The adaptation of lean techniques in public services is viewed as an innovative managerialist response to government demands for more efficient services amidst large reductions in public spending. This paper explores workers' experiences of the impact of lean on work organisation and control and provides new insights into developments within contemporary back office clerical work. Bob Carter (rcarter@dmu.ac.uk) is Professor of Organisational Change Management at De Montfort University. His research interests are in labour process analysis, restructuring the public sector, class relations and trade union organising strategies. Andy Danford (corresponding author: andrew.danford@uwe.ac.uk) is Professor of Employment Relations at the University of the West of England. His research interests include labour process analysis of lean production and the high performance workplace and union organizing strategies. Debra Howcroft (Debra.howcroft@mbs.ac.uk) is Professor of Technology and Organisations at the University of Manchester and visiting Professor at Luleå University of Technology. Her research interests are concerned with the drivers and consequences of socio-economic restructuring in a global context. Helen Richardson (H.Richardson@ salford.ac.uk) is a Reader at the University of Salford. Her research interests encompass technology, work and organisation including issues of gender, the ICT labour market and the global location of service work. Andrew Smith (A.Smith14@Bradford.ac.uk) is a Lecturer in Human Resource Management and Employment Relations at the University of Bradford. His current research focuses on change in the public sector. Phil Taylor (philip.taylor@strath.ac.uk) is Professor of Work and Employment Studies at the University of Strathclyde and has researched and published extensively on call centres, offshoring, occupational health and safety, the labour process and trade union organising. New Technology, Work and Employment 26:2

Occupational health and safety (OHS) is under-researched in the sociology of work and employment. This deficit is most pronounced for white-collar occupations. Despite growing awareness of the significance of psychosocial conditions -notably stress -and musculoskeletal disorders, white-collar work is considered by conventional OHS discourse to be 'safe'.

The paper measures the effects of workplace partnership and selected high performance work practices on four different dimensions of employee experience. Whilst the partnershiphigh performance work systems nexus seems to have little impact on employees' job satisfaction or sense of attachment, it does, however, have a negative impact on both workplace stress and employee evaluations of union performance. The analysis thus questions common assumptions about the inevitability of 'mutual gain' and the necessity of employer/union partnership.

This article provides case study analysis of the impact of high performance work practices and workplace partnership on skilled workers in the UK's aerospace industry. In contrast to assumptions that such practices increase empowerment and participation we find evidence of a democratic deficit in workplace decision-making and deterioration in the quality of working life

Social cues, such as eye gaze and pointing fingers, can increase the prioritisation of specific locations for cognitive processing. A previous study using a manual reaching task showed that, although both gaze and pointing cues altered target prioritisation (reaction times [RTs]), only pointing cues affected action execution (trajectory deviations). These differential effects of gaze and pointing cues on action execution could be because the gaze cue was conveyed through a disembodied head; hence, the model lacked the potential for a body part (i.e., hands) to interact with the target. In the present study, the image of a male gaze model, whose gaze direction coincided with two potential target locations, was centrally presented. The model either had his arms and hands extended underneath the potential target locations, indicating the potential to act on the targets (Experiment 1), or had his arms crossed in front of his chest, indicating the absence of potential to act (Experiment 2). Participants reached to a target that followed a nonpredictive gaze cue at one of three stimulus onset asynchronies. RTs and reach trajectories of the movements to cued and uncued targets were analysed. RTs showed a facilitation effect for both experiments, whereas trajectory analysis revealed facilitatory and inhibitory effects, but only in Experiment 1 when the model could potentially act on the targets. The results of this study suggested that when the gaze model had the potential to interact with the cued target location, the model's gaze affected not only target prioritisation but also movement execution.