New Work Organizations, Flexibility and Decentralization - a sociological case-study of work organization and cooperation in five Danish industrial enterprises
PhD thesis by Steen E. Navrbjerg
The main objective of this thesis is to clarify the interrelation between new work organizations and flexibility - and how such interrelation's affect the institutionalized system of cooperation and collective bargaining as well as cooperation within the single enterprise - in short the Danish model.
It has particularly been discussed, in light of new work organizations like Human Resource Management (HRM), if such organizational strategies possibly contribute in individualizing management-worker relations. The priority new management gives to human resources thus might change existing management-worker and worker-union - relations. Hence, the next question posed is how such an individualization process might affect the support of unions and ultimately the whole collective bargaining process.
These questions constitute the primary focal points of the thesis. The empirical foundation of the thesis is composed of five indepth case studies of Danish industrial enterprises. All in all 85 workers, shop stewards, line-managers and managers have been interviewed, the outcome being five separate enterprise investigations into the fields of work organization, human resource utilization, cooperation and organizational culture. The theoretical frameworks mounted in these investigations are flexibility concepts and Human Resource Management theories.
The thesis is in three parts. In the first part different aspects of work organizations - flexibility, Scientific Management, Taylorism, Human Relations, Human Resource Management and management-worker relationships (interpersonal and/or collective) - are discussed theoretically.
In the second part, case studies of five Danish enterprises are presented. These enterprises have been analyzed in terms of flexibility and HRM, as previously defined in part I. The case studies as presented in the dissertation are shortened versions of the empirical data. It should be noted that the complete case studies are available as appendices to the thesis.
In the third part, a broader analysis is undertaken in order to shed light on how new forms of flexibility and work organizations affect cooperation at the local as well as the central level (i.e. the level of the collective bargaining system). Finally, it is discussed whether or not, a broad tendency in implementing new work organizations and cooperational systems, can be identified.
PhD thesis, Jurist- og Økonomforbundets Forlag, Copenhagen, 1999 (395 pages).