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Public service employees (3044) completed a questionnaire seeking information on their expectations regarding a proposal to increase their functional flexibility. It was proposed that beliefs concerning the unfavorability of outcomes of the intervention would be correlated with a range of biographical, affective, and job content variables. Multivariate analyses revealed that the scope of an employees' existing job and biographical variables (apart from age) were not generally predictive of attitudes to functional flexibility. Rather, unfavorable attitudes were weakly associated with low levels of extrinsic satisfaction, perceived reward equity, aspiration organizational commitment, and age. The implications of these findings for work and skills restructuring interventions and organizational change in general are discussed.

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This paper is concerned with the effects of advanced manufacturing technology on shopfloor operator jobs and work attitudes. A strong line of argument from labour process theory suggests that such technology will simplify and deskill jobs, and reduce the quality or working life. This proposition was explored within a large electronics company which assembles computer boards, where two different applications of information technology have been experienced. These were compared with two traditional manual assembly jobs. Assessment of job content, perceived job characteristics and operator work attitudes, showed no uniform deskilling effects of advanced manufacturing technologies. Much larger differences existed both between the different new technology applications and between the traditional jobs. This demonstrates that choice of technology is important to skill use and employees' attitudes, as are the choices for the organization of work around it. These are not uniform processes even within a single organization. Experience of operating advanced manufacturing technology was also accompanied by more positive views concerning its impact on the shopfloor.

Increasingly, multiskilling programmes are a key element in workplace reform. In this paper, the findings of a longitudinal case study of multiskilling involving process workers are presented. The study found that the multiskilling programme and associated changes to work organization only marginally altered skill requirements for jobs, although there was evidence of increased worker control over certain aspects of the work role. There was no evidence to suggest that these developments reflected a fundamental shift in the nature of management-employee relations. Conclusions are drawn as to the extent to which such innovations signal a departure from traditional Taylorist and Fordist orientations towards skills formation and work organization.