Job Design and Technology - Taylorism vs Anti-Taylorism (Hardcover)

Recent trends like "lean production" and "McDonaldisation" indicate that Taylorism is a persistent, underlying principle of many organisations. Despite global competition and the need for speed, flexibility and quality, still the principle of Taylorism remains in the contemporary workplace. Moreover, information technology is often being used in way's that reinforce Taylorist patterns. For some this may be a fact of life. Hans D. Pruijt argues that this is not the case. There is a countermovement, particularly in North-West Europe where viable alternatives are being purseued. But, a systematic analysis of the resulting change of anti-Taylorist practice at shop-floor level has been lacking. This text fills this gap by analyzing 150 cases of anti-Taylorist initiatives in Scandinavia, the UK and the Netherlands. An example of anti-Taylorist principles working towards job enrichment can be seen in Germany; it also examines the role of state policy, research and consultancy in an experiment at Bosch where assembly workers learned testing skills.