Unpacking the myth of decoupling: An empirical case study of human-machine dynamics in Chinese battery factories

• In Event: Education improvements: interventions and impacts

Proposal

Research Purpose:
As industrialization enters a new stage, Taylorism has widened the gap between theoretical researchers, corporate R&D personnel, and management staff on one hand, and industrial engineers and workers on the other, leading to a "decoupling" between a general model of vocational education for future workers and the emerging knowledge and practices created by local practitioners when interracting with machines. Although Bobbit (1918) pointed out and tried to resolve this issue 100 years ago, we are facing this challenge again within another round of "machines replacing humans." This study aims to explore the logics of practice (Bourdieu, 1990) underlying the "decoupling" and attempts to figure out Whether the content of vocational education should be designed solely based on the needs of job requirements to align with enterprises and factories, or if it can anticipate and guide the evolving demands of industry transformations from a more strategic viewpoint?

Theoretical Perspective:
Existing social and educational research has provide at least 3 distinct perspectives to examine human-machine dynamics during the industrial and technological transformation.
(A)Research on the labor process theory examines how worker behavior is controlled through the advancement of machine. Scholars like Marcuse, Braverman and Burawoy have explored how the separation of written rules and their execution in production, stemming from Taylorism, leads to the de-skilling of frontline workers (Braverman,1974; Buraway,1985).
(B)From the perspective of the politics of technology, some Chinese scholars have analyzed the hidden "politics of labor dignity" and the issues of "deskilling" and "reskilling" under the narrative of "machines replacing humans." For instance, Yi Lianyuan (易莲媛,2019), in her review of the "mass science" in China during the "first thirty years" after the founding of the People's Republic of China, highlights the contributions of the local workers to technological innovation. Wang Hongzhe (王洪喆,2015) re-examines the issue of "seeing the machine but not the person" in the wake of applying commercial computers in industrial management in the 1980s and argues that the machine works as an important intermediary for the advancement of the workers' skills.
(C)Daniel Bell (1973)'s research on post-industrial society also addresses the rise of the intellectual class, "white-collar" workers, and symbolic analysts, and their influence on the structure of professional education. Similarly, studies on "technological feudalism" have looked at how digital technology reshapes platform-user relationships and the societal impacts caused by labor force substitution (Durand,2023).

Research Method and Data:
The study provides an investigation into the labor structure and skill changes in two factories of a Chinese battery company, which primarily focuses on the production of lead-acid batteries. We began engaging with this company in 2018 and from 2022 to 2023, we focused our efforts on further study about their employee background, manufacturing processes and equipment update status. We also interviewed relevant employees, including front-line workers, engineers, managers to review the history of the industry between 2008-2023, which has been a key period for their update their techniques. Following the automation machine updating history we investigated two core production processes called "Cast On Strap(铸焊)" and "layering(包片)."

Research Findings and Discussion:
The study reveals that the specific contributions of industrial workers to the technological upgrade are mediated by machine upgrades and ultimately reflected in the process of "machines replacing humans." It identifies two key pathways for new equipment invention and skill development:
Firstly, in the upgrade of the “Cast On Strap” process, highly skilled workers and managers who are intimately familiar with the production process collaborate with the automation equipment development team, which may not be fully acquainted with the technique of the traditional process. Through this collaboration, industrial workers transform and integrate their embodied know-how into the general protocol of automization.
Secondly, during the transition from old to new equipment (like auto laminating machine or grid-casting machine), industrial workers, with the assistance of equipment developers, gradually master and develop new skills to deal with new technological equipment and gradually enhance production capacity through methods such as "parallel transition," "local tuning," "apprenticeship training," and "performance incentives." The design of these new operating procedures requires in-depth insights into the processes which highly targeted towards specific new equipment and products, and are specialized knowledge that is both embodied and situationally prominent.
In both pathways, industrial workers leverage their practical production experience in the design and utilization of new machine, illustrating that industrial upgrading is contingent upon the application and transformation of skills, which in turn leads to an increase in income.

Based on the findings, the study attempts to analyze why the supply of vocational education skills fails to meet the needs of industrial upgrading:
(1)the new technologies emerging in industrial upgrading often focusing on industry standards, product demands, and the actual working conditions of industrial workers, which differs from the theoretical and operational knowledge teaching carried out by schools in a single scenario.
(2)the new skills required in industrial upgrading are networked. The machine development and application about techniques of automation in industrial upgrading requires the participation of various actors such as enterprise development, employee acceptance, and human-machine interaction, and promotes the continuous iteration of skills through a series of linked incentive mechanisms. In contrast, schools are in a relatively source and marginal position in this "skill-tech-skill" diffusion network, and at the same time, it is difficult to quickly iterate skills with the production scene or invest a large amount of resources in skill development.
(3)The knowledge of craftsmanship and technology in industrial upgrading retains local and embodied characteristics. This leads to a situation where the focus of enterprise managers on technological security and skilled workers on their own expertise creates barriers to skill diffusion, which is enterprise-led and worker-participated. Consequently, this results in fewer opportunities for educational institutions to be involved. Therefore, compared to the theoretical, simulated, and universal knowledge taught in schools, technological innovation that is embedded in the production practice process demands a form of skill knowledge that is more empirical, generative, and situational.

Authors

• Ben Chen, Peking University

• Lei Zheng, Peking University