Stephen R. Barley reflects on over three decades of research to explore both the history of technological change and the approaches used to investigate how technologies, including intelligent technologies such as machine learning and robotics, are shaping our work and organizations.

A systems approach to managing technological change, this book shows how to achieve management excellence by incorporating humanistic needs into the technological job design framework.

Workers, Managers, and Technological Change: Emerging Patterns of Labor Relations contributes significantly to an important subject. Technological change is one of the most powerful forces transforming the American industrial relations In fact, the synergistic relationships between technology and indus system. trial relations are so complex that they are not well or completely understood. We know that the impact of technology, while not independent of social forces, already has been profound: it has transformed occupations, creating new skills and destroying others; altered the power relationships between workers and managers; and changed the way workers learn and work. Tech nology also has made it possible to decentralize some economic activities out of large metropolitan areas and into small towns, rural areas, and other coun tries. Most important, information technology makes it possible for interna tional corporations to operate on a global basis. Indeed, some international corporations, especially those based in the United States, are losing their national identities, detaching the welfare of corporations from that of particu lar workers and communities. Internationalization, facilitated by information technology, has trans formed industrial relations systems. A major objective of the traditional American industrial relations system was to take labor out of competition.

A study which looks at the reciprocal influence of technological change and labour relations and includes case studies from six industrialized market economy countries, as well as a comparative chapter.; The book focuses on the introduction of microelectronic technology in machinery manufacturing, banking and printing to examine how workers participated in the changeover and how labour relations in the enterprises studied were affected by the new technology.

Workers, Managers, and Technological Change: Emerging Patterns of Labor Relations contributes significantly to an important subject. Technological change is one of the most powerful forces transforming the American industrial relations In fact, the synergistic relationships between technology and indus system. trial relations are so complex that they are not well or completely understood. We know that the impact of technology, while not independent of social forces, already has been profound: it has transformed occupations, creating new skills and destroying others; altered the power relationships between workers and managers; and changed the way workers learn and work. Tech nology also has made it possible to decentralize some economic activities out of large metropolitan areas and into small towns, rural areas, and other coun tries. Most important, information technology makes it possible for interna tional corporations to operate on a global basis. Indeed, some international corporations, especially those based in the United States, are losing their national identities, detaching the welfare of corporations from that of particu lar workers and communities. Internationalization, facilitated by information technology, has trans formed industrial relations systems. A major objective of the traditional American industrial relations system was to take labor out of competition.

Workers, Managers, and Technological Change: Emerging Patterns of Labor Relations contributes significantly to an important subject. Technological change is one of the most powerful forces transforming the American industrial relations In fact, the synergistic relationships between technology and indus system. trial relations are so complex that they are not well or completely understood. We know that the impact of technology, while not independent of social forces, already has been profound: it has transformed occupations, creating new skills and destroying others; altered the power relationships between workers and managers; and changed the way workers learn and work. Tech nology also has made it possible to decentralize some economic activities out of large metropolitan areas and into small towns, rural areas, and other coun tries. Most important, information technology makes it possible for interna tional corporations to operate on a global basis. Indeed, some international corporations, especially those based in the United States, are losing their national identities, detaching the welfare of corporations from that of particu lar workers and communities. Internationalization, facilitated by information technology, has trans formed industrial relations systems. A major objective of the traditional American industrial relations system was to take labor out of competition.