Reshaping Work Organization in British Firms

There has been much discussion of the reform of work organization in British companies in recent years. Much of the debate has been informed either by case studies of a small number of sites, or by large scale data sets which have been collected by postal questionnaire. This paper presents findings on the reorganization of work which are drawn from a new qualitative, longitudinal study. Fifty mainly highly unionized British firms were interviewed in 1979 and 1991. Questions were asked about matters such as the introduction of new working practices and evidence of improvements in productivity. This new data set complements a number of previous studies by offering a combination of aggregate sample findings along with individual case examples.