This article presents data that shows strong counterintuitive improvements in productivity occur following a management decision to permanently close a part of their organisation. This productivity change is known in the literature as the ‘Closedown effect’. It is primarily during the period following negotiations between management and unions, that the strongest empirical evidence of increased productivity is recorded.

The purpose of this article is to analyze what type of autonomy that comes into practice, given a new institutional order, during closedown processes. Empirical evidence from the closure of three plants in Scandinavia supports the analysis that a closedown decision, changes the frontiers of control. These changes provide operative space for informal work practices, innovation and other aspects of workplace relations which facilitate higher levels of output. The workplace has reached ‘the end of the game’ and a new order appears replacing the previously institutionalised pattern with more real autonomy.