulator for the maintenance of social welfare, but as a guardian of the market’s interests, as pointed out by Dardot and Laval (2016).

Moreover, despite the particularities of each paradigm, it is possible to notice a continuum between Fordism, Post-Fordism and Cyber Fordism as each represents a stage of the acceleration process of the Industrial Revolution towards greater mechanization and deregulation of labor, always in accordance with the new faces of capitalism and the current industrial and economic paradigm. Conforming to Tragtenberg (1974) and Paes de Paula (2002), the inexorable administrative harmonies follow their course in managerial theory and practice because, regardless of the production paradigm, the direct and indirect mechanisms of social control are perpetuated, which ensure productivity and order in work relations.

CONCLUSIONS

The aim of this article was to approach Industry 4.0 as the manifestation of a new production paradigm - the Cyber Fordism - emphasizing its main characteristics and its alignment with the ultra-neoliberal stage of capitalism. To this end, we defined what Industry 4.0 really is, highlighting its relationship with the acceleration of industrial automation and use of the internet and artificial intelligence in decision-making processes. We also brought up how the evolution from Fordism to Post-Fordism, which are intertwined with Keynesian propositions and neoliberal flexibilization, respectively, occurred in order to characterize Cyber Fordism as a manifestation of the ultra-neoliberal stage of capitalism. We then discussed the Cyber Fordist paradigm as a renewed vanguard of Taylorism-Fordism, which, by maximizing purposes, achieves the fulfillment of the mechanistic dream: making both factory labor and managerial intervention unnecessary.

Through the presentation of a summarized table with the main characteristics of Fordism, Post-Fordism, and Cyber Fordism, we highlighted the continuum between these production paradigms as they represent phases of the acceleration of mechanization processes and of the deregulation of work itself. In addition, the production paradigms reflect worldviews that unfold in social, economic, and political dynamics specific to their time, without breaking with the assumption of administrative ideologies and harmonies responsible for labor and social control and its insertion in the productive context, as advocated by the Tragtenbergian thinking.

We can still conclude that Cyber Fordism is a manifestation of the view of how new technologies that replace human labor are disseminated, to which Toni (2019) refers as techno-optimists or techno-pessimists. In general, social and economic progress is justified by the improvement of the living conditions of human beings, referring to the utopian reasoning that the evolution of production relations and technologies could lead to a liberation of work and the emancipation of individuals. However, as presented currently, the Cyber Fordism - in conjunction with ultra-neoliberalism - seems to contribute much more to the elimination of jobs and precarization of work relations without the release of manufacturing and managerial labor to other occupations, whether productive, social, political, and artistic, that correspond to the remuneration necessary for a decent survival.

Specifically in the Brazilian case, conforming to literature, there are several challenges to be overcome in order to each the expected levels of Industry 4.0, as the country is still in previous stages of the Industrial Revolution. Even though some researchers believe that the conditions of automation and the integration of systems already exist, the fact is that our industry has not yet fully presented the productivity gains expected from technological transformations. However, in the service sector, such ideology has been materializing. In the work relations field, ground is being prepared for an ultra-neoliberal approach in government discourses and actions, as well as in industrial sectors, which are resulting in reforms whose outcomes are the deregulation of labor contracts and reduction of employment.

As we write this text, the world is going through a pandemic caused by the COVID-19, resulting in social isolation, as well as long periods of quarantine to slow down infections. This phenomenon forced us to deal with the challenge of rapidly implementing telework, distance learning, and all the other remote forms of activities that make use of information technology to avoid contact between people. The consequences of this pandemic are still unpredictable, but it is possible to affirm that it may contribute to engender the typical processes of Industry 4.0, especially automation and the use of artificial intelligence in decision-making.

We consider that this theoretical article has reached its objective. We discussed the characteristics of a new production paradigm - Cyber Fordism - and its repercussions in the productive, economic, and social spheres under the domain of ultra-neoliberalism. In addition, this article also fills a didactic and pedagogical gap by helping teachers that teach disciplines related to organizational theory and administration in classroom discussions; this is the main audience to which we address this text.

Studies on this matter are still scarce, as shown in literature and the investigation carried out herein, thus, for future studies, we recommend researchers to further debate our propositions in theoretical or empirical articles through the approach of specific industries or service providers. Does Industry 4.0 bring more benefits than harm? Is this really a new Industrial Revolution? Is Cyber Fordism, in fact, a new production paradigm? Such issues are addressed to the academia, which can continue this debate and present different approaches and results.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We thank CNPQ for the financial support and for the scholarship granted to Professor Ana Paula Paes de Paula, who enabled the research that resulted in this article.

• [Translated version] Note: All quotes in English translated by this article’s translator.

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Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  24 Jan 2022
• Date of issue
  Sep-Dec 2021

History

• Received
  28 Jan 2021
• Accepted
  12 July 2021