Temporary contracts are forming a worldwide pattern of post industrial landscape, in turn encouraging short term profit and minimal commitments.
Post Industrialism: “Information Age” and the “Service Economy. Manufacturing is still important, but it has lost it’s dominant position in production, because hardware and software required for information managemenent epitomizes the temporariness of post industrialism.
4 interrelated phenomena characterize post industrial economy which encourage growth in temporary contracts:
1)Reliance on telecommunication and information processing
2)More jobs in services than manufacturing
3)Globally integrated markets for production and consumption
4)Mobility of capital
Industrial economy promoted city building and centralization, post-industrial economy promoted urban function to transition from the core into decentralizing.
Postmodernity in manufacturing economy means speed, efficiency, aesthetically pleasing as well as technological.
Fordism: high volume mass production, before the post industrialist age.
Post Fordism: high quality, consumer responsive, flexible production. The speed of innovation and changing product became strategies for demand. Prodct change keeps the interest of the buyer, but requires technology in order for this to be productive.
It seems we’ve entered a non-committal nation since the the post industrial economy began. Proof is shown in the divorce rate, public frequently moving households, leasing rather than owning. This also occurs for large corporations who control a major part of our economy. One third of U.S. employment is part time. As well, many companies have seen benefits in moving head offices out of big urban developments and into smaller “edge cities”. For large corporations, this means non unionized workers in smaller towns, that don’t require long commitments, benefits, cheaper employment, cheaper rent, easy exporting to international market. Cutting out the overhead and life cycle costs of the big cities, and entering into smaller rural communities benefit the corporations immensely.
Over the past quarter century, the industrial economy has changed from the downtown setting to suburban manufacturing, wholesailing, commercial back offices etc. Suburbs have captured majority of job growth in manufacturing, and central cities have lost drastic amounts.
Walmart is an example given of a temporary contract corporation. They locate their stores in rural areas, eliminating distributors, and linking directly to computer controlled manufacturing and limiting advertising. They in turn cut prises and expand market share. They can destroy a small towns economy, but entirely taking over the regional market. Typically, they buy land, and lease the building. They use the strategy of abandoning the market once it has damaged the local economy and begin competing with the next Walmart closest to them.
Temporary contracts are based on consuming rather then sustaining relationships. It’s encouraged to build fresh, instead of maintaining an existing structure. This becomes evident in stock market statistics.
How can we respond to this the popular trend of temporary contracts in society. Given these facts, what can we do to create or fight back to endure a sustainable landscape?
It seems as though the Walmarts of the world will only continue to succeed in our economy. In one respect, they can technically employee an entire small town. For smaller edge cities, which may have seasonal employment due to farming, this would be a great help to their economy. On the other hand, this can tamper with the small business' in the community. It seems like a hard feat for small towns to overcome.
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