Flexible Specialization

Definition

Flexible specialization ("flexspec") is the production regime Michael Piore and Charles Sabel theorized as the exit from Fordism's "necessity of bigness" (The Second Industrial Divide, 1984): "a move away from… the 'necessity of bigness' that for two centuries had propelled capitalist development toward ever larger increases in the scale of industrial production" — Fordist mass production seen as having "reached the limits of bigness and economies of scale," making room for "clusters of small and middle-sized firms, no longer bound to old Fordist urban agglomerations," to lead innovation (Soja 2000, p. 168). The paradigmatic case was the Third Italy and its scattered, craft-based Marshallian industrial districts (fabbrica diffusa, diffused production; Beccatini's revival of Alfred Marshall). "The empowerment of flexibility" pervades the discourse: flexible technologies (computerized product-line changes, just-in-time delivery), flexible organization (vertical disintegration, subcontracting, outsourcing, externalized risk), flexible labor–management relations — producing what Soja summarizes as "an enhanced ability to combine the variety of production that characterized nineteenth century craft industries with the enormous returns to scale that were associated with Fordist mass production" (p. 174).

Soja's critical counterweight is the regime's other face: "the dark side of flexible production" (Harrison) — the "surge in inequality" achieved through downsizing, outsourcing, plant closures, the explosion of part-time and contingent work, union-busting, and sweatshops. Flexibility is also a disciplining strategy: "the search for tighter social control over disruptive or potentially disruptive forces in the economy has characteristically involved an intensified disciplining process… ideologically rationalized and cloaked in such catch-phrases as the necessity for 'creative destruction' or an emergency-generated 'politics of austerity'" (pp. 173–174). The three propulsive sectors where re-agglomeration appeared most intense: high-technology production (technopoles), craft-based and design-intensive industries (garments, furniture, jewelry, guided missiles, movies), and the FIRE sector.

Key Thinkers

• Michael Piore & Charles Sabel (referenced, not paged — see log) — The Second Industrial Divide (1984): flexible specialization as the "second industrial revolution"; the Third Italy as paradigm.
• Allen J. Scott (referenced, not paged — see log) — the spatialization: vertical disintegration → transaction-cost re-agglomeration → new industrial spaces and technopoles.
• Bennett Harrison (referenced, not paged — see log) — the dark side: "Lean and Mean" (1994), the Great U-Turn, Lester Thurow's "surge in inequality."
• Michael Storper (referenced, not paged — see log) — the regional version: "worlds of production," reflexive capitalism.
• Edward W. Soja — the concept's critical cartography and its Los Angeles localization (Orange County, the San Fernando Valley technopoles, the Westside multimedia complex).

Related Concepts

• postfordism — the regime flexible specialization defines.
• crisis-generated-restructuring — the creative-destruction mechanism flexspec rides.
• synekism — the agglomeration logic the new industrial districts rediscover ("Marshallian" districts as synekistic innovation at small scale).
• neoliberal-metropolis — the FIRE-sector and labor-discipline side of the same regime.
• postmetropolis — the urban form (Postfordist Industrial Metropolis) the regime produces.
• technological-limits — the wiki's design-side register of the same questions of capacity and constraint.

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• Postmetropolis (Soja 2000) — "The empowerment of flexibility" (pp. 171–173) and "Getting lean and mean" (pp. 173–175): the technological/organizational/territorial realms of flexibility, the dark side, and the first discourse's policy terminus.

Source Support linking rule: All entries in this section must be wikilinks to source note pages in wiki/source-notes/ using the source-notes/ path prefix. Never link to raw files — raw files are not wiki pages.

Open Questions

• Was flexible specialization a description or a prescription — Piore and Sabel's "possibilities for prosperity" were quickly translated into policy success stories; how much of the "flexibility" celebrated was actually risk externalization onto labor?
• Soja asks whether the "success stories" literature systematically buried the failures (Palmdale, the stranded technopoles) — what would a full accounting of flexspec's geography of failure look like?
• Does flexible specialization have an architectural register: the flexible building, the adaptable plan, the serviced shell — is the wiki's prefab-interior and kit-of-parts cluster its built counterpart?