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The aim of this paper is to provide a framework for adopting and installing a working arrangement. In line with the current emphasis on customers, the paper argues that employees, trade unions and managers should be viewed as customers to a work system given that their support and commitment will determine the success of the work system. To achieve this objective the concept of auditing “novel” work systems is introduced. Auditing will enable organizations to assess the potential of the work system before it is installed.

For me, the human side of work is the most important aspect in any consideration of jobs and organizations. Hospital organizations, for example, are made up of people, their jobs are, of course, done by people, and the results of that work are for people — whether they be direct recipients such as patients, or customers; or whether they be the indirect recipients such as the community, or the employees themselves. The dilemma is highlighted by asking, why do we so often separate the effects of work on the humans involved in its production, from the effects on humans as recipients of its end result? I will posit that if work is consciously designed as a meaningful activity for the people involved in its production, then chances are good that its product will also better suit its human users. That is, there is a systemic relationship between the quality of working life and the quality of the product of that work. In so saying however we must likewise acknowledge the importance of the technical requirements of the work — for having meaning to the people involved is not enough. Work that is meaningfully arranged, both for the humans involved in its execution and for its technical requirements, typically results in a higher quality product and, not infrequently, in greater productivity as well. In our experience results are frequently accompanied by lowered absenteeism and turnover and greater feelings of satisfaction with the work activity. Work system design, or socio‐technical system design, is a powerful approach to this human side of work — work that is meaningful in both that human sense, as well as the technical sense.

Illustrates how the implementation of a major information technology (IT) system within the Norwegian Army affected the way the employees perceived their flexibility and personal involvement in their work. By employing Taylor’s initial works, this paper illustrates how the introduction of this IT system was perceived by some of the employees. Shows how, instead of increasing employees’ work engagement, the IT system had the opposite effect. Demonstrates that the new IT system contributed to a deskilling of the employees, to a more task‐oriented approach to their work, and to increased employees’ interdependence. Instead of increasing employees’ personal flexibility and involvement in their jobs, the research shows how the new IT system in fact contributed to a reduction in the freedom to choose when and how quickly to do their jobs.

This paper focuses on the internal system of the organization as a determinant of the optimization of the input/output ratio. Describes the two subsystems of which the internal system consists. Addresses the question of the extent to which, each one of those, impacts on the output synergetically and not modularly and stresses the necessity for holistic interventions to the system. Identifies three distinct work systems depicting different combinations of the technical and social subsystem on an intra and inter‐organizational level. Introduces the basic guidelines for building a diagnostic model for the internal system of the organization and concludes by discussing the applicability of the proposed model and suggesting areas for further research.

IN A RECENT issue of New Scientist a letter was from a graduate (or should it be graduette, for she was a girl) who said she was writing on behalf of many unemployed graduates; and she posed a ‘Catch 22’ query. What she wanted to know how anyone could obtain the experience needed to gain a job if no one will give such a person a job to get the experience?

The difficulties in designing and implementing successful technological systems which support business objectives, good work practices and high quality outcomes are well known. Discusses the “modernisation” of the Australian Taxation Office – an ambitious ten‐year programme of organizational and tech‐nological change – which has its origins in the need for re‐equipment and the recognition that the new systems must support the way in which the Taxation Office would work in the future. Review of the programme mid‐term shows considerable success, but also areas where it has been difficult to achieve some of the aims. In spite of the participatory framework, participants tend to feel that technology has driven the process, rather than business or workplace requirements. In particular, some initiatives have impacted negatively on workers, and it has been difficult to integrate the implementation of new systems with the design of better work practices. Recognition of these problems has encouraged the development of new approaches to work and systems design, and considerable further organizational and structural change.

The world of education within the UK is in turmoil. As in other countries there is a blurring between education and training. Teachers at all levels are faced with implementing the National Curriculum. Polytechnics are coming to terms with their independence from local authorities and dependence for (decreasing levels of) funding on the Polytechnics and Colleges funding Council. The Universities are grappling with their own new funding body — the Universities Funding Council. Students are likely to be faced with taking out ‘top‐up’ loans. The National Vocational Council lurks around the next comer to put in its ‘threepennyworth’.

In the last four years, since Volume I of this Bibliography first appeared, there has been an explosion of literature in all the main functional areas of business. This wealth of material poses problems for the researcher in management studies — and, of course, for the librarian: uncovering what has been written in any one area is not an easy task. This volume aims to help the librarian and the researcher overcome some of the immediate problems of identification of material. It is an annotated bibliography of management, drawing on the wide variety of literature produced by MCB University Press. Over the last four years, MCB University Press has produced an extensive range of books and serial publications covering most of the established and many of the developing areas of management. This volume, in conjunction with Volume I, provides a guide to all the material published so far.

Using the backdrop of an (apparently) extended visit to the West Indies, analogies with key concerns of internal audit are drawn. An unusual and refreshing way of exploring the main themes ‐ a discussion between Bill and Jack on tour in the islands ‐ forms the debate. Explores the concepts of control, necessary procedures, fraud and corruption, supporting systems, creativity and chaos, and building a corporate control facility.

The purpose of this study is to introduce the Human Resources (HR) module of the SAP suite in the Italian branch of a leading multinational pharmaceutical company. This study can be re-conducted within the interpretive tradition of information technology studies focusing on the attempt to understand and describe how software users in the HR department interpreted the enterprise resource planning (ERP) technology, how they changed their work practices and the changes that occurred in organizational discourses and meanings alongside the process.

The case study/intervention took start with the impulse of the Italian HR department manager, who was struck by the way that the ERP system technology implementation was affecting work life of the employees in the department. This research/intervention used interviews, focus groups and internal documents as sources of data. The authors conducted and analyzed 20 narrative interviews and 3 focus groups with middle managers, and they analyzed about 120 pages of internal memos.

The implementation of ERP systems is almost invariably accompanied by great expectations of increased process rationalization, efficiency and cost-effectiveness, and upper managers’ discourses make large use of what Engeström et al., 2010 have called process efficiency rhetoric. But the ERP technology, most likely, will neither revolutionize management nor will it become a “complete calculation machine” that runs an entire work organization (Quattrone and Hopper, 2005, p. 731).

The implementation of the ERP system has caused conflicts and disturbances, aggravating contradictions that already existed between activity systems and introducing new types of contradictions. Pre-existent contradictions become clearer; there is a stronger interconnection between activity systems. The individual agents could experiment an expansion in their activities if only they will initiate a movement of expansive learning and if they are not prevented from doing so by coercive control. The natural expansion of the subjects’ scope of activity and horizons of possibilities could be sustained by the ERP technology if it is not used as a tool for domination and if the upper management does not try and separate what cannot in actuality be separated: The actors’ capabilities of improvised learning, which makes the institution of a new mode of the activity possible, and their capacity to assume collective control of the meaning and direction of the transformation of the activity. ERPs are technologies that can naturally bring transformations in the activity system and networks where they are introduced, but in some cases, they can easily and in a non reflective manner be intended as tools for oppression by the upper management.