"As bees pollinating flowers": Labor management and rationalization in the leather and shoe complex (Franca, SP, Twentieth Century)

Abstract

The city of Franca (SP) was the major centre of production of male leather shoes in Brazil in the second half of the twentieth century. In this paper I explore how it was largely connected to the great transformations of industrial capitalism. In doing so, I analyse the mechanization and rationalization of the production of leather, footwear and its components, looking especially to the process of acquisition of managers, management techniques and technologies by the major local industries. More specifically my goal is to understand how the relationship between national industrialists and industrialists from countries technologically advanced, such as the agency of foreign managers, enabled to diffusion of managerial and organisation rules achieved at advanced industries from countries as the United States and Czechoslovakia.