Chapter 9: New Technologies and Post-Taylorist Regulation Models: Production Planning Systems in French, Italian, and German Enterprises

The Quality of Work in a Changing Labour Market

“…While new technologies were seen as providing employees with greater opportunities to use their abilities and participate in work decisions, this was a form of relative autonomy rather than a high trust system in that it was constrained by an increased emphasis on transparency and accountability (Dubois et al . ).…”

“…Greater control in turn makes possible an intensification of work effort, partly through allowing more fine‐tuned product or service flows that ensure that there are no interruptions to the work process and partly through a greater capacity to establish individual performance targets and sanction underperformance (Dubois et al . ).…”

Team Leaders of Self-Managed Work Groups: A Contradiction?

“…The reasons given for their introduction mainly concern questions of flexibility and the humanisation of the working environment, but the results reported by researchers are not unambiguous as some cases have been reported of increased productivity and reduced workers' satisfaction. After the first experiences of similar forms by Olivetti and some public enterprises in the 1970's were abandoned at the beginning of the 1980's in the wake of the "technicist" dream of automated factories (Dubois, P./Heidenreich, M./La Rosa, M./Schmidt, G., 1995), SMWTs have started to appear in Italy over the last few years. However, a recent study of about 50 large Italian firms showed that only about 30% actually used them (ASAM-Bain, 1997).…”