Management Of Labor Time And Order Reconstruciton Of Enterpirse In The Background Of Institutional Changes

It is well known that both time and space are the two dimensions in the socialdevelopment. It is the over thirty-years’ reform and opening in China that has promotedthe rapid generation of modernity and the process of development. This process isreflected not only in the space displacement, but also in the time changes. In recent years,the relationships between the regional differences in the social and economicdevelopment and the influence of globalization on China’s social life have been fullydiscussed so far by other scholars from the perspective of space dimension. But theprocess of the reform and opening in China also has its temporal characteristics. That is,many things that should occur in different historical stages are compressed andoverlapped in the same period. Therefore, the grasp of the time factor in the process ofreform, and that of the changes and reconstructions of the time concept throughout theinstitutional changes are full of academic and social significance. The “social time” as avariable is introduced into the system to be researched in this paper. Herein, a super-largestate-owned enterprise in J city, an old industrial base, is studied as an individual case.From the viewpoint of social reality of "enterprise system" change, and by combiningthe theory of "social time" with the practice of enterprise management system, timemanagement of state-owned enterprise under the institutional changes is approached tofurther understand the order reconstruction of state-owned enterprise management sincethe reform in China. It’s really full of practical and theoretical significance to deeplyunderstand the deep connotation of social time theory, to enrich the development theoryof "social time", to expand the boundaries of enterprise system research, to deepen thesocial time concept in the modern society and to understand the relationships betweenthe institutional forms of the modern society we live. From a sociological perspective of ‘time’, such a few dimensions of the researchframework can be established. Namely, time as a resource can be seen as a variable andas a limited commodity, and time can be consumed in industrialist activities of socialism.Time can also be interpreted as a kind of power relations. New time morphology meansthe expressions of all sorts of power struggles and speech, and the social powerallocation mechanism. At the same time,‘time’ can also be interpreted as a sort of socialidentity and emotional attachment generation. Time can still become asynchrony-enhancing process in the same space groups, foster new collective identity,and form the collective consciousness of the new process. And time discussed here isalways embedded in the collective institutional change centered on "power-benefits". Inthe process of this change, time can integrate individuals into society, connect past andpresent, and symbolize history and future. Time is not only the current product, but alsothe stretch of history. Time is both the constructed structure and constructing generation.This dissertation is attempted to observe the micro-changes in unit system ofstate-owned enterprises through the speeches about the internal production timemanagement to reflect a more macroscopic social transformation. The new orderconstruction and concern at a practical level are closely paid attention to as givenacademic responses to a unit system reform and the revitalization of the old industrialbase of the northeast of China.On the basis of the field investigation, it is found that “unit persons” presenteddifferent concepts about labor time in different historical periods of the system context.In the course of the historical evolution including the traditional system period, culturalrevolutionary period, double-rack system period and the property right reform periodover the past60years, the workers in J factory developed and formed different socialtime values. That is, a state-owned enterprise was not the competitive product in themarket, but the government’s system arrangement under the planned economic system. Itnot only bore the burden of economic benefits to the country but shouldered more socialbenefits as well. Therefore, collective time and valuable time were created in theatmosphere of communist spirit-seeking and collectivism-strengthening traditionalsystem. In the pioneering period, a unit person’s physical pain was submerged in themidst of joy of "gratitude and reward" and "liberation" although he underwent the hardliving environment and shouldered heavy physical labor, At the age of the so-called"low-wage but high-benefit" unit society, the laborers nearly acquired the sense of "equality" and "master consciousness", and formed a highly collective identity, settingup a unit life community like an average family, which was the formation phase of the“typical unit system”. During the Cultural Revolution, collective political time wascreated by integrating political enthusiasm into strengthening political identity, whichwas the reinforcement and consolidation stage of “typical unit system”. Under therequirement of "the class struggle as the key link" all over the country and in theinfluence of the cultural revolutionary trend of thought, the production of J factory as aproduction unit was severely impacted, whereas its political function of a unitorganization as an important carrier of social mobilization was consolidated andintensified. In the class movement, the position and identity of "the political time”obtained among the workers colony were unprecedentedly consolidated andstrengthened. But this kind of reinforcement was deliberately produced by the country atthe cost of discipline and depression in the special period. With the reform and opening,"the typical unit system" went through a process of constant variation and dispelling. In1978, state-owned enterprises faced a situation of low efficiency of production andsevere waste of resources and had to take stride into the reform course, whose goalswere to reduce the government’s intervention in the business administration, to makeenterprises become a main body of market, and to obtain economic benefits that becamethe only target of state-owned enterprise existence. But the system reform of astate-owned enterprise did not go smoothly but went through a series of setbacks. In thedouble–track period, the production order which only depended on the targets assignedby the government under the planned economy was replaced by the market-centeredeconomic order. With the leadership power enlargement in a unit and the power spaceexpansion of outside the system, the economic, political and social status of the"unitpersons"group represented by traditional industrial workers came to slide, thus, dawdlingbecoming "unit persons" response to the benefits damage brought about by the powerdifferentiation. The collective consciousness which used to lead "unit system" to glorywas smashed to pieces in the process and the former solid unit system began to go loose,and gradually head for dispelling.However, with the continuous deepening of the reform process and the continuousdeepening of the state-owned enterprise reform after the14th National Congress of theparty, the modern enterprise system with clear property right has been set up, and anenterprise has become the real main body of the market. With the deepening of the market-oriented reform, the unit system has experienced the transformation from the"living community" of the universal type to the "interests group" of the economicfunctionalism. What an enterprise has to do most is the workers’ space displacement andlabor accounting, during which the efficiency-priority principle and profit-seekingprinciple in the labor management system have become the most fundamental principlein the business development. Thus, the constant and unquestionable equation "time ismoney" runs through the economic activities and management of state-ownedenterprises today. Efficiency and profits are hooked with speed. The compression timeand rationalization proposals have become a priority choice in the management. As aresult, the premise of giving priority to efficiency has catalyzed the"benefit time"generation, the compression time has become the magic weapon of a successfulenterprise, and speed has become the theme of enterprise efficiency. And a new unitcommunity as an enterprise has been reconstructed in the course of"benefit time"generation.In the deductive processes from "unit community" life which gradually went todispelling to"new unit community", a unit person’s concept change in labor time revealsthe unit system formation and the change of mental trajectory, and demonstrates theobjective inevitability, long-term and complexity of the unit system change. But underthe permeation of the market and the capital logic, a state-owned enterprise has notbecome a single "economic being" after the realization of economic functionalismtransformation, but it has fostered a new community life in the construction andrealization of “a new unit society” in the background of people’s livelihood advocated bythe government and society, i.e. at the levels of paying attention to the unit persons’collective welfare, of regaining the inherent virtue of the " traditional unit system " andof seeking the harmonious community life relying on enterprises.