ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION (Ph.D.)



Competition, Competitive Strategy and the Capitalist

Process:  The Restructuring of the Global Telecommunications

Industry and the AT&T Monopoly



by TANYA J. STEINBERG



Dissertation Director:



Professor Robert W. Lake



The dynamics of competition are central to processes of economic and industrial restructuring at a broad level within capitalism, and determine the strategic behavior of individual firms.  Organizational and spatial restructuring and implementing a flexible organization of production are shown to be the means by which capital responds to changing competitive conditions, adjusts to crisis and restores profit making conditions.  The restructuring of the large corporation, in particular, is characterized by the dismantling of corporate hierarchies, the organizational and spatial decentralization of corporate power and productive activities to market focused business units, and the implementation of flexible technologies and modes of labor organization.  Implementing a flexible organization of production ultimately enables large firms to become more market responsive in a globally competitive environment. The utilization of advanced telecommunications throughout the production process has been fundamental to current processes of industrial restructuring and the shift to flexibility.  It is shown, however, that while telecommunications mitigate many of the spatial constraints on capital movement and allow for even more extensive spatial divisions of labor, new modes of production organization demand greater proximity and agglomeration throughout the production process.  The increasing organizational and spatial integration of production has become key to competitiveness in a flexible era.



The restructuring of the global telecommunications industry and the AT&T monopoly in the U.S. as a direct result of changing competitive conditions illustrates these trends.  The deregulation, liberalization and establishment of competition in what was a monopoly dominated and regulated industry stimulated a wave of restructuring in individual, nationally based telecommunications industries around the world.  The reorganization of AT&T along market- focused business units and the implementation of new modes of production and labor organization are examples of how one telecommunications monopoly implemented a flexible organization of production as a response to changing competitive conditions.