When algorithmic management was new: Engineered standards and the managerial prerogative in Australia

In this article we analyse the significance for critical logistics studies of a neglected chapter in industrial relations history, the introduction of so-called ‘Engineered Standards’ into the Australian food and groceries sector in the late 1980s and early 1990s. We argue that this episode was decisive in establishing the conditions which have allowed algorithmic management to flourish in Australia in more recent years. We argue for the significance of this episode as responding to a crisis in the corporatist organisation of Australian industrial relations during the neo-liberal ‘Accord’ era. Engineered Standards, we argue, constituted a decisive ‘break’ within Australian logistics, establishing a new technical, managerial, and discursive order.