The Essentials of the New Workplace: A Guide to the Human Impact of Modern Working Practices / Edition 1 available in Paperback
The Essentials of the New Workplace: A Guide to the Human Impact of Modern Working Practices / Edition 1
- ISBN-10:
- 0470022159
- ISBN-13:
- 9780470022153
- Pub. Date:
- 12/10/2004
- Publisher:
- Wiley
The Essentials of the New Workplace: A Guide to the Human Impact of Modern Working Practices / Edition 1
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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780470022153 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Wiley |
| Publication date: | 12/10/2004 |
| Pages: | 272 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.61(w) x 9.74(h) x 0.59(d) |
About the Author
Toby D.Wall is Professor of Psychology at the University of Sheffield, where he is director of the Institute of Work Psychology and the ESRC Centre for Organisation and Innovation. He obtained his first degree and his doctorate from the University of Nottingham. his main research interest have been in industrial and Organisational psychology and have re4cently focused on the effects of advanced manufacturing technology and shop floor work organisation on work performance and strain. His research has appeared in the Journal of Applied Psychology, the Academy of Management Journal and other leading publications. He is also the author of several books including The Human Side of Advanced Manufacturing Technology and Job and Work Design.
Chris W. Clegg is Professor of Organisational Psychology and Deputy Director of the Institute of Work Psychology at the University Sheffield. He is a Co-Director of the ESRC Centre for Organisation and Innovation and Co-Director of the BAE- Rolls-Royce University Technology Partnership for Design. He currently chairs the Sociotechnical Sub-Group of the British computer Society. He holds a BA (Hons) in Psychology from the University of Bradford. He is a Fellow of the British Psychological Society, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and a chartered psychologist. His research interest are in the areas of new technology, work organisation, information and control systems, sociotechnical theory and new management practices. He has published his work in a number of books and journals.
Paul Sparrow is the Ford Professor of International Human resource Management at Manchester Business School. He graduated from the University of Manchester with a BSc (Hons) in Psychology and the University of Aston with an MSc in Applied Psychology and was then sponsored by Rank Xerox to study the impacts of ageing on the organisation for his Ph.D. at Aston University. He has written and edited a number of books including European Human Resource Management in Transition, The competent Organization: A Psychological Analysis of the Strategic Management Process, Human Resource Management: The New Agenda, International Human resource Management and Globalizing Human Resource Management. He has also published articles in leading journals on the future of work, human resource strategy, the psychology of strategic management, international human resource management and cross-cultural management. He is the former Editor of the Journal of Occupational and Organisational Psychology.
Ann Howard is Manger of Assessment Technology Integrity for Development Dimensions International (DDI), a leading provider of human resource programs and services. She has served a president of the Leadership Research Institute, a non-profit organization that she served as president of the Leadership research Institute, a non-Profit organization that she co-founded in 1987. Ann is the author of more than 85 publications on topics such as assessment centers, management selection, managerial careers, and leadership. She is the senior author (with Dr Douglas W. Bray) of Managerial Lives in Transition: Advancing Age and Changing Times, which received the George R. Terry Award of Excellence from the Academy of Management in 1989. She has edited two books: The Changing Nature of Work (1995) and Diagnosis for Organizational change: Methods and Models (1994). She is a past president of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology and the Society of Psychologist in Management. Ann received her Ph.D. degree from the University of Maryland and her MS degree from San Francisco State university, both in industrial organizational psychology. She holds an honorary doctor of science degree from Goucher College, where she earned a BA degree in psychology.
Read an Excerpt
The Essentials of the New Workplace
A Guide to the Human Impact of Modern Working PracticesJohn Wiley & Sons
Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.All right reserved.
ISBN: 0-470-02215-9
Chapter One
Introduction to the Essentials of the New WorkplaceDavid Holman, Stephen Wood and Toby D. Wall Institute of Work Psychology, University of Sheffield, UK
and
Ann Howard Development Dimensions International, New Jersey, USA
Modern working practices and technologies are typically designed to shape the nature of work and affect employees' behaviour. They include, for example, lean manufacturing, advanced manufacturing technology, total quality management, call centres, supply-chain partnering and knowledge management. Surveys show that these practices are increasingly prevalent in organisations in advanced industrial societies (Clegg, et al., 2002; Lawler, Mohrman & Ledford, 1995; Osterman, 1994; Waterson et al., 1999; Wood, Stride, Wall & Clegg, 2005). Yet when modern working practices are implemented they can alter work in unintended ways, have deleterious effects on employees and not produce the hoped for improvements in employee and organisational performance (Clegg et al., 1997; Parker & Wall, 1998; Patterson, West, & Wall, 2004; Waterson et al., 1999). Indeed, changing working practices often creates problems for employees at all levels in theorganisation. It is therefore essential that we understand the nature of modern working practices, the extent of their use, and the effects that they have on employees and organisational performance so that they can be more effectively designed and managed.
Needless to say, considerable research has already been conducted on these issues in areas such as human resource management, occupational psychology, strategic management, operations management, economics and sociology; and one of the strongest messages to come out of this research is that the social, psychological and organisational aspects of working practices and technologies must be considered in order to understand, design and manage them effectively (Cherns, 1987; McLoughlin & Harris, 1997; Salvendy, 1997; Storey, 1994; Wall, Clegg & Kemp, 1987). As such, the main premise of this book is that the social and psychological side of modern working practices and technologies must be addressed. The aims of this book are therefore to examine:
1. The nature and extent of modern working practices and technologies.
2. The impact of modern working practices on how people work and their experience of work.
3. The human resource management implications of such practices.
4. The effect that these practices have on productivity and organizational performance.
These aims are covered throughout the book. Specifically, chapters 2-10 deal with the first three aims in relation to nine important modern working practices: lean manufacturing, total quality management, advanced manufacturing technology, supply-chain partnering, team work, call centres, knowledge management, employee involvement and virtual working. These practices are defined in Table 1.1 and were chosen because their use is thought to be on the increase and to be having a significant impact the nature of work. The last two chapters are concerned with the fourth aim of the book, the relationship between modern working practices, human resource management and organisational performance. Chapter 11 focuses on manufacturing organisations, Chapter 12 on service organisations. The rest of this chapter sets out some of the main issues that have concerned researchers when examining the area of modern working practices.
THE CONCEPTUALISATION AND NATURE OF MODERN WORKING PRACTICES
A working practice can be broadly defined as a set of technique- or technologically-based tasks that directly shape the labour process. Technique-based tasks involve the practical application of a particular method, procedure or skill. Technologically-based tasks are those in which the practical application of a particular method or skill involves using technological hardware such as machinery or computers. According to this definition, working practices are likely to differ in the extent to which they use technique- or technology-based tasks. Advanced manufacturing technology primarily involves technology-based tasks; teamwork primarily involves technique-based tasks, whereas knowledge management appears to be a combination of technological and technique-based tasks. However, while this definition is useful in highlighting the basic nature of a working practice, and while general definitions of each working practice can be made (see Table 1.1), they hide a degree of conceptual variation within definitions of each practice. For example, Cooney and Sohal (Chapter 3) point out that TQM is "something of a fungible concept and one that is sometimes difficult to pin down. There is not one TQM, but a range of TQMs" (p. 34). They illustrate this by stating that TQM "may be seen as a technically-focused quality management programme, as a philosophy of business concerned with strategic business issues or as an organizational-behavioural intervention designed to promote the more effective use of human resources" (pp. 33-34). Similar degrees of conceptual variability are found in the concepts of advanced manufacturing technology, lean manufacturing, supply-chain partnering, call centres, team working and knowledge management.
In parallel with this conceptual variability, there is also a degree of variation in the actual form of a working practice. There are a number of reasons for this heterogeneity. First, working practices are used to achieve multiple aims, and different aspects of a practice may be emphasised in order to achieve those aims. Second, working practices rarely occur on their own as independent entities. Delbridge (Chapter 2) notes that lean manufacturing will contain TQM practices, team work and supply-chain partnering initiatives, while Benson and Lawler (Chapter 9) show how TQM can be an integral part of an employee involvement initiative. Even "remote" practices such as telework may be part of a supply-chain initiative or involve team working, albeit virtually.
Third, a modern working practice is always embedded within a broader social system and is best considered as a socio-technical system (Cherns, 1987). As a consequence, the nature of a working practice-and its effects-will be affected by the social system of which it is part. Significant aspects of the social system, and ones that are a core concern in this book, are job design and human resource practices. These two aspects will be discussed in more depth shortly, but job design varies along a continuum that runs from "Taylorist" to "Empowered" (Parker & Wall, 1998). In Taylorist jobs, employees have little discretion over how they do their work and tasks tend to be unskilled and repetitive. In empowered jobs, employees are given responsibility for a broad range of varied tasks, a high degree of discretion in how they work, and opportunities to use and develop their skills and participate in decision-making processes. Human resource practices vary in the extent to which they are present in an organisation, and in their degree of sophistication. One organisation may make extensive use of high quality and continued training, regular performance appraisals, well-resourced recruitment procedures and performance-contingent payment systems (such as profit sharing); another organisation may use these for a specific group of employees, while another may use little or no induction, sophisticated selection or training practices regardless of the type of employees. It is often assumed in characterising the modern organisation that sophisticated human resource practices will be combined with empowered jobs to form what is called a high-commitment or involvement approach, while the minimal use of sophisticated human resource practices and Taylorist jobs are taken to form the low-commitment/involvement approach assumed to characterise the organisational model of the past (Lawler, 1986; Walton, 1985; see also Benson & Lawler, Chapter 9; Wood, Chapter 11; Batt & Doellgast, Chapter 12).
Throughout the book the reader will see how variations in job design and human resource practices affect the nature of a modern working practice. For example, Cooney and Sohal (Chapter 3) suggest that TQM can be used with either Taylorist or empowered jobs and that this leads to two very different sorts of TQM (cf., the distinction between total quality control and total quality learning forms of TQM; Sitkin, Sutcliffe & Schroeder (1994)). Moreover involvement initiatives, which are generally associated with empowered jobs, can be accompanied by Taylorist jobs (for an example of the latter see Adler and Borys'(1996) description of enabling or learning bureaucracies).
In sum, modern working practices are likely, so theory suggests, to be bundled together with other working practices and are embedded within a social system in which two significant aspects are job design and human resource practices. The mixture of technical and social practices means that a single practice can take on a variety of forms, and that the effects of a practice may ultimately depend on the form it takes.
CHANGE AND CONTINUITY IN THE WORKPLACE
Most of us are now fairly well versed in the changes occurring in the economic, political and social landscape. These include: the internationalisation of the economy; a reduction in trade barriers between countries; the deregulation of markets; privatisation and the ending of state monopolies; increasing demands for greater accountability and efficiency in the public sector; and changing consumer demand (e.g. a desire for more customised products or better quality) (Appelbaum & Batt, 1994; Doganis, 2000; Gabriel & Lang, 1998; Katz, 1997; Pollitt, 1993). The changes have intensified competition and achieving a competitive advantage will depend on the simultaneous pursuit of cost minimisation, quality, innovation and customisation (Appelbaum, Bailey, Berg & Kalleberg, 2000; Piore & Sabel, 1984). Similar demands for cost efficiencies, quality and customised services are evident in the public and not-for-profit sectors (e.g., in universities; see Peters, 1992). In addition, the creation, ownership and management of knowledge-based assets is increasingly recognised as a basis for competition (see Scarbrough, Chapter 8, on Knowledge Management, and Hodgkinson and Sparrow (2002), for the implications of knowledge management for organisational learning processes, the co-ordination of distributed cognition and top team behaviour).
Organisational change is undoubtedly taking place in response to these general economic and societal changes and in the expectation of such changes (Sparrow & Cooper, 2003). The chapters in this book provide evidence for this organisational change through the adoption of new working practices. There appears to be fairly widespread use (in some 40-60% of organisations) of TQM, team work and supply-chain partnering, particularly in UK manufacturing companies (Clegg et al., 2002; Wood et al., 2005), while the service sector has witnessed a rise in the use of team work, TQM and information technology since the 1990s (Batt & Doellgast, Chapter 12). Advanced manufacturing technology is reported as being used, at least to a moderate extent, by some 40% of all manufacturing organisations and lean manufacturing appears to be fairly widespread in the automotive industry but less extensively used in other parts of the manufacturing sector (Clegg et al., 2002; Delbridge, Chapter 3). There is also evidence of initiatives that empower employees occurring in about one quarter of UK, Japanese, Australian and Swiss manufacturing organisations (Clegg et al., 2002; Wood et al., 2005), although Benson and Lawler (Chapter 9) do question the extent to which firms strongly embrace such initiatives and show that involvement initiatives declined in the US in the mid-1990s. Less extensive but growing in popularity are newer practices such as teleworking and knowledge management, while call centres now employ 1-2% of the working population in many industrialised nations and are of growing importance in developing economies such as India and Malaysia.
The common interpretation of the prevalence of modern working practices is that they represent part of a radical move away from the "old workplace", characterised by Fordist large-scale, hierarchical bureaucracies designed for mass production and mass service (see Wood, 1989, pp.10-11, for a definition of Fordism). This old workplace is being replaced by a "new workplace" characterised by the co-occurrence of four factors: flexible modern working practices; high-involvement human resource practices; a managerial orientation that views these two sets of practices as integrated and complementary; and an employee orientation that is flexible and pro-active (Amin, 1994; Kumar, 1992; Lawler et al., 1995; Schneider & Bowen, 1995; Storey, 1994; Unsworth & Parker, 2003; see also Wood, Chapter 11). This implies that "the new workplace" can be defined as comprising an "historical new", i.e., the presence of new working practices, types of HR practices or bundles of practice, and an "experiential new", i.e., the presence of qualitatively different managerial and employee orientations and experiences of self and work.
However, we must exercise some caution when applying these categories to the real world. First, a substantial proportion of organisations have not adopted many modern working practices, nor are modern working practices necessarily accompanied by high-involvement HRM. Second, "old workplace" ideas are still influencing how "modern" working practices are designed and managed, as is illustrated by the influence of Taylorism in some call centres and other service organisations (Ritzer, 1998; Taylor & Bain, 1999), and the extension and revitalisation of Fordist principles in just-in-time, an essential component of lean manufacturing (Tomaney, 1994; Wood, 1993). Third, modern working practices are not always accompanied by flexible, pro-active employee orientations and fundamentally different experiences of self and work. At this stage of knowledge it is safest to assume that throughout the economy there will be considerable variation across organisations. Combining our historical and experiential categories, there are logically four possible types of workplace:
1. The "new/new" workplace in which modern working practices are associated with a qualitatively different experience of work.
Continues...
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Table of Contents
List of Illustrations.About the Editors.
List of Contributors.
Preface.
Chapter 1: Introduction to the Essentials of the New Workplace (David Holman, Stephen Wood, Toby D. Wall and Ann Howard).
Chapter 2: Workers Under Lean Manufacturing (Rick Delbridge).
Chapter 3: The Human Side of Total Quality Management (Richard Cooney and Amrik Sohal).
Chapter 4: System Integration in Advanced Manufacturing Technology (Waldemar Karwowski and Bradley Chase).
Chapter 5: Supply-chain Partnering (Máire Kerrin and Belén Icasati-Johanson).
Chapter 6: Team Work (John Cordery).
Chapter 7: Call Centres (David Holman).
Chapter 8: Knowledge Management (Harry Scarbrough).
Chapter 9: Employee Involvement: Utilization, Impacts, and Future Prospects (George S. Benson and Edward E. Lawler III).
Chapter 10: Managing Virtual Workers and Virtual Organisations (David Lamond, Kevin Daniels and Peter Standen).
Chapter 11: Organisational Performance and Manufacturing Practices (Stephen Wood).
Chapter 12 Organisational Performance in Services (Rosemary Batt and Virginia Doellgast).
Author Index.
Subject Index.