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This paper explores the contradictory pressures for standardisation and customisation in reorganisation processes. Taking a ‘practice lens’ (Orlikowski, 2000), it examines eight on-going reorganisations, from both private and non-private sectors, using photography, observation and extensive interviews. This practice lens goes both outside and inside the processes of reorganising. Outside these processes, it highlights the pervasive influence of standard, even banalised practices, from those embedded in the technologies of Microsoft to the frameworks of McKinsey & Co. Inside these processes, it emphasises the detailed improvisation around these standard practices, with customising the norm. The paper concludes by arguing for the effectiveness of the practice lens in negotiating the contradictory pressures between standardisation and customisation, and by offering provisional implications for the teaching of organisation design in business schools.

Presents the idea that the “Aubry” law context, which concerns the reorganization of working time, constitutes an encouragement to decentralize the collective negotiation. Introduced in June 1998, this mechanism represents an opportunity to observe innovative negotiation modes and the construct of organizations’ models. These models aim to associate the principles of Taylorism with the increasing need for flexibility. Through negotiation cases, the authors observe the manner in which the social partners build satisfactory compromises regarding work and the organization of working time. Such processes show the ability of employees to participate in organizational constructs and their creativity. The empirical observations illustrate the debate on the renewal of the Taylorian approach for organizations. Historically, in France, the action of trade union organizations has been deeply rooted in the protest against the Taylorian model; today the union movement constitutes, in our understanding, one phase of professional relations in the reshaping process of the Taylorian model of organization.

The article seeks to analyse and explore the contradictions and variations in the concepts “team” and “teamwork” and their use in the NSW, Australia, commercial cleaning industry.

The article utilises an ethnographic study of a large Australian cleaning firm. Data were collected using participant observation, field notes, and interviews with managers.

The study provides evidence for the limited uptake of the idealised form of teamwork in commercial cleaning and suggests that teamworking is another means of coordinating groups of workers. Furthermore, the findings support previous research into the paradox of teams without teamwork.

The research provides an insight into the largely neglected area of the reorganisation of work in commercial cleaning. It also provides a critique of the concept of teams and teamworking.

The 1980s have witnessed a marked divergence in the economic and industrial relations development in the North American auto‐industry. It is argued that important links exist between industrial relations and the wider patterns of uneven development in the North American auto‐industry. The development of industrial relations in this sector has been and will continue to be a major factor in determining the form of work organisation, particularly as pressures to move towards more Japanese or flexible working practices grow.

The 1980s and 1990s were periods of far‐reaching transformations in working hours and flexibility in Europe. Usually those initiatives came from the social partners. Yet France stood out during this period in that it maintained an interventionist state; the climax of public intervention came when the Aubry laws were passed introducing the 35‐hour working week. Paradoxically, the Aubry laws resulted not in a weakening of collective bargaining, but in an unprecedented series of negotiations in companies. This article sets out the process leading to the laws, and then analyses the results of the negotiations.

The Summer 1972 issue of Personnel Review contained an article by Enid Mumford setting out a framework for analysing job satisfaction. This article presented a theoretical and practical approach for evaluating and measuring job satisfaction, together with a definition which equated job satisfaction with the fit between what an employee was seeking from work and what he was receiving or, in other words, the fit between job needs and expectations and the requirements of the job. This analytical framework has since been used extensively in industrial and commercial organizations as a means for assisting the design of the human part of computer systems. The method has been used in the following way.

The question of health and safety at work is a central issue for trade unions. In Britain it is an area of concern where there were important legislative initiatives in the 1970s and 1980s, although surprisingly this has received relatively little attention in the debates about trade unionism. This neglect results in an aspect of union activity about which little is known. Explores through a detailed longitudinal study of a middle‐range engineering firm, from the late 1970s into the 1990s, the ways in which trade unions organize and act on health and safety questions. Argues that it is almost “routine” that workers face dangers and hazards at work, a central feature of the work and employment experience of most workers. However, this is often difficult to deal with as individual issues, or as matters which are subject to collective consideration. On the one hand, workers often appear to accept the dangers and hazards they face. On the other hand, managements are preoccupied with questions relating to production and finance, rather than the day‐to‐day problems faced by workers. This tension suggests that the future wellbeing of workers in unionized workplaces lies not so much with legislative provisions and rights at work, but in education and the organizing ability of workplace unions, raising and addressing what often seem like individualistic problems in collective ways.

Observes that there has been much discussion about human resource management (HRM) policies and packages and what their implications may be for trade unionism. Explores the impact of HRM policies and practices on trade unionism through a detailed three‐year case study examination in manufacturing, utilities and the civil service. Advances the argument that the way unions deal with HRM at a local level is varied and depends on the traditions and forms of union organization and practice in different sectors, although common to these packages is the attempt to individualize work relations and weaken the resources of collective worker power. Maintains that, in the context of considerable restructuring and job insecurity in the manufacturing sector, union responses have been largely reactive and muted, occasionally resulting in the emergence of debilitating union forms of “social partnership”. In contrast, HRM policies in the public sector and the utilities have been one part of a more profound restructuring in these sectors and unions have been faced with the problem of developing or revitalizing workplace forms of organization. Concludes by asserting that such developments place the question of the way unions organize and operate at a workplace level, in the context of individualized and consensual work relations firmly back on union agenda.

This chapter examines and discusses the unintended outcomes of the production bonus scheme the mine had instituted to motivate and increase the productivity of the frontline mining teams. This is crucial given that the maladministration of the bonus system could lead to a range of undesired outcomes such as deteriorating levels of trust between management and frontline workers, prioritisation of production at the expense of safety, poor work relations and ultimately low levels of organisational, employee and team performance. There are a number of organisational, management and labour factors that can render a production bonus scheme effective or ineffective. These factors influence the nature and extent of worker reactions to the bonus scheme.

This chapter examines and discusses the factors that influenced the reaction of the mining teams to the team-based production bonus scheme and the extent to which mine management fulfilled its side of the bargain in the implementation of the production bonus. The chapter highlights the manner in which the team-based bonus system influenced teams of stope workers to engage in their informal organisational practice of making plan (planisa) in order to offset the snags that jeopardised their prospects of earning the production bonus. The chapter reveals that, to a large extent, the productivity bonus generated conflict rather than cooperation at the point of production down the mine. As a result, the incentive scheme failed to live up to expectations by not eliciting the desired levels of organisational, worker and team performance at the rock-face.

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the South African mining sector’s contribution to the national economy. It also discusses the socio-economic challenges that the sector has faced in terms of operational efficiency, productivity and safety. The chapter then briefly discusses the formal and informal organisational aspects of restructuring work processes in the South African mining industry. It concludes with a synopsis of each of the chapters of this book.