New Forms of Work Organization

A growing body of social science literature has examined the organizational innovations and staffing practices comprising new flexible forms of work. Researchers have investigated the depth and scope of these changes and questioned how they affect diverse groups of workers in the United States. Reviewing the research on this transformation reveals a model of combined and uneven flexibility, characterized by the opening of opportunities that are differentially distributed across different groups of American workers, emerging under conditions in which effort is intensified, control is decentered, and employment is destabilized. The essay concludes by suggesting additional areas of inquiry for sociologists concerned with new forms of work organization.

[1]  T. Sullivan.  Marginal Workers, Marginal Jobs: The Underutilization of American Workers , 1978 .

[2]  Charles Heckscher,et al.  The New Unionism: Employee Involvement in the Changing Corporation , 1988 .

[3]  R. Brannon,et al.  Professionalization and Work Intensification , 1994 .

[4]  David M. Gordon,et al.  FAT AND MEAN: The Corporate Squeeze of Working Americans and the Myth of Managerial "Downsizing" , 1996 .

[5]  Barry Bluestone,et al.  Negotiating The Future: A Labor Perspective On American Business , 1994 .

[6]  P. Osterman,et al.  The Mutual Gains Enterprise: Forging a Winning Partnership among Labor, Management, and Government , 1986 .

[7]  David Harvey,et al.  The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change. , 1991 .

[8]  J. Barker.  Tightening the Iron Cage: Concertive Control in Self-Managing Teams , 1993 .

[9]  Stanley Aronowitz,et al.  [Book review] the jobless future, sci-tech and the dogma of work , 1994 .

[10]  David A. Nadler,et al.  Quality of work life: perspectives and directions. , 1983, Organizational dynamics.

[11]  Steven P. Vallas,et al.  The Transformation of Work Revisited: The Limits of Flexibility in American Manufacturing , 1996 .

[12]  F. Block.  Postindustrial Possibilities: A Critique of Economic Discourse , 1990 .

[13]  R. E. Parker.  Flesh Peddlers and Warm Bodies: The Temporary Help Industry and Its Workers , 1994 .

[14]  Employee Involvement, Involved Employees: Participative Work Arrangements in a White-Collar Service Occupation , 1996 .

[15]  James R. Lincoln,et al.  Employee Work Attitudes and Management Practice in the U.S. and Japan: Evidence from a Large Comparative Survey , 1989 .

[16]  Karen A. Brown,et al.  A Comparison of Just-in-Time and Batch Manufacturing: The Role of Performance Obstacles , 1991 .

[17]  W. Heydebrand.  New Organizational Forms , 1989, Organizational Design.

[18]  H. Aldrich,et al.  Prometheus Stretches: Building Identity and Cumulative Knowledge in Multi Employer Careers , 1996 .

[19]  Martin Kenney,et al.  Beyond Mass Production. , 1994 .

[20]  L. Graham,et al.  Constructing Difference: The Making of Gendered Subcultures in a Japanese Automobile Assembly Plant , 1993 .

[21]  S. Levitan,et al.  Worker Participation and Productivity Change. , 1984 .

[22]  Y. Cohen,et al.  Temporary Help Service Workers: Employment Characteristics and Wage Determination , 1993 .

[23]  A. Sinclair.  The Tyranny of a Team Ideology , 1992 .

[24]  R. H. Waterman,et al.  In search of excellence : lessons from America's best-run companies , 1983 .

[25]  Robert E. Cole,et al.  The death and life of the American quality movement , 1995 .

[26]  R. D. Rosenberg,et al.  Participation and Productivity: An Empirical Study , 1980 .

[27]  B. Harrison,et al.  Lean and Mean: The Changing Landscape of Corporate Power in the Age of Flexibility. , 1995 .

[28]  G. Sewell,et al.  `Someone to Watch Over Me': Surveillance, Discipline and the Just-in-Time Labour Process , 1992 .

[29]  L. Graham,et al.  On the Line at Subaru-Isuzu: The Japanese Model and the American Worker , 1995 .

[30]  Nicholas J. Aquilano,et al.  Multiskilled Work Teams: Productivity Benefits , 1977 .

[31]  V. Smith.  Institutionalizing Flexibility in a Service Firm , 1994 .

[32]  Dan Clawson,et al.  A Critical View of Worker Participation in American Industry , 1988 .

[33]  H. Wial,et al.  Is Job Stability Declining in the U.S. Economy? , 1995 .

[34]  Katherine S. Newman,et al.  Falling from Grace , 1988 .

[35]  P. Osterman.  How Common is Workplace Transformation and Who Adopts it? , 1994 .

[36]  A. Bostrom,et al.  The Overestimated Workweek? What Time Diary Measures Suggest , 1994 .

[37]  J. Rogers.  Just a Temp , 1995 .

[38]  P. Hirsch.  Undoing the Managerial Revolution? Needed Research on the Decline of Middle Management and Internal Labor Markets , 1993 .

[39]  Michael Wallace,et al.  Work in the Fast Lane: Flexibility, Divisions of Labor, and Inequality in High-Tech Industries , 1992 .

[40]  R. Milkman,et al.  Technological Change in an Auto Assembly Plant , 1991 .

[41]  William N. Cooke.  Improving Productivity and Quality Through Collaboration , 1989 .

[42]  H. Hartmann,et al.  Contingent Work: A Chart Book on Part-Time and Temporary Employment. , 1991 .

[43]  Barry Bluestone,et al.  The deindustrialization of America : plant closings, community abandonment, and the dismantling of basic industry , 1984 .

[44]  S. Havlovic,et al.  Quality of Work Life and Human Resource Outcomes , 1991 .

[45]  D. Cornfield.  Labor-Management Cooperation or Managerial Control? , 1987 .

[46]  Larry Hirschhorn,et al.  Beyond mechanization: Work and technology in a postindustrial age , 1984 .

[47]  Thomas A. Kochan,et al.  The Transformation of American Industrial Relations , 1988 .

[48]  V. Smith.  Managing in the Corporate Interest: Control and Resistance in an American Bank , 1990 .

[49]  Janette Webb,et al.  New Production Arrangements: The Totally Flexible Cage? , 1989 .

[50]  H. Gottfried.  Mechanisms of control in the temporary help service industry , 1991 .

[51]  Kathleen Christensen,et al.  Flexible Staffing and Scheduling in U.S. Corporations. Research Bulletin No. 240. , 1989 .

[52]  Peter B. Doeringer,et al.  Turbulence in the American Workplace. , 1991 .

[53]  R. Leidner.  Fast Food, Fast Talk: Service Work and the Routinization of Everyday Life , 1993 .

[54]  W. H. Davidow,et al.  The Virtual Corporation: Structuring and Revitalizing the Corporation for the 21st Century , 1992 .

[55]  Vicki Smith,et al.  Consumers' Reports: Management by Customers in a Changing Economy , 1991 .

[56]  Chris Tilly,et al.  Reasons for the Continuing Growth of Part-Time Employment , 1991 .

[57]  H. Prechel,et al.  Economic Crisis and the Centralization of Control Over the Managerial Process: Corporate Restructuring and Neo-Fordist Decision-Making , 1994 .

[58]  A. Rafaeli.  QUALITY CIRCLES AND EMPLOYEE ATTITUDES , 1985 .

[59]  M. Arthur,et al.  The boundaryless career: a competency- based perspective , 1994 .

[60]  Garth L. Mangum,et al.  The Temporary Help Industry: A Response to the Dual Internal Labor Market , 1985 .

[61]  Joan Acker.  HIERARCHIES, JOBS, BODIES: , 1990 .

[62]  The Impact of Foreign Investment on US Industral Relations: The Case of California's Japanese-owned Plants , 1992 .

[63]  Michael R. Reich,et al.  Segmented Work, Divided Workers: The Historical Transformation of Labor in the United States , 1982 .

[64]  Brian Uzzi,et al.  Determinants Of Employment Externalization - A Study Of Temporary Workers And Independent Contractors , 1993 .

[65]  Robert J. Thomas,et al.  What machines can't do : politics and technology in the industrial enterprise , 1995 .

[66]  I. Taplin.  Flexible Production, Rigid Jobs: Lessons from the Clothing Industry , 1995 .

[67]  S. Aronowitz.  False Promises: The Shaping of American Working Class Consciousness , 1974 .

[68]  Andrew Sayer,et al.  The New Social Economy: Reworking the Division of Labor , 1991 .

[69]  B. Harrison,et al.  Outsourcing and the Search for `Flexibility' , 1993 .

[70]  Robert J. Thomas,et al.  Supermarkets Transformed: Understanding Organizational and Technological Innovations. , 1994 .

[71]  Melvin Brodsky.  Labor Market Flexibility: A Changing International Perspective , 1994 .

[72]  C. Sabel,et al.  The Second Industrial Divide: Possibilities for Prosperity , 1984 .

[73]  M. Safizadeh.  The Case of Workgroups in Manufacturing Operations , 1991 .

[74]  N. Margulies,et al.  Perspectives on the Implementation of Participative Approaches , 1987 .

[75]  R. Aronson,et al.  The Contingent Economy: The Growth of the Temporary, Part-Time, and Subcontracted Workforce. , 1991 .

[76]  E. Lawler,et al.  Quality circles after the fad. , 1985, Harvard business review.

[77]  Beverly Lozano.  The invisible work force : transforming American business with outside and home-based workers , 1992 .

[78]  R. Milkman.  Japan's California factories : labor relations and economic globalization , 1993 .

[79]  Daniel T. Jones,et al.  The machine that changed the world : based on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 5-million dollar 5-year study on the future of the automobile , 1990 .

[80]  R. Florida,et al.  Beyond Mass Production: The Japanese System and Its Transfer to the U.S. , 1993 .

[81]  H. Shaiken,et al.  The Work Process Under More Flexible Production , 1986 .

[82]  J. Geary,et al.  Employment Flexibility and Human Resource Management: The Case of Three American Electronics Plants , 1992 .

[83]  James C. Franklin,et al.  Industry output and employment projections to 2006. , 1995 .

[84]  Chris Tilly.  Dualism in Part‐Time Employment , 1992 .

[85]  P. Brown.  Cultural Capital and Social Exclusion: Some Observations on Recent Trends in Education, Employment and the Labour Market , 1995 .

[86]  Anna Pollert,et al.  The `Flexible Firm': Fixation or Fact? , 1988 .