Why Teamwork Fails: Obstacles to Workplace Change in Four Manufacturing Plants

Vallas, Steven P.

doi:10.2307/1519767

Cited by 190 publications

(155 citation statements)

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“…2 I argue that the relationship between worker 2 There is a large qualitative literature on worker experience with post-Fordist work arrangements in manufacturing (Barker 1993;Garrahan and Stewart 1992;Graham 1995;Grenier 1988;Milkman 1997;Rinehart et al 1997;Smith 2001;Thomas 1989;Vallas 2003a;Vallas 2003b). These studies, however, do not systematically address the relationship between participatory arrangements and job satisfaction, empowerment and job satisfaction is much more complex than suggested by what seems to be the standard view among the advocates of lean production and high performance work organization.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Lean Production, Worker Empowerment, and Job Satisfaction: A Qualitative Analysis and Critique

2007

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Lean Production, Worker Empowerment, and Job Satisfaction: A Qualitative Analysis and Critique

2007

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“…However, studies also support a more cautious view, noting middle and lower management resistance to change (Zuboff 1988), token or faddish adoption (Abrahamson and Fairchild 1999), and poor execution (Vallas 2003). The harshest critics describe workplaces in which management uses employee involvement to control workers and intensify work (Graham 1993;Barker 1993) as part of a more general strategy to control labor cost, which may also include real wage reductions, union avoidance, outsourcing, offshore production, and less stable employment arrangements.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In addition, the difficulty of sustaining traditional American industrial jobs has only increased as low-value-added jobs are moving abroad, and many have argued that American manufacturing workers can retain jobs in highvalue-added operations, particularly those serving rapidly changing markets and using information technology, high skills and high employee involvement (Piore and Sabel 1984;Zuboff 1988; Appelbaum et al 2000, pp.10f. ).However, studies also support a more cautious view, noting middle and lower management resistance to change (Zuboff 1988), token or faddish adoption (Abrahamson and Fairchild 1999), and poor execution (Vallas 2003). The harshest critics describe workplaces in which management uses employee involvement to control workers and intensify work (Graham 1993;Barker 1993) as part of a more general strategy to control labor cost, which may also include real wage reductions, union avoidance, outsourcing, offshore production, and less stable employment arrangements.…”

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confidence: 99%

The Effects of New Work Practices on Workers

Handel¹,

Levine²

2006

America at Work

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The study of work and employment in the 1970s was shaped by a widely-cited report taking stock of the current workplace and proposing broad changes (Work in America [HEW 1973]). In this chapter we review research on how employee involvement practices affect job quality and assess the extent to which they have delivered on their promise. Overall, we find that new workplace practices increase employee satisfaction and (on average) increase wages a small amount. Effects on employee injury rates are less clear. It is unclear if the small and inconsistent findings across many studies reflect variation in the seriousness of implementation (with many workplaces making few real changes), variation in the quality of the studies and measures, or true variation in effects. We conclude with some considerations of policy options. The study of work and employment in the 1970s was shaped by a widely-cited report taking stock of the current workplace and proposing broad changes. Appearing after nearly thirty years of prosperity and economic growth, the Work in America (HEW 1973) report focused on how work could be made more satisfying, skilled, and participatory. Similarly, the 1990s also began with a widely-cited report advocating fundamental changes. However, America's Choice: High Skills or Low Wages (National Center on Education and the Economy 1990) focused on the need to restore American competitiveness and wage growth through tougher education standards, structured school-to-work transitions, one-stop job service and information centers, and incentives and assistance for firms adopting high-performance work systems to compete on quality rather than low wages.Although policy-makers paid a lot of attention to these issues, policy changes were modest. Perhaps in spite of this relative neglect, the economy did very well in the 1990s in terms of job growth. The economic recovery in the 1990s left one agenda item conspicuously unresolved: securely improving the quality of jobs for the middle and lower segments of the workforce. Thus, as the 1990s boom ended, inequality remained extraordinarily high, living standards improved little for the vast majority (Mishel, Bernstein, Allegretto 2005), and doubts lingered as to whether a credible model of high-quality employment had emerged to compensate for the waning influence of unions.New work practices with higher levels of employee involvement and skill were viewed favorably by academics, policy makers, and firms, to judge by various studies of their prevalence (Osterman 1994(Osterman , 2000Frazis, Gittleman, Horrigan, and Joyce 1998;Cappelli 1996;Cappelli and Neumark 2001; Freeman and Roger 1999). While definitions vary, most would agree that employee involvement (EI) practices include job rotation, quality circles, self-directed teams, and 3 most implementations of Total Quality Management, as well as supportive practices such as enhanced training and non-traditional compensation (e.g., pay for skill, bonuses, gain sharing, and profit sharing). In this chapter we revie...

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“…The job control of union contracts often implicitly reserved certain types of work for certain ascriptive groups, for example channeling women into less skilled or less lucrative jobs (Milkman 1987;Vallas 2003). For much of the period studied here, the AFL--CIO's positions on immigration and trade were quite protectionist; the federation only switched to favor amnesty for illegal immigrants in 2000.…”

Section: Unions and Managerial Discretionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Control of Managerial Discretion: Evidence from Unionization’s Impact on Employment Segregation

Ferguson

2015

American Journal of Sociology

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Does limiting managers' discretion limit organizations' scope for discrimination? Social--psychological research argues that it limits opportunities to exercise cognitive biases. Organizational research has found that formal personnel practices that establish accountability for workplace diversity have increased women and minority representation in management. However, drawing causal inferences from such studies is complicated because adopting such policies may be endogenous to the firm's wish to hire and promote women and minorities. This study uses unionization elections to conduct a regression--discontinuity test from which stronger causal inferences can be made. I find that while unionization is associated with more representative workplaces and more women and minorities in management, these effects disappear close to the discontinuity threshold. Most of the effects of unionization on workforce diversity may be attributable to the unobserved drivers of selection into unionization. This has similar implications for the causal effects of diversity policies adopted by managers. Acknowledgments The author would like to thank Emilio Castilla, Roberto Fernandez, Aruna Ranganathan, Susan Silbey, Jesper Sørensen, and seminar participants at Stanford GSB, Berkeley--Haas, MIT--Sloan, INSEAD, and the 30 th EGOS Colloquium for comments on the manuscript. Sheldon Friedman, Alfonso Nevárez, and Gordon Pavy at the NLRB and Bliss Cartwright and Ronald Edwards at the EEOC gave invaluable support with the data. Direct correspondence to John--Paul Ferguson, Stanford Graduate School of Business. Email: jpferg@stanford.edu. suggests that it does. This work situates much employment discrimination not in the conscious actions of bigoted managers but in the unconscious impact of cognitive biases, deployed through personnel policies that fail to take such biases into account. As one classic review of the subject summarized, "We cannot rid work organizations of discrimination until we recognize both that much employment discrimination originates in automatic cognitive processes, and that it occurs because of work organizations' personnel practices" (Reskin 2000, p. 321).This social--psychological approach to discrimination reinforces an older organizational perspective on the subject. Organizational research has long emphasized the existence of informal social structures within formal organizations (Mayo 1984;Dalton 1959;Scott and Davis 2006) and recognized that, in the absence of formal structures, informal processes like ascriptive homophily will shape organizational careers and rewards. This is why, in his unromantic defense of complex organizations, Perrow (1986, p. 6) emphasizes the importance of rules that limit managers' discretion in "Purging Particularism":Particularism means that criteria irrelevant for efficient production (e.g., only relatives of the boss have a chance at top positions), in contrast to universalistic criteria (e.g., competence is all that counts), are used to choose employees. The criteria of eff...

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Why Teamwork Fails: Obstacles to Workplace Change in Four Manufacturing Plants

Cited by 190 publications

References 31 publications

Lean Production, Worker Empowerment, and Job Satisfaction: A Qualitative Analysis and Critique

Lean Production, Worker Empowerment, and Job Satisfaction: A Qualitative Analysis and Critique

The Effects of New Work Practices on Workers

The Control of Managerial Discretion: Evidence from Unionization’s Impact on Employment Segregation

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