In this article I examine the changes that occurred in a large domestic appliance factory over a 12 year period. The appointment of a new managing director was the catalyst for many innovations in the plant including the ending of PBR (payment by results) and the use of stopwatches by work study engineers (WSEs). Despite senior managerial efforts to change the organizational culture those employed in the work study department continued to exert considerable influence over factory design and work organization. In the article I present a first-hand account of the way in which individual identity and subjectivity contributed to a distinctive subculture. This masculine culture encouraged conflict with shopfloor workers even after the PBR scheme had been discontinued. Hence, the article focuses on the way in which the subjective experiences of a small group of WSEs influenced the organization of shopfloor work as well as relationships between workers and manager
Baden-Fuller, C. & Stopford, J.M.Rejuvenating the mature business. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 1994.
2.
Beer, M. , Spector, B., Lawrence, P., Mills, Q. & Walton, R.Managing human assets. New York: Free Press, 1984.
3.
Berger, P.L. & Luckman, T.The social construction of reality. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1966.
4.
Blackford, K.M.H. & Newcomb, A.The job, the man, the boss. Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Page, 1914.
5.
Blyton, P. & Turnbull, P.Reassessing human resource management. London: Sage, 1992.
6.
Borum, F. & Strandgaard-Pedersen, J.Understanding the IT people, their subcultures, and the implications for management of technology. In F. Borum and P.H. Kristensen (Eds), Technological innovation and organisational change: Danish patterns of knowledge, networks and culture. Copenhagen: New Social Science Monographs, 1989, pp. 219-248.
7.
Braverman, H.Labour and monopoly capital. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1974.
8.
Burawoy, M.Manufacturing consent: Changes in the labour process under monopoly capitalism. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 1979.
9.
Burawoy, M.The politics of production: Factory regimes under capitalism and socialism. New York: Verso, 1985.
10.
Collinson, D.Engineering humour: Masculinity, joking and conflict in shopfloor relations . Organization Studies, 1988, 9(2), 181-199.
11.
Collinson, D.Managing the shopfloor: Subjectivity, masculinity and workplace culture. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1992.
12.
Currie, R.M. (Revised by J.E. Faraday) Work study, 4th Edn.London: Pitman, 1977 (Orig. 1959).
13.
Czarniawska-Joerges, B.Narration or science? Collapsing the division in organisation studies . Organization, 1995, 2(1), 11-34.
14.
Fahim, H. (Ed.) Indigenous anthropology in non-western countries. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 1982.
15.
Fombrun, C. , Tichy, N.M. & Devanna, M.A.Strategic human resource management. New York: Wiley, 1984.
16.
Friedman, A.L.Industry and labour: Class struggle at work and monopoly capitalism. London: Macmillan, 1977.
17.
Gabriel, Y.Turning facts into stories and stories into facts: A hermeneutic exploration of organisational folklore . Human Relations, 1991, 44(8), 857-876.
18.
Giddens, A.Central problems in social theory. London: Macmillan, 1979.
19.
Giddens, A.The constitution of society: Outline of the theory of structuration. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1984.
20.
Giddens, A.New rules of sociological method: Positive critiques of interpretive sociologies, 2nd Edn.Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993.
21.
Goffman, E.The presentation of self in everyday life. New York: Anchor, 1959.
22.
Goffman, E.Asylums: Essays on the social situation of mental patients and other inmates. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1961.
23.
Graham, L.Inside a Japanese transplant: A critical perspective . Work and Occupations, 1993, 20(2), 611-628.
24.
Granovetter, M.Economic action and social structure: The problem of embeddedness . American Journal of Sociology, 1985, 91(3), 481-510.
25.
Grey, C.Career as a project of the self and labour process discipline . Sociology, 1994, 28(2), 479-498.
26.
Guest, D.Human resource management: Its implications for industrial relations and trade unions. In J. Storey (Ed.), New perspectives on human resource management. London: Routledge, 1989, pp. 41-55.
27.
Guest, D.Human resource management and the American dream . Journal of Management Studies, 1990, 27(4), 377-397.
28.
Hammersley, M.What's wrong with ethnography? Methodological explanations. London: Routledge, 1992.
29.
Hamper, B.Rivethead: Tales from the assembly line. London: Fourth Estate, 1992.
30.
Hassard, J.Sociology and organization theory: Positivism, paradigms and postmodernity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
31.
Hatch, M.J.Organization theory: Modern, symbolic and postmodern perspectives. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.
32.
Henriques, J. , Hollway, W., Urwin, C., Venn, C. & Walkerdine, V.Changing the subject: Psychology, social regulation and subjectivity. London: Methuen, 1984.
33.
Jacques, R.Manufacturing the employee: Management knowledge from the 19th to 21st centuries. London: Sage, 1996.
34.
Jones, G.R.Life history as methodology. In G. Morgan (Ed.), Beyond Method. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1983, pp. 147-159.
35.
Jones, O.Changing the balance? Taylorism, TQM and work organisation . New Technology Work and Employment, 1997, 12 (1), 13-24.
36.
Kamata, S.Japan in the passing lane: An insider's account of life in a Japanese auto factory. London: Allen & Unwin, 1983.
37.
Knights, D.Subjectivity, power and the labour process. In D. Knights and H. Willmott (Eds), Labour process theory. London: Macmillan, 1990, pp. 297-335.
38.
Lupton, T.On the shopfloor: Two studies of workshop organization and output. Oxford: Pergamon, 1963.
39.
Martin, J. & Siehl, C.Organization culture and counterculture: An uneasy symbiosis. Organizational Dynamics, 1983, Autumn, 52-64.
40.
Peters, T. & Waterman, R.H.In search of excellence: Lessons from America's best-run companies. New York: Harper & Row, 1982.
41.
Power, M.Educating accountants: Towards a critical ethnography . Accounting, Organisations and Society, 1991, 16(4), 333-353.
42.
Reed, M.The sociology of organizations: Themes, perspectives and prospects. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1992.
43.
Roy, D.Quota restriction and goldbricking in a machine shop . American Journal of Sociology, 1952, 57, 427-442.
44.
Roy, D.Making-out: A workers' counter-system of control of work situation and relationships . American Journal of Sociology, 1955, 60, 255-266.
45.
Sennet, R.Authority. London: Secker and Warburg, 1980.
46.
Sims, D. , Fineman, S. & Yiannis, G.Organizing and organization: An introduction. London: Sage, 1993.
47.
Slaughter, J.The team concept in the US auto industry: Implications for the unions . Paper presented at the ERU Conference on the Japanisation of British Industry, Cardiff, September, 1987.
48.
Smith, C.Technical workers: Class, labour and trade unionism. London: Macmillan, 1987.
49.
Smith, C.Engineers and the labour process. In C. Smith, D. Knights and H. Willmott (Eds), Whitecollar work: The non-manual labour process. London: Macmillan, 1991, pp. 189-216.
50.
Storey, J.Managerial prerogative and the question of control. London: Kegan Paul, 1983.
51.
Storey, J.Developments in the management of human resources: An interim report. Warwick Papers in Industrial Relations, No. 17, IRRU, SIBS, University of Warwick, 1987.
52.
Taylor, E.W.Scientific management. New York: Harper & Row, 1947.
53.
Thompson, P. & Ackroyd, S.All quiet on the workplace front: A critique of recent trends in British industrial sociology. Sociology, 1995, 29(4), 615-635.
54.
Tolliday, S. & Zeitlin, J.The automobile industry and its workers. Oxford: Polity Press, 1986.
55.
Van Maanen, J. & Barley, S.R.Occupational communities: Culture and control in organizations. In B.M. Staw and L.L. Cummings (Eds), Research in organizational behavior. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, 1984, pp. 287-365.
56.
Warde, A.Industrial discipline: Factory regime and politics in Lancaster. In A. Sturdy, D. Knights and H. Willmott (Eds), Skill and consent: Contemporary studies in the labour process. London: Routledge, 1992, pp. 97-114.
57.
Watson, T.J.In search of management: Culture, chaos & control in managerial work. London: Routledge, 1994.
58.
Weir, D.Not doing the business . Times Higher Education Supplement, 30April, 1993, p. 22.
59.
Whalley, P.The social production of technical work. London: Macmillan, 1986.
60.
Whittington, R.Corporate strategies in recession and recovery: Social structure and strategic choice. London: Unwin Hyman, 1989.
61.
Young, E.On naming the rose: Interests and multiple meanings as elements of organizational change . Organizational Studies, 1989, 10: 197-206.
