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TOWARD MORE FLEXIBLE ORGANIZATION?: CANADIAN RAIL FREIGHT IN THE 1990s
Author(s) -
MILNE SIMON,
WADDINGTON RICHARD,
PEREY ANDRÉ
Publication year - 1994
Publication title -
tijdschrift voor economische en sociale geografie
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.766
H-Index - 55
eISSN - 1467-9663
pISSN - 0040-747X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9663.1994.tb00684.x
Subject(s) - restructuring , deregulation , context (archaeology) , fordism , industrial organization , capitalism , business , perspective (graphical) , market economy , economic system , economics , economic geography , political science , politics , finance , computer science , paleontology , artificial intelligence , biology , law
The freight transportation sector has received relatively little attention in recent debates over the nature of the transformations currently affecting contemporary capitalism. This lack of interest is particularly surprising given the fact that certain emergent forms of productive organization appear to be heavily dependent on increasingly flexible and efficient transport services. Within the context of these theoretical debates we review how the two dominant players in the Canadian rail freight sector, Canadian Pacific and Canadian National, are responding to the evolving competitive conditions of the 1990s. Deregulation, recessionary pressures, and changing customer expectations are just some of the factors that are creating an intensifying competitive environment. We then outline the responses adopted by the two companies in their attempts to improve the responsiveness and efficiency of their operations. The concluding sections of the article focus on some of the broader spatial and theoretical implications of the findings. We show that while this sector has undergone considerable change in recent years current ‘post‐Fordist’ theories of industrial restructuring can provide, at best, only a partial explanation of the processes observed.