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Systematic study of the sociology of organizations is almost absent in both the classical and modern Marxist traditions. Although some recent studies in the Marxist tradition show considerable promise, the field has been dominated by the Webenan perspective. The development of new theory should be informed by the Marxian concepts of (a) labor theory of value, (b) the forces and relations of production, (c) historical development of capitalism, and (d) class structure and class struggle. Bourgeois organizational theory has some serious deficiencies, but there is much of value that can be subsumed under the broader rubric of Marxist political economy. The potential for a Marxist theory of bureaucracy is explored in an examination of managerial strategies to minimize external uncertainties in a monopoly capitalist system, and internal uncertainties arising from the work force. Strategies for controlling the work force include the division of labor, organizational hierarchy, rules and procedures, the uses of secrecy and hoarding of knowledge, and the maintenance ofethnic and sexual divisions in the work force. Further research is needed on (a) differentiating capital accumulation and social control strategies, (b) comparisons between workers in the state and corporate sectors, (c) comparisons between work organization under full range of socialist economies and those in capitalist economies in both manufacturing and government and (d) alternatives for the future. SYSTEMATIC STUDY OF T H E SOCIOLOGY of organizations is almost absent in both the classical and modern Marxist traditions. Marxist scholars have given little attention to the bureaucratic aspects of the labor process and have thus left us without a sophisticated understanding of how managerial decision making and the institution of "bureaucratic rationality" have served the purposes of capital accumulation and social control of the work force during the capitalist epoch. This inattention has limited our knowledge of the structural contradictions of capitalist administrative practice.For the most part Marxists have ceded this area of intellectual inquiry to professors of business administration and to sociologists who take the Weberian perspective as a point of departure. Both Giddens (1973) and Wright (1974) have described the disjunction between the Marxian and Weberian traditions in a fashion that is suggestive for the study of the industrial enterprise. Wright notes:Marxists have generally continued to focus on the dynamics and contradictions of capitalist society seen as a total system, while paying relatively little attention to the organizational dynamics of the state . . . Analvsts in the Weberian tradition in contrast. have continued to treat organizations in isolation &om the social contradictions in which they are embedded (1974: 103).We hope in this paper to begin to synthesize these divergent viewpoints, and subsume current bourgeois' administrative and sociological theory and research under the broader rubric of Marxist political economy. Recent...

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This article closely looks at the nature of the Swedish production system incorporating autonomous work groups, and the historical course the innovation has taken from its emergence in the early 1970s to its reversion in the 1980s. The article examines (1) whether managers were motivated by idealism or by labor shortages and protest; (2) whether or not the production system is a sophisticated form of technical control; (3) whether or not the innovation produces mixed outcomes for labor and for employers; and (4) whether or not the managers' interest in the innovation has diminished as unemployment has risen in the late 1970s and 1980s. Based on eight months of interviews in Sweden and many secondary sources in English and Swedish, this article concludes that the adoption and diffusion of a workplace innovation cannot be fully understood without considering: (1) the characteristics of the production system in which the innovation is implanted that may simultaneously embrace rationalization and humanization, (2) the task environment of the firm that may compel managers to design production innovations with an eye to competition and market fluctuations, and (3) economic cycles and shifts in the political climate, both of which can influence (4) the relative strengths of labor and management to demand arrangements in a labor process favoring them.