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Driving Productivity: Automation, Labor, and Industrial Development in the United States and Germany
Author(s): Anthony J. Knowles (Author)
- Publisher: Brill
- Publication Date: July 31, 2025
- Edition: 1st
- Language: English
- Print length: 412 pages
- ISBN-10: 9004736700
- ISBN-13: 9789004736702
Book Description
Driving Productivity reconstructs the industrial histories of the American and German automotive industries in a new light. From the Fordist assembly line to Japanese lean production and Industry 4.0, Anthony J. Knowles critically examines major technical developments within the historical dynamics of capitalism. Both countries face the pressure to automate, transform labor, and increase efficiency, yet their responses differ due to divergent paradigms of integrating business, labor, and government. Driving Productivity makes the case that improving productivity is a never-ending process that becomes a compulsory social imperative that industries must respond to but are nevertheless responded to differently between countries.
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Anthony J. Knowles, Ph.D. (2023, University of Tennessee-Knoxville), is Teaching Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Tennessee. His research pertains to the social and economic effects of technologies. His most recent publication “The Artificiality of Digital Scarcity” (Fast Capitalism 21(1), 2024) theorizes how online filesharing generates a “crisis of value” for media industries.
