HIGH PERFORMANCE WORK DESIGN: THE DIGITAL EXPERIENCE

This paper argues that the boundaries of what management once considered acceptable work redesign have been expanded by new environmental pressures. Approaches now being developed give employees considerably more discretion and enhance opportunities for personal skills development and improved organizational performance. The motives behind this shift in management practice are quite different from those which sustained the quality of working life movement in the 1960s and 1970s, and are influenced in part by the development of increasingly sophisticated computer based manufacturing technologies. This argument is illustrated by the experience of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), in computer manufacturing plants in America and Scotland, with applications of “high performance work systems”. Complementary evidence that this represents a wider shift in management practice, not confined to one country, company or sector, is drawn from published accounts of similar developments in other countries.