This paper engages the dis/articulations perspective to analyze everyday processes of upgrading in the Sri Lankan apparel industry. Using feminist ethnographic methods that see management discourses as tools of interpellation that partially configure systems of power, I examine how managers are rearticulating worker subjectivities, restructuring the labor process to organize consent, and selectively mobilizing 'Sri Lankan' culture to legitimate a shift to flexible production. I argue that value is not only produced through interfirm or firm-state relations, but is also determined by the labor process as it is shaped by legacies of colonialism, persisting hierarchies, and the everyday reproduction of social difference. This research suggests that upgrading cannot be reduced to an economic logic and that it does not guarantee sustained global competitiveness or more egalitarian development. These findings call for more attention to be paid to the ways in which upgrading is a complex process of disarticulation and rearticulation that is occurring through an embodied, global labor-management process.
The inability of labor markets to function effectively to satisfy the needs of employers and workers suggests that there is a growing need for policy interventions to promote workplace cultures of learning and innovation. Past research suggests that publicly funded incumbent worker training programs are a promising antidote against market failures. With only a handful of studies published in the last two decades, however, this is one of the least-researched types of business support programs. This paper examines the impact of a state program in California that uses a pay-for-performance approach to reimburse employers that train their employees: the California Employment Training Panel (ETP). Based on a mixed-methods study of ETP, the authors found that, overall, ETP had positive and significant impacts on company sales and firm size. The study suggests the need to abandon ideological debates and engage in more evidence-based policy discussions about incumbent worker training programs.
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