'Flexible' Work Practices and Occupational Safety and Health: Exploring the Relationship Between Cumulative Trauma Disorders and Workplace Transformation

Brenner, Mark D.; Fairris, David; Ruser, John W.

doi:10.2139/ssrn.333762

Cited by 52 publications

(73 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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Section: Theories Relating Workplace Practices and Employee Outcomesmentioning

confidence: 74%

“…TQM emphasizes reduction in variation and is often combined with just-intime inventory practices that eliminate buffer stocks and worker control over work pace in order to maximize total work time. The result can be more standardized and repetitive work and increased work loads that raise the risk of repetitive motion injuries such as carpal tunnel syndrome, confirming the suspicions of many that TQM represents a more developed form of Taylorism (Adler, Goldoftas and Levine 1997;Brenner, Fairris and Ruser 2004). 3 For business press accounts of wage concessions in firms that adopted high performance practices, see The possibility of conflict was most apparent with the reengineering movement in the 1990s, where the redesign of jobs (often involving both new information technology and increased worker autonomy) was explicitly tied to laying off the workers no longer needed after the resulting increase in efficiency (e.g., Hammer and Champy, 1993).…”

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confidence: 77%

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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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Section: Theories Relating Workplace Practices and Employee Outcomesmentioning

confidence: 74%

mentioning

confidence: 77%

The Effects of New Work Practices on Workers

Handel¹,

Levine²

2006

America at Work

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“…They find evidenc e of a positive relationship between innovative work practices and various occupational injuries. Brenner et al (2004) also find a positive relationship between innovative work practices and cumulative trauma disorders in their study using U.S. establishment-level data. Askenazy and Caroli (2010) use individual-level data from a supplement of the French Labor Force Survey from 1998 to examine whether there is a relationship between innovative work practices and mental strain, occupational risks, and occupa tional injuries.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 84%

Innovative work practices and sickness absence: what does a nationally representative employee survey tell?

Böckerman¹,

Johansson²,

Kauhanen³

2011

Industrial and Corporate Change

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The paper examines the effect of innovative work practices on the prevalence of sickness absence and accidents at work. We focus on several different aspects of workplace innovations (self-managed teams, information sharing, employer-provided training and incentive pay) along with the "bundles" of those practices. We use nationally representative individual-level data from the Finnish Quality of Work Life Survey from 2008. Using single equation models, we find that innovative work practices increase short-term sickness absence for blue-collar and lower white-collar employees. In twoequation models that treat innovative workplace practices as endogenous variables we do not find relationship between innovative work practices and sickness absence or accidents at work. JEL classification: I12, J28

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“…The prevalence of flexible workplace practices (Brenner et al, 2004;Fletcher, 2009;Rodgers, 1992) increased significantly during the 1980s and 1990s, although appears to be largely limited to developed countries (Lee et al, 2007). These practices are typified by part-time work, job-share agreements, outsourcing and contracting; all forms of work now closely associated with the 'new' work landscape.…”

Section: Deconstruction Of Changes To Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Work innovations: transformation, micro-emancipations, or discursive shift?

Hurd

2012

IJWI

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Through a deconstruction of the taken-for-granted assumption of the 'transformation of work', I argue that the nature of this transformation is largely discursive, underpinned by enduring assumptions of economic imperative and the control of worker subjectivities. Predominated by discourses of mutual benefit and innovation/knowledge work, there appears to be a significant disconnect between the promises of these discourses, and the experiences of most workers. I explore whether new forms of work may be examples of an emancipatory transformation of work. I question whether the polarity in outcomes might be seen as an emancipation for the 'chosen', rather than meaningful transformation of the workplace for all workers.

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'Flexible' Work Practices and Occupational Safety and Health: Exploring the Relationship Between Cumulative Trauma Disorders and Workplace Transformation

Cited by 52 publications

References 16 publications

The Effects of New Work Practices on Workers

The Effects of New Work Practices on Workers

Innovative work practices and sickness absence: what does a nationally representative employee survey tell?

Work innovations: transformation, micro-emancipations, or discursive shift?

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