A far-reaching transformation is taking place in the US in the relationship between employers and employees. The lessons learned from Japan and from "best practice" companies like IBM about how job security, training, and internal development can improve employee commitment and performance have given way to a new set of lessons about how companies can redue fixed costs, increase flexibility, and improve performance by eliminating the elaborate employment systems that prepared employees for long careers in the company. Where the old arrangement protected employees from outside market forces, the new ones drag the market right back in through downsizing, contingent workforces, hiring on the outside for new skills, and compensation contingent on overall organizational performance. New work systems that reengineer processes and empower employees "flatten" the organizational chart, cutting management jobs in particular and reducing opportunities for career development. The new arrangements shift many of the risks of business from the firm to the employees and make employees, rather than employers, responsible for developing their own skills and careers. They also increase the demands placed on workers while reducing what they receive back for their efforts. While morale is down and stress is up, employee performance seems to be rising largely because of fear driven by the shortage of good jobs. Change at Work explores the theme that employees have paid the price for the widespread restructuring of American firms as illustrated by reduced security, greater effort and hours, and reduced morale. In this important study--commissioned by the National Planning Asociation's Committee on New American Realities--the authors consider how individuals and employers need to adapt to the new arrangements as well as the implicatioons for important policy issues such as how skills will be developed where the attachment to the firms is sharply reduced. The future is uncertain, but the authors argue that the traditional relationship between employer and employee will continue to erode, making this work essential reading for managers concerned with the profound impact corporate restructuring has had on the lives of workers.

Change at Work

Business & Money

Cappelli, Peter

Knoke, David

Useem, Michael

Bassi, Laurie

Osterman, Paul

Katz,Harry

Economics

Oxford University Press

Organizing for Collective Action (Social Institutions and Social Change Series)

Organizing for Collective Action investigates the political and economic behaviors of national associations, including trade associations, professional societies, labor unions, and public interest groups. It focuses upon the ways that these organizations acquire resources and allocate them to various collective actions, particularly for member services, public relations, and political action. This analysis is structured around three broad theoretical paradigms for collective action: (1) the problem of societal integration which concerns the ways that people are tied to organizations and the ways that organizations connect their members with the larger society; (2) the problem of organizational governance which considers how individuals become unified collectivities capable of acting in a coordinated manner, and (3) the problem of public policy influence which involves interactions among public and private interest groups to formulate the binding decisions under which we all must live.

Organizing for Collective Action: The Political Economies of Associations (Social Institutions and Social Change Series)

Routledge

The Organizational State: Social Choice in National Policy Domains

The Federal Government in the United States is a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people.” Presidents are elected by popular vote in the nation (filtered through the electoral college), Senators are elected by popular vote in their states, and Representatives are elected by popular vote in their Congressional districts. Cabinet members and agency heads are appointed by the elected president, as are members of the Supreme Court.But this says nothing about politics. Professor Lauman and Knoke have asked, in this book, how policies were made, in the period 1977-1980, in the areas of energy and health. The question is a very different one from the question of how the positions of president and Congress are filled.

Politics & Social Sciences

Laumann, Edward O.

Social Sciences

Univ of Wisconsin Pr

Changing Organizations: Business Networks In The New Political Economy

International

Political Networks: The Structural Perspective (Structural Analysis in the Social Sciences, Series Number 4)

This book examines almost two decades of research using the structural or network approach to political behavior. Network analysis begins with the assumption that the most important elements of political power are the relationships of influence and domination among social actors. Influence is the exchange of information about preferences and intentions; domination is the exchange of material sanctions to reward or punish compliance with commands. By examining the confluence of these two networks, analysts can develop a structural picture of the political process. David Knoke provides an overview of the work already done in the structural analysis of politics and the directions it will take in the future. Topics covered include voting decisions, social movements, formal organizations, community power systems, national elites and the world system of nation-states. Theoretical conceptualizations, empirical findings and topical research agendas are discussed in each of these areas.

Sociology

Cambridge University Press

Comparing Policy Networks: Labor Politics in the U.S., Germany, and Japan (Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics)

The United States, Germany, and Japan, the world's three most powerful and successful free market societies, differ strikingly in how their governments relate to their economies. Comparing Policy Networks reports the results of collaborative research by three teams investigating the social organization and policymaking processes of national labor policy domains in the United States, Germany, and Japan during the 1980s. Through interviews with more than 350 key labor policy organizations in all three countries, the authors reveal similar conflict divisions between business and labor interests but also distinctive patterns within each nation.

Tsujinaka, Yutaka

Pappi, Franz Urban

Broadbent, Jeffrey

Politics & Government

Economic Networks

Social relations are crucial for understanding diverse economic actions and a network perspective is central to that explanation. Simple exchanges involving money, labor, and commodities combine into complexly connected systems. Economic networks span many levels of analysis, from persons (consumers, employees), to groups (households, workteams), organizations (corporations, interest groups), populations (industries, markets) and the rapidly expanding global economic system. David Knoke blends network theories from a range of disciplines and empirical studies of domestic and international economies to illuminate how economic activity is embedded in and constrained by social ties among economic actors. Social capital, in the form of connections to others holding valuable resources, is vital for finding a job, buying a car, creating a new industry, or triggering a global financial crisis. In nontechnical terms the author explicates the core network concepts, measures, and analysis methods behind these phenomena. The book also includes many striking network diagrams to provide visual insights into complex structural patterns. This accessible book offers an invaluable critique for both undergraduate and graduate students in economic sociology and social network analysis courses who seek a better understanding of the multifaceted economic webs in which we are all entangled.

Polity

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