The organization of work is under critique in many industrialized countries. Bureaucracy, specialization, repetitive technology, and hierarchical control structures are criticized by politicians, trade unionists, and social scientists. They argue for improved quality of work, for work democratization, and for the humanization of work. This book evaluates Norwegian field ex periments in the area of job redesign which started already in 1964. Norway has therefore a lead in experience compared to most other countries, particu to the United States, where debates and subsequent experiments re larly volving around the quality of working life and the democratization of work started only in the early seventies. The Norwegian social scientists who left their academic bastions and started action research drew heavily upon the 'open socio-technical system' thinking as developed by the Tavistock Insti tute of Human Relations in London. This descriptive evaluation study ana lyzes the job redesign experiments from an industrial democracy perspective and places the experiments in their national political and labor relations contexts. Special emphasis is given to the actual and potential role trade unions can play in shopfloor job design projects. The industrial relations of the United States is generally used as reference point in this study. system The theory guiding the experiments regards work democratization through job redesign as a first step in a bottom-up process of organizational demo cratization.

The shift from manufacturing- to service-based economies has often been accompanied by the expansion of low-wage and insecure employment. Many consider the effects of this shift inevitable. In Disintegrating Democracy at Work, Virginia Doellgast contends that high pay and good working conditions are possible even for marginal service jobs. This outcome, however, depends on strong unions and encompassing collective bargaining institutions, which are necessary to give workers a voice in the decisions that affect the design of their jobs and the distribution of productivity gains. Doellgast’s conclusions are based on a comparative study of the changes that occurred in the organization of call center jobs in the United States and Germany following the liberalization of telecommunications markets. Based on survey data and interviews with workers, managers, and union representatives, she found that German managers more often took the "high road" than those in the United States, investing in skills and giving employees more control over their work. Doellgast traces the difference to stronger institutional supports for workplace democracy in Germany. However, these democratic structures were increasingly precarious, as managers in both countries used outsourcing strategies to move jobs to workplaces with lower pay and weaker or no union representation. Doellgast’s comparative findings show the importance of policy choices in closing off these escape routes, promoting broad access to good jobs in expanding service industries.

The contributions to this edited collection, first published in 1983, are based on two underlying themes. The first examines the major recession that took hold of the global economy during the 1980s and assesses its effects on key areas of social structure, including political and economic democracy and trade union representation. The second theme considers the limitations of state intervention in such changing circumstances, with particular reference to the welfare state. This is a comprehensive title, which is of great relevance to those with an interest in the current global economic situation and the potential impact of this on the welfare state and class structure.

A remarkable development in the sociology of work in recent years has been the explosion of brilliant cross-national and cross-cultural studies in Europe examining the conditions of labor against the background of different economic systems, and differences within each of the major free market, mixed welfare, and planned economic systems that dot the European landscape. In Vienna and Budapest in particular, a group of intellectual workers have gotten together for what can only be described as breakthrough studies in the conditions and purposes of work in post-industrial society. The question of new forms of work organization focuses on job satisfaction, participatory democracy in the work place, levels of productivity, and issues of health and safety in the occupational environment. That these elements are important have long been known. But what this collection of studies emphasizes is the specific mix that produced specific outcomes. It does not shy away from dangerous and tough questions: worker control and control of workers, political participation in contexts of authoritarian regimes, and personal rewards in contexts that once frowned upon private acquisition of capital. The volume is rich in empirical studies and draws the theoretical implications that can and already have had vast policy consequences for workers in the modern " context. Issues relating to job rotation, enrichment, enlargement and autonomy, and others related to new forms of organization starting with the shop floor and extending throughout the management of the enterprise as a whole are dealt with candidly. The social character of labor, long frowned upon as a mechanism for evading bread-and-butter issues, is now recognized, East and West, as a dimension of concern that is growing precisely as the size and character of the labor sector is diminishing. This is must reading for those interested in new forms of social and policy synthesis, and ways of meliorating competing claims of different sectors in modern societies.

The aim of this Handbook is to produce an interdisciplinary and international benchmark text for anyone wanting to understand job quality. Job quality matters and has long and continually done so, even if the terminology used to describe it has, and continues, to vary. Debate about the future of work and job quality in the twenty-first century centres on the impact of the new digital technologies of the putative fourth industrial revolution. This debate compounds existing concerns about the restructuring of employment and, importantly, a worrying proliferation of poor-quality jobs, often within the context of neo-liberal political-economic hegemony since the early 1980s or the economic crisis that followed the Global Financial Crisis of the late 2000s. Job quality is offered as a solution to challenges such as health, welfare, productivity, innovation, economic competitiveness, democracy and democratic participation, Bildung/cultivation, societal equality, individual and collective quality of life, and environmental sustainability. As job quality is a key factor in addressing these and the other challenges, it needs to be understood in all its complexity in terms of what it affects as well as what affects it. This Handbook draws together into a single volume: first, an explicit focus on job quality both as a significant factor in and of itself and as producing instrumental effects on a range of other processes and outcomes; second, a catalogue of the diverse range of multiple contributions and applications related to job quality; and third, the complexity and multiple interpretations of the concept of job quality. Each chapter provides distinct responses to the question of why job quality matters, coupled to a contention about for whom or for what job quality matters most. As the chapters with their respective answers and arguments attest, there are a range of ways in which job quality is relevant to an equally broad range of social, economic, and political concerns.