WHO DESIGNS WORK - ORGANIZING PRODUCTION IN AN AGE OF HIGH TECHNOLOGY

Who determines the overall structure of production systems? The details of equipment, tools, and tasks? What forces motivate workp ace redesigns? This paper seeks to answer such questions through consideration of job design and work organization practices in the United States and Europe. It arrives at the following conclusion: regardless of the political influence of organized labor or of corporate policies stressing quality of working life or productivity, efficiency, and competitiveness, the growing complexity of workplace technology and the invisible nature of the logic embodied in computer-based systems mean that the design of work has become more than ever the province of technical experts. The experts themselves remain responsible to managements. Nonetheless, managers - like shopfloor employees - have much more difficulty today in understanding, and, hence, in shaping the technology of production system than in the past. Newer forms of production systems sometimes give employees greater local control over their work, but influence over the shape of the system as a whole is restricted to the margins. © 1990.