经营“灵活性”:制造业劳动力市场的组织生态与制度环境——基于W市劳动力招聘的调查

Managing “Flexibility”: Organizational Ecology and Institutional Environment of the Labor Market in the Manufacturing Industry

对于世界工厂如何持续有效地组织和控制劳动力问题,当前研究过于关注生产政治,忽略了工厂之外劳动力市场组织的角色与影响。基于对W市制造业招聘的调查,本文分析了当前劳动力市场组织生态及其嵌入的制度环境。研究表明,围绕企业的灵活用工需求,劳动力市场组织形态日益复杂化,已形成了层层外包、精细分工、竞争合作的中介链条。在配合弹性生产的同时,该链条的盈利方式与运行策略正不断抬高工厂的用工成本,持续构造工人的高流动性与低技能性。地方政府、用工企业、工人群体是形塑劳动力市场组织生态的重要力量,三者共同营造了中介链所需的制度环境,并策略性地经营着生产体系中部分的“灵活性”,同时也放大了生产体系整体的系统性风险。

A huge challenge confronted by the World Factory today is how to organize and control labor in a sustainable and effective manner. Most literature focuses on production politics, but neglects how the labor market in the manufacturing industry is organized. Based on fieldwork in the manufacturing industry in city W, this paper analyzes the configuration of the organizational ecology and institutional environment where recruitment takes place. It argues that such configuration has evolved into an intermediary chain, composed of multilevel outsourcing, elaborate division of labor, and constant competition and cooperation. To coordinate the flexible production, this chain develops a profit model that increases labor cost, aggravates labor turnover, and lowers labor skill. Key social forces that constitute the institutional environment include the local government, workers, and the corporations. Each manipulates the partial “flexibility” to its own interest. However, such flexibility unintentionally enlarges the risk of the production system as a whole.