Changing work organisation and skill requirements.Context How work is organised is one of the most important factors in determining what skills workers need to do their jobs successfully. Many analysts have argued that recent decades have seen the beginnings of a revolution in work organisation, a revolution that continues and will have ever widening effects in the workforce. No longer will workers be successful if they are able only to complete one small unchanging set of tasks in a workplace that puts together the work of many to produce goods or services. Instead, they will need to be far more flexible, able to fit productively into teams that are formed for specific work tasks or projects that may only be performed once. They will need a new range of skills to negotiate the new, much more changeable, communication-rich and customer-focused world of work. These broad images of change have been expressed in a myriad of ways, with a variety of emphases. They have become almost an article of faith when talking about the likely future of work and skill requirements, often providing the context for various claims. To take one example, a recent NCVER collection on 'generic skills' begins with the assertion that: In today's economy, knowledge, information, customer service, innovation and high performance are at a premium and generic skills are essential ... [for workers] (Gibb and Curtin, 2004, p.7). The implication is clear: 'today's economy' is different from yesterday's, and so are the kinds of skills it demands of workers. The purposes of this paper are to take stock of existing research on how work organisation has actually been changing in Australia during the past decade or so and to consider the implications that any change has for shifts in skill demand. We begin by reviewing the main features of the most coherent arguments about why work organisation has been changing, and how it has been changing. We draw out the implications of these arguments for changes in skill requirements. Much of our focus is on the often claimed rise of sets of work and employment practices that are usually called 'High Performance Work Systems' (HPWS). There has been some research focus on these arrangements, and, though there is little consensus about their exact contours, they represent the main strands of most arguments suggesting a rising set of skill demands on workers. We also briefly consider other views about key forms of workplace change, noting that some analysts have a much more sceptical position than advocates of HPWSs. The main contribution of this paper is to bring together all the case studies of work organisation and workplace change in Australian workplaces during the past decade, using these to assess exactly what we do and do not know about such change and its effects on skill requirements. Before analysing the case studies that we have found, we describe our approach to locating relevant studies, how we decided what to include and exclude, and the limitations of the approach. Why should Work Organisation be Changing? Analyses of changes in the ways work is organised usually connect change to the needs and demands faced by employers. Over recent decades, researchers and theorists have focused on four main sets of new demands that are said to be driving work organisation change. These can be described as the flexibility demand, the autonomy demand, the customer focus demand and the knowledge demand. The flexibility demand: A sharply increased premium on flexibility is one of the central planks of many analyses of the origins of recent workplace change. This position often uses a shift from 'Fordist' mass production to 'post-Fordist' flexible production as the paradigm of the change (Harvey, 1990). Driven by changes in consumer markets, and the increased competition resulting from neo-liberal economic regimes and globalization, organizations can no longer succeed by producing the same goods or services year after year. Instead, they must be able to adapt rapidly to changing consumer demands and unpredictable competition by altering what they produce to meet the market. This requires that work be organised in new ways. No longer can organisations survive with workers who do the same well defined tasks, with sharp distinctions between the roles of one worker and another. In the flexible workplace, workers need to be able to move from one task to another, as the need arises. More than this, work needs to be reorganised so that people work in flexible teams, where the team focus is on getting the required job done and team members organise themselves to achieve this most efficiently. With rapid changes in demand for goods and services, teams will move quickly from completing one job to beginning the next one, though it may be quite different. The autonomy demand: A related analysis suggests that the waves of restructuring in large organizations, driven primarily by competition and the need to increase efficiency, have produced unprecedented needs for autonomy amongst many workers. As management layers have been stripped out of organizations, so the argument goes, there is less direct supervision of workers, and organizations move towards new methods of ensuring that workers do what is needed. Fundamentally, they require that employees become much more autonomous in their day to day work. Hence work is increasingly organised in ways that rely on workers being self-directed, making judgements about what exactly to do next in their jobs, with an ability to focus on achieving a final outcome that is optimal for the organisation. In many analyses, organisations seek to achieve these new levels of employee autonomy by developing organisational cultures that are internalised by workers, producing commitment that guides them in their new autonomous work situations (Kunda 1992; Thompson and Findlay 1999). The 'customer focus 'demand: The increasing significance of customer relations is a further dimension to the changing character of work that is often seen as shifting the way work is organised. Here, the emphasis is on the increasing proportion of organisations whose primary focus is customer service and the more general growth in the 'service'/frontline function in many organizations. Successfully responding to customer needs and demands requires that employees be able to exercise autonomy, judgement and initiative, so that rigid work organisation will not usually be successful. Though organisations do sometimes attempt to standardise employee responses to customers (McDonald's, some call centre operations), for many forms of customer service standardisation is not feasible. In short, the emphasis here is on new ways of organising work which allow employees to provide the customer focus that is now said to be the life-blood of most organisations (du Gay 1996; Frenkel, Korczynski, Shire, and Tam 1999). The knowledge demand: The image of the knowledge economy as a big picture summary of the force driving workplace change gained currency in the late 1990s. It emphasised the idea that knowledge and information had become the new driving forces of economic development, largely as a result of the impact of new information and communication technologies. The knowledge intensive nature of production, it is often claimed, has now spread to all areas of goods and service production. It requires that work be organised so that knowledge is easily shared within the organisation, and the organisation is capable of gathering and assimilating new knowledge (the 'learning organisation'). The emphasis here is on work patterns that allow knowledge to be developed and flow within the workplace, so that it can be used most effectively for efficiency and innovation. Again, rigid work roles, and inflexible definitions of work tasks, need to be structured out of work organisations for them to thrive in the new knowledge economy (ABS 2002; Burton-Jones 1999; Reich 1991; Senge 1990). Claims that each of these new demands has been growing, and driving workplace change, have been subject to much research and dispute. Indeed, the shorthand versions of many of these arguments--'Post-Fordism' or the 'Knowledge Economy'--are now treated with considerable scepticism by influential analysts (e.g., Thompson 2003). Nevertheless there remains a widespread belief that work organisation has changed, and will continue to do so. And these images of the impetus for change continue to lie behind many analyses of how work organisation is changing. We now turn to the content of exactly what about work organisation might have changed, bearing in mind that each of the above demands is usually seen as driving change, though to varying degrees. How Work Organisation Might be Changing--High Performance Practices Many of the main implications of the economic changes described above for the organisation of work are embodied in work arrangements that are referred to variously as High Performance Work Systems (HPWSs), High Performance Workplaces and High Commitment Workplaces. Godard (2004) has recently described the various models of employment and workplace covered by these labels as 'high-performance practices' (HPPs). We adopt this useful term here since it indicates that we are referring to a range of employment practices which are taken as capable of substantially improving the performance of organisations in the areas described above. Godard makes the point that discussions of HPPs refer to two sets of arrangements: those around the development of alternative work practices and those around the development of 'high commitment' employment practices (designed to enhance the commitment of workers to the organisation and their work within it). Teamwork is the pin-up example of alternative work practices. There are other forms of job redesign, however, including job enrichment and job rotation. In addition, HPPs are sometimes taken to include reforms designed to increase workers' participation in aspects of decision making about work organisation. These include quality circles and similar participatory systems designed to involve workers in influencing work practices that affect the quality of output. These forms of work reorganisation respond to needs created by several of the demands described above. They add to flexibility by making it possible for work to be easily reorganised as demand changes; they may reduce requirements for direct supervision of workers insofar as teamwork involves conscious cooperation between workers; and practices such as quality circles and some teamwork may respond to the need for customer focus when they are directed at this issue. Clearly, these practices could entail significant alterations in the skills required of workers compared to traditional 'command and control' relationships in which workers are simply told what to do by bosses. To be successful, practices such as teamwork and quality circles require that workers have more developed skills in such areas as cooperation, negotiating with others and communication. High commitment employment practices are focused on supporting and enhancing employees' commitment to their work, with the aim of improving its quality. They include a focus on careful selection and training of workers, systematic behavioural appraisal of performance, relating pay and advancement to performance and other practices. These practices may aim to assist organisations to respond to the flexibility demand by supporting and motivating workers to work more flexibly; they may be used to respond to the autonomy demand by selecting and supporting workers who are able to act with less supervision; and they may enhance customer service again by orienting selection towards workers' ability to offer customer service, and by creating new and clearer incentives for workers to focus on customer service through appropriate performance appraisal. High commitment work practices place some emphasis on selection of workers and, in this sense, seek to employ workers who bring appropriate skills to an organisation. At the same time, a key focus of high commitment practices is to train workers in new skills as they are needed, and to reward them for the skills they acquire. Overall, the focus of these practices is to enhance the productivity of workers by ensuring they are appropriately skilled and motivated to use their skills to achieve maximum productivity and to retain productive workers in the organisation. In reality, few workplaces implement all of these HPPs. Moreover, there remains considerable debate about their effect on organisations and workers (Godard 2004; and for a recent Australian contribution, see Harley, Allen, and Sargent 2006). It can be expected that the more of these practices an organisation adopts, the greater will be the effect on skill needs. It does appear, though, that the adoption of some kind of teamworking model of work organisation is likely to have qualitatively different effects on skills compared to the adoption of high commitment employment practices. This is partly because teamworking requires specific skills of employees, while high commitment practices are as much about how organisations deal with employees as they are about how the work of employees is actually organised. For this reason, we particularly focus on evidence about the presence and character of teamwork, and its effects on skill needs, in our analysis of Australian case studies. Downsizing and Work Intensification The 'high road' of seeking to implement aspects of the high performance paradigm has not been the only response of organisations to the pressures described above. Reforms aimed primarily at cutting costs have also been widely used. So-called 'downsizing'--essentially any form of organisational change that involves a systematic attempt to reduce staffing numbers--has been a widespread strategy to reduce organisational costs across the public and private sectors in Australia (Littler and Innes 2003; Morehead et. al. 1997). Recent research suggests that downsizing is associated with reduction in net skill levels in organizations (Littler and Innes 2003), strongly indicating that downsizing and the adoption of high performance practices are unlikely to occur together. Reduction in staff numbers associated with downsizing and attempts to cut costs does often affect the demands placed on employees. Most obviously, it is likely to produce work intensification, as net organisational output does not decline as much as staffing (e.g., Green 2004). Research on the relationship between cost-cutting strategies such as downsizing and work reorganisation is limited, however, except in the apparently unusual cases where downsizing is associated with the adoption of HPPs. Despite Littler and Innes's research, showing that downsizing has usually been associated with reductions in the overall employment of more skilled workers, it may be that the work reorganisation associated with downsizing increases or decreases the skill requirements placed on remaining workers. Much depends on how work is reorganised following downsizing. Method The aim of this project was to assess whether the above images of work reorganisation are evident from relevant Australian cases studies, and what implications the body of case studies has for changes in skill requirements. This aim required finding all available case studies of Australian organisations that provided information about how work was organised. While an initial focus was on organisations that had undergone some change in work organisation, a few were found in which no change had occurred, but work organisation was clearly described, and these were included. Many of the case studies were undertaken for research purposes other than the assessment of the character of work reorganisation, but they frequently contained the necessary information about work organisation and were therefore included. Case studies were located using standard bibliographic techniques, including searching relevant databases, journal tables of contents and relevant websites. In addition, an attempt was made to access any relevant 'grey literature' (i.e., unpublished case studies). For this purpose, the International Employment Relations List Server (IERN-L) was used, and all members of the list server were invited to contribute either published or unpublished case studies. In addition, a letter of invitation was sent to 18 business schools in Australia, with the aim of capturing any other available case studies. We received 23 pieces of research in response to this call. Most of these, however, were either studies conducted in the very early 1990s or studies based on 1995 AWIRS (Australian Workplace Industrial Relations Survey) data. Such studies were excluded as being outdated for the purposes of this research. Nevertheless a small number of useful studies were received and were included in the analysis for this report. Ultimately, we included 27 published or unpublished reports, representing case studies of 33 organizations and consolidated data from surveys and summarised cases representing another 73 organisations. The cases span a range of industries and geographical spaces. Approximately equal numbers of studies focus on manufacturing (9), health care (7) and miscellaneous service organisations (10). The remaining studies are of government administrative organisations and industry (mining, meat processing and electricity generation). Most studies focus on one industry, though a few make comparisons across sectors. Clearly, these cases do range across important sectors in Australia. They cannot, however, be taken as strictly representative of what is happening in Australian workplaces. We must therefore be cautious in drawing universal conclusions. All case studies included in this research were systematically analysed for information about key aspects of work organisation. Analyses focused on: * The type and extent of work organisation change. In particular, evidence related to: team based organisation; decentralisation of authority; increased vertical or horizontal knowledge sharing; employees taking greater responsibility for work; flexibility in job tasks. * The effects of change on skill requirements, whether training practices or investment changed, and whether there was evidence of a shift in the way skills were viewed. * The course of any change in work organisation: Was it maintained, attenuated, reversed? Over what period did this occur? * The main purposes and outcomes of change for the organisation * Any evidence of change in employment contracts (e.g., use of casual or part-time workers). We have summarised the case studies examined for this report in Table 1, which appears at the end of this paper. The table outlines the main features of work practices in the case study organisations, insofar as they are revealed in the available studies. It also outlines the rationale for the observed work practices. Case Study Evidence Teamwork Central to the 'new world of work' discourse is the prediction that organisations will increasingly favour team-based work organisation over hierarchical forms. Teams are said to facilitate worker empowerment by establishing vertical and horizontal channels for communication and problem-solving. In addition, teams either require or encourage other work practices consistent with 'high-performance practices' (HPPs), including information-sharing and decentralisation of internal authority. What is the evidence on the use of teams in Australian organisations over the last decade? Where teams have been adopted, have they become permanent features of the work environment? And have they affected tangible measures of organisational performance or the demand for particular kinds of skills? Our first finding is that there has been widespread experimentation with teamwork in Australian organisations. Of all the work practices that potentially indicate a movement toward HPPs, we have the most detailed evidence about teamwork and its consequences. We can assert with some confidence that the conception of teams as a method of work organisation largely confined to the manufacturing industry has been eclipsed. In the process, the nature of teamwork-its purposes and connections to other components of organisational strategy--has changed. We explore this evolution in more detail below. The objective here is to report the evidence on where teamwork currently exists, where it has been tried and abandoned, where it has not been tried, and where we have no indication either way. In discussing these trends we refer extensively to the 'Study Site' column of Table 1. It is clear, first, that manufacturing has been one of the major sites of teamwork. We have specific evidence on team arrangements in the automotive manufacturing sector, in other significant areas of the metal manufacturing sector, and in other areas of capital equipment and materials manufacturing (e.g., a paper mill). A substantial number of these teams began under the Federal Labor government's (now defunct) Best Practice Demonstration Program in the early 1990s. But there has not been a universal adoption of teams even in manufacturing. The cases suggest little current use of teams in food and grocery manufacturing, for instance, and a rollback in whitegoods manufacturing. Elsewhere, there has been a significant penetration of teamwork into the service industries. Since some of the relevant sectors are relatively recent entrants to the labour market, their experiences of teamwork have been qualitatively different from those in the established areas of manufacturing. The implications of these contextual differences are developed in greater detail below. For 'mapping' purposes, we note the evidence of teams in hospitals, nursing homes, call centres, travel agencies, parts of grocery and pharmaceutical distribution industries and government departments. As these patterns also imply, teamwork practices have spilled over from private-sector service firms to significant government-owned and regulated institutions, utilities and the state bureaucracies. Finally, though we should like to provide a comprehensive account of where teams do and do not flourish, the available case study evidence is too patchy for a complete picture to be presented. We are not able to draw conclusions either way about the incidence of teamwork (or other key work practices) in major industries such as hospitality, construction, transport and agriculture. A second issue is what forms of teamwork have emerged. The team concept is not homogenous, and there is ample evidence on the variability of teamwork across different industries. The teams that have grown up (and sometimes declined) in automotive manufacturing have few similarities to the teams that can now be readily found in call centres, hospitals and grocery warehousing. In general, the evidence suggests that the 'teams' which have been taken up in manufacturing more closely resemble the idealised 'high-performance' team than those which have appeared in other places. This is not surprising, however, since the HPP paradigm originated in analyses of manufacturing performance. What is more surprising, perhaps, is the divergence of teamwork forms within the same industry. A number of studies conducted in automotive manufacturing make this plain. Here we have a small number of competing firms, producing highly substitutable goods. Yet the divergence in working practices is remarkable. One company has organised its production around an inclusive model of teamwork, in which workers elect their own representatives and direct their own activities toward pre-determined quality and productivity objectives. In another company, teamwork is considered integral to the 'continuous improvement' process, but affords employees fewer opportunities for direct participation in goal-setting. In yet another firm, teams are narrowly-focused and play little part in deciding how work is planned and executed. This diversity is not limited to automotive manufacturing. In grocery distribution--another industry for which we have evidence about more than one company--teamwork arrangements are similarly mixed. One distributor employs 'process improvement teams' and combines these with other mechanisms to ensure a high level of job security. Its competitors pursue lean production without teams, or use more nominal forms of 'teamwork' principally to control and co-ordinate the work process. Where the adoption of teamwork has involved changing existing work practices, we also observe some departure of actual achievements from the expressed aims. One manufacturing study found that while 50 per cent of companies sought to implement 'self-managing' teams, few had reached this destination after three years. Instead, 61 per cent had directed or 'semi-autonomous' teams, 22 per cent had 'project' teams (convened for a single issue), and a small remainder had quality circles (Park, Erwin and Knapp 1997). Across the range of studies reviewed in this paper, we found very few examples of practicing 'self-managed' teams. The vision of teamwork in which constituents share power, collaborate and jointly make consequential decisions about their work, largely in the absence of guidance or censure from management, remains, on our evidence, an unfulfilled vision. It is possibly one that will never be realised. The types of teamwork that appear most frequently in Australian cases are not of this idealised kind. They are teams in which top-down direction from management, or from appointed 'team leaders', is customary. The following are some examples of how teams appear to operate away from the 'high-performance' systems that characterise some parts of manufacturing: * In one grocery distribution centre, workers must co-ordinate with a sophisticated automated conveyer system. While there is a 'team culture', its main function is to monitor performance at both ends of the conveyer line, since the rate of work is dictated by the progress of cartons along the conveyer belt. Formalised exchanges between team members are few (Wright and Lund 2006). * Teams in a banking call centre exist not to decentralise authority (which is strongly centralised through sophisticated internal monitoring) or to share information, but mainly to improve the sociability of the work environment. Team members are those located within the same part of the centre, and team leaders are responsible for performance 'coaching'. The team system has little impact on the essentially 'individualistic' nature of work in the centre (Russell 2002). * A public hospital introduced the new position of Personal Service Attendant and insisted that these workers operate in ward-based teams. But while the new approach increased task variety and job satisfaction for PSAs, teamwork itself was illusory. Jobs were instead carried out on a strict 'just-in-time' basis, and done s at the direction of nurses (Willis 2005). * The Australian Taxation Office pursued a less hierarchical internal structure in which agencies would have increased autonomy. One component of the shift was the use of work teams, but these were implemented in a way that required teams to exercise quite rigid responsibilities in the overall reshaping of the organisation (Anderson, Teicher and Griffin 2005). An issue with which we have not yet dealt is why teamwork arrangements are adopted in the first place. What motivates their introduction? The first observation is that change is almost always initiated by management, and typically without employee or (where relevant) union consultation. In only one case did teams come about following a union or worker proposal to management, and in the event the union succeeded in having its proposal adopted only after a protracted struggle against entrenched managerial resistance (Murakami 1999). Two related conclusions flow from the recognition that teamwork is usually the product of managerial decree. The first is that the idea may have to be 'sold' to the workforce, especially if there is the prospect of redundancies. How readily workers embrace teamwork will depend at least on their attachments to existing practices and their propensity to resist top-down change. The second implication is that, for any change to proceed as planned and achieve its intended objectives, substantial commitment from those who initiated the idea is mandatory. We have already seen that the implementation of teamwork is a time-consuming process--after three years, many manufacturers had not realised their preferred team model. Along the course of change there may be few markers indicating whether the goal is in sight or hopelessly lost. It is perhaps for these reasons that, in practice, many of the notable Australian work teams have arisen only after some external stimulus, usually the availability of government funding. The Best Practice Demonstration Program of the Federal Labor government provided one such incentive to manufacturing firms in the early 1990s (Buchanan and Hall 2002). A comparable program initiated by that government in public health seems to have motivated team experiments in that industry, too (Germov 2005). The obvious limitation of this approach is that, when funding ceases to be available, the team arrangements sponsored by the funding may also be in jeopardy. Under these conditions, and with the potential constraints outlined above, have Australian teams generally been resilient, or have they fallen victims to subsequent losses of internal (managerial) or external (funding, innovative climate) support? This question is complicated because it is only possible to represent how teams evolved up to the ends of whatever study periods were covered by the cases reviewed. Nonetheless, the following messages emerge from the evidence available. First, and with some exceptions, the most ambitious teamwork experiments have not been long-term 'survivors'. In a study of 19 'best practice' metals and engineering firms, the forms of team-work adopted were diverse. Many were consultative, but few offered workers a say on strategic matters such as personnel and training requirements. The experiments with 'self-managing' teams were, after a time, either abandoned entirely or brought back under direct managerial control. While the teams restricted to single functions sometimes survived, the more expansive cross-functional teams did not enjoy ongoing support. One simple explanation is that the 'novelty' of these teams wore off as it became apparent what disruptions to existing processes such autonomous work practices might entail (Buchanan and Hall 2002). Alternatively, the rolling-back of the farthest-reaching teams may reflect resistance from workers (and line supervisors) whose roles they threatened. Second, there appears to be a more general process through which teams become progressively infiltrated and 'captured' by managerial agendas. Again, because of its position at the forefront of past 'high-performance' initiatives, manufacturing is a bellwether for other industries. A study of three manufacturing firms in the period 1994-2001 discussed three 'phases' through which these firms seemed to pass. There was little employee empowerment in the first phase because teams tended to stand alone without substantial resources or support. In the second phase a loss of key external supports meant that managers were able to exercise increased influence on the direction and concerns of the site teams. In the final phase, this control was consolidated, as team leaders internalised managerial concerns about efficiency improvement and competitive survival, to the exclusion of other aims (Macneil and Rimmer, 2006). Third, the teams that seem most likely to endure are those that have not undergone the upheaval of organisational change. They are 'in-built' teams rather than the products of job redesign. The archetype is the call centre, in which 'teams' exist in the planning phase even before workers are hired. If the centre expands, new teams are added. Inductees are expected, as a condition of their being hired, to fit into an existing team culture. Contrast this situation with the internal changes that many manufacturers underwent to develop their teams. Even modest team structures were confronted with substantial impediments in these environments. To some extent these could be overcome through external incentives (e.g., funding), or other instruments of workplace reform (e.g., enterprise bargaining), but in many cases the eventual outcomes fall into one of the above two categories (i.e., abandonment or capture). Teamwork seems now to be developing in one of two broad directions. On the 'frontline' of change--the parts of industry where teams have historically enjoyed their strongest advocacy, and in which the period of exposure to such arrangements is longest--there is some evidence that the mood is turning against teamwork. As this is not happening across the board in the parts of the economy we refer to, we hesitate to present it as a sharp reversal of previous trends. But clearly there are now parts of the frontline for which teamwork has limited appeal. We identify in the frontline category those organizations which are either exposed to international competition or are obliged by comparable outside forces to minimise their operating costs. Three examples illustrate the changing perceptions of teamwork in these frontline areas: * Following a period of experimentation with teams, a major whitegoods manufacturer invested heavily in fixed capital and restructured its workforce around the operation and maintenance of this new equipment. In interviews with researchers, one manager reflected that the benefits of teamwork, in terms of productivity growth, were inferior to those achievable through new capital investment. Teamwork had been detrimental to the company's competitive position, relative to rivals that had prioritised new capital investment (Lambert, Gillan and Fitzgerald 2005). * In another capital-intensive industry, coal mining, the flexible deployment of labour on the mine site was abandoned after this was shown to compromise both performance and safety. The unique characteristics of work in the industry--geographic dispersion, high reliance on advanced technology, necessity for rigorous adherence to work processes--favoured task specialisation, rather than the job rotation envisaged by teams (Barry, 2000). * A study of one nursing home found widespread dissatisfaction among staff with the 'Work Improvement Teams' that management had instigated at the facility. One of the reasons for this negative sentiment was that, since floor staff were expected to take the lead in resolving their own issues, clear channels of authority for notifying and remedying problems with the provision of care were lost. Staff perceived that instead of everyone 'taking ownership', no-one did. Standards of care were consequently at risk (Allan and Lovell 2003). Behind the work reorganisation frontline, teamwork is developing in a different direction. There is less indication that teams are falling out of favour. The most important observation here is that teamwork seems to be evolving into new forms, and taking on new meanings, which are distinct from--and perhaps at odds with--the objectives of information-sharing and empowerment that influenced the first generation of teams in manufacturing. The process at work is different from the familiar one, in which an innovative industry or cluster of industries blazes a trail along which others subsequently follow. Instead, a transformation of sorts is taking place in the philosophy of teamwork behind the reorganisation frontline, which has been little influenced by the experiences of teams in manufacturing or elsewhere. The evolution of teams in the second-tier service industries appears to reflect two concerns. The first is to provide social support to employees. The team exists in some cases to relieve the daily repetition of scripted tasks (Russell 2002), and in others to alleviate the burden of work that is being 'intensified' through downsizing and technological change. In other cases, the team exists principally to cover absenteeism (Dunford and Palmer 2002). Obviously these manifestations of teamwork are widely approved of by employees, who perceive that their own work would be more difficult without the assistance of other individuals within their own team. The provision of social support is, however, some distance from the aims of empowerment and increased autonomy that underpinned the original ventures into teamwork in manufacturing. The service-oriented team also has a more insidious side. Here its function is principally one of cultural control. The team is a mechanism through which management establishes pervasive work norms. These norms are reinforced by expectations within the team. Call centre teams provide one example. The team leader exists to discipline the observable departures from rule, but other forms of less easily detected resistance remain. These are discouraged by inculcating loyalty to a team. Members refrain voluntarily from actions that will reflect poorly on their team--such as leaving one's phone too long in 'unavailable' mode, causing the work rate indicators of the team as whole to deteriorate (van den Broek, Callaghan and Thompson 2004). The important conclusion about both the social support and cultural control functions of service teams is that their implications for skill requirements are likely to be quite narrow. Because these teams have none of the hallmarks of more transformative teams, and indeed because they often are not in fact the outcomes of workplace change, any changes in skill needs may be incidental. We develop this theme in more detail in the later section of this report, 'Implications for VET'. Other High-Performance Work Practices What is the evidence that Australian organisations are moving to adopt other components of the high-performance paradigm in conjunction with, or independently of, their experimentation with teams? In this section we examine six additional features of the model high performance workplace: decentralisation of authority, increased horizontal and vertical information-sharing, flexibility in the ways work is done (particularly breaking down or eliminating occupational distinctions), pay for performance, strict recruitment and selection and provision of internal training (perhaps tied to promotion). It is part of the received wisdom of high-performance work organisation that responsiveness to changing customer demands, and the commitment of employees, can be improved by deliberate 'employee involvement' schemes. HPPs include decentralised authority, broad participation in decision-making and highly developed channels for horizontal and vertical information sharing. One determinant of whether participatory mechanisms are of the kind envisaged in the HPP model is the extent to which they form deliberate and purposeful elements of the organisational design, or instead represent ad hoc reactions to evolving circumstance. The available case studies suggest that, in 'front-line' organisations, teams are the cornerstone of employee involvement opportunities. This matters because of the previous evidence that teams take variable forms (with different allowances for group members to exercise influence over the teams' purposes independently of managers) and may after a time become captured by external agendas. In circumstances where managers are able to guide site teams towards particular issues, the extensiveness of teams' opportunities to participate meaningfully in policy formation must be curtailed. Similarly, the information that is shared within the team, and between it and managers, will be of a particular kind, tailored toward the underlying issues which managers perceive to be most threatening at any given time (Macneil and Rimmer 2006). The 'consultative committees' which evidently operate in some frontline automotive manufacturing firms are potentially a remedy for the limitations otherwise faced by teamwork. These committees are restricted, however, by their being convened typically to deal with single or temporary issues (Lansbury, Wright and Baird 2006). The involvement which employees attain through these committees is episodic and fits the above ad hoc or convenient characterisation of involvement schemes better than the notions of purposeful redesign associated with HPP. Decentralisation of authority is integral to the employee involvement condition, and implies that workers will have a say in how their work is done. There are several cases, however, that suggest trends in the opposite direction. In grocery distribution, an automated conveyer belt determines the pace of work. Much the same thing occurs in even the most modern and comfortable of call centres, where a central computer distributes customer inquiries to available phone operators. The distinction we are making is between the physical level at which work is done and the level at which that performance is co-ordinated and monitored. The work of customer representatives in a call centre is highly individualised, but their control over it is not, apart from limited avenues through which 'resistance' to the system can be expressed. Teams may be organised at the ends of the grocery or telephone call distribution lines to provide camaraderie and to help team leaders monitor performance, but they are not intended to shift the power base from managers and their appointed representatives to the larger mass of employees. This conclusion implies that the apparent adoption of high-performance practices cannot be equated with the inclusive attitudes that HPPs are designed to promote. There are several cases where the increased employee autonomy was curtailed by the recurrence of hierarchical structures or problems in overcoming informal power relations--even when the formal architecture of participation was erected. In the Australian Taxation Office, researchers documented a gradual reversion to hierarchical structures after a period of allowing particular agencies and workgroups to exercise increased autonomy (Anderson et al. 2005). In various public health organisations, teams failed to realise their participatory benefits, at least in the eyes of employees, because of a perceived lack of independence from appointed leaders (Germov 2005). Even in the more radical cases of job redesign, formal hierarchies were remarkably resilient. The creation of a Personal Service Attendant position in one hospital was intended to help relocate responsibility for patient care at the ward level, but in reality the work of these PSAs was dictated to them by nurses on a just-in-time basis (Willis 2005). The locus of authority shifted, in other words, but not so far as to increase the personal control that lower-level workers could exercise within their jobs. Finally, when formal channels of power are actively dismantled (or left to wither) with the aim of reshaping work processes, there is nothing to suggest that the change will necessarily increase the choices available to workers or their beliefs about the efficacy with which internal problems are resolved (Allan and Lovell 2003). Another important finding is that information-sharing sometimes occurs for defensive reasons. In these cases it is done to allay workers' fears about potential threats to their jobs coming from new technology, outsourcing or the replacement of permanent workers by casuals. The sharing of information is 'defensive' in that its purposes are to dispel rumours and assuage some of the tensions which arise during organisational change. In extreme cases, information is provided not to win workers' support for controversial change before it occurs, but to persuade them, after the fact, that it was necessary for the survival of the organisation and the preservation of their jobs. The central purpose of information sharing in the HPP model is employee empowerment. This requires that employees be kept 'up to speed' about how external conditions and internal developments are impacting on their own jobs. In only one case, however--a distributor of cold and frozen goods to grocery retailers--was this approach being clearly followed (Wright and Lund 2006). In other cases the information shared seemed to be less about responding to changes in external demands, and more about basic functional issues. In one organisation which appeared to follow many HPP precepts, employees were expected to share information with each other, but this was mainly to ensure that the clients of any temporarily absent colleagues would not have to return on a different day (Dunford and Palmer 2002). Self-styled 'learning organisations' seem to do better at approximating the involvement traits of prototypical HPPs. For instance, the Royal District Nursing Service successfully increased employee autonomy and communication mechanisms as strategies to improve patient care. In a similar fashion, a pharmaceuticals firm used information-sharing to provide its employees with a more holistic understanding of their organisation's place in a challenging global market. Finally, there have been efforts at a poultry processing facility and at a local council to let employees collaborate with each other and with management over the design of work rules and business plans (Johnston and Hawke 2002). It is easy to appreciate how sharply these approaches are in contrast to the methods of work organisation adopted in other firms, such as the call centres where conversation scripts are worked out by experts ahead of employees actually putting them into use. In the latter, employees are taught how to work with the system; whereas in the former cases, they have a say in how that very system is designed. We are encouraged by these instances of employee involvement schemes in place at some workplaces, but are not persuaded from the evidence available that these represent the general course of change in Australian organisations. The high-performance paradigm also predicts the erosion of existing occupational barriers and distinctions to facilitate increased movements across accepted job boundaries, in conjunction with coordinated multi-skilling. This 'flexibility' in work organisation must be distinguished from the more familiar flexibility in staffing practices: the former concerns how work is done, the latter is about who does the work. Since the focus here is on changes in the organisation of work, we make only passing reference to the evidence about flexibility in the types of labour engaged and concentrate instead on how jobs and tasks (rather than workforces) may have been reshaped. It is also appropriate to reflect on whether the practice of multi-skilling has produced any tangible change in organisational training practices or tacit skill requirements. On the frontline of work reorganisation, broadening of job responsibilities has occurred in the normal course of workplace change and adjustment to market conditions. The practice of task flexibility has brought with it a concern for developing or recruiting polyvalent workers--those with more generic competencies with which to complement their traditional, task-specific skills. In the automotive manufacturing industry, employees have been expected to conceive their jobs as containing multiple 'general duties', rather than strictly demarcated tasks associated with single occupational domains (Lansbury et al. 2006). In the best cases, reorganisation on the frontline has been accompanied by a new emphasis on refining internal training protocols and investing in the acquisition of variable skills. As an example of a major financial institution, Westpac provides something of a model for how induction training can be expanded, then progressively built upon by short courses which impart function-specific knowledge tied to pay increases and a reasonable prospect of internal progression through the organisation (Kitay 2001). At the same time, several frontline industries appear to be retreating from multi-skilling projects in order to ensure the continuity of production efficiency. BHP reinstated task specialisation after an expensive training effort failed to instil diverse and practically-applicable skills in its large and geographically dispersed workforce. The need to maximise output to meet fluctuating demand on international coal markets meant that the best miners could not be spared to take up adequate new training or move to other (potentially less productive) areas of the business. Another smaller mine operator supplied the comparatively stable domestic market and was able to realise its job rotation ambitions by adopting a more relaxed training program and ensuring that resultant skills were sufficiently mastered by those who would later be expected to use them (Barry 2000). Away from mining, there is evidence that other large manufacturing and distribution firms have recently drawn back from the HPP ideal of multi-skilling because the costs of moving workers through different areas of the business are too high in terms of the opportunity costs of training and the comparative efficiency gains that continued specialisation makes available. Behind the reorganisation frontline, flexibility proceeds apace, but is not the product of HPPs. It arises instead from efforts to contain costs, by getting workers to 'do more with less'. Such a trend seems to be most pronounced in the healthcare sector generally. In this and other industries behind the frontline, training (if it is offered at all) tends to be of short duration at induction and more sporadic later in the period of employment. High turnover of staff in some industries remains a disincentive for employers to offer training. In addition to the length and availability of training, its content is different in second-tier industries from those on the frontline. In the former, there is little presumption of existing knowledge. Workers are chosen into the firm based on assessed fit with the organisational culture and structures, and it is presumed that the knowledge required to do the work adequately can be quickly and systematically taught. Programs focus on customer service and behaviour conducive to smoothing the interaction of workers with outside clients. Training is streamlined in recognition that some workers will not remain at the organisation for long, while others who do will learn from doing and from informal coaching by team leaders. In relation to the nexus between different types of flexibility at work, there are interesting signs of how organisational objectives can sometimes pull against one another. For instance, increased casual employment or the outsourcing of certain functions is a cost-motivated strategy that runs counter to the proposition of moving multi-talented workers through high-output regions of the business as dictated by outside demand. Instead, these operational 'pieces' are in some industries being stripped off the 'core' business, standardised and outsourced (or sent offshore). Similar forces are at work in healthcare, where the use of temporary and agency workers has depleted on-the-ground knowledge to the point that permanent staff and managers are facing onerous new responsibilities that diminish their own opportunities to provide direct care to patients. At the managerial level, such flexibility strategies have forced organisations to adopt (mostly with limited success) novel strategies for 'stabilising' their non-standard workforces (Allan 1998). The tensions between task flexibility (HPP) and labour flexibility (usually cost-driven) are plain from our analysis and likely to be an ongoing source of conflict in workplace change. Finally, Australian case studies disclose evidence about a range of other practices used to select and motivate the high-performance workforce. The limited detail provided in most cases about organisational recruitment policies does support the view that organisations are now looking for workers less with a view to their particular competencies and more with a view to their likely 'fit' with existing internal cultures (van den Broek 1997). Two things are at work here. First, there is a presumption that required work orientations can be quite easily inculcated through short formal induction and learning from one's peers. Secondly, organisations are probably not screening recruits with a view to their long-term development toward managerial careers. High turnover rates in a number of service areas make firms more interested in 'psychological match' and less with the possession of tangible and immediately applicable skills. Performance-related pay schemes are a further source of controversy. While there are few cases in which such approaches have been successfully bedded down, several attempts have led to resentment among staff and accusations of favouritism. Paradoxically, the firms that now appear to contain most HPPs have eschewed wage incentives out of fear that these might undermine safety codes and jeopardise 'co-operative' workplace relations, especially those involving unions. Such a possibility is another manifestation of the cost-quality dichotomy which is shaping change in many of the organisations whose experiences are reported in the case studies reviewed here. Cost Cutting and Cost Containment: Effects on Work Organisation The Australian case studies did not always show that the reality of work organisation and reorganisation was a result of conscious attempts to change the way work was arranged and performed. Sometimes it arose largely as an unintended consequence of other pressures, and sometimes as a result of pursuing goals other than enhancing the quality of work. Generally, this tended to occur where organisations were focused on cost cutting or cost containment. Many of the relevant case studies were of organisations in the public health sector, although there are a few examples in other areas. Only one relates to a private business, however, and this refers to work organisation in two private hospitals. To this extent, these case studies necessarily give us only a small part of the story about the extent to which organisations are confronting cost cutting and cost containment pressures, and how work organisation is affected by their responses. That most are in the public sector is striking, and worth considering. Cost cutting and cost containment are certainly well documented orientations in private firms (Morehead et al. 1997, pp.241-242). They are almost always, however, part of a strategy to strengthen a firm to enhance its longer term possibilities for profitability and growth. Indeed, this strategy tends to lead either to growth and greater resources in the firm or decline towards bankruptcy or takeover. In this sense, cost cutting and cost containment cannot be permanent primary foci of a firm's strategy. In contrast, public sector organisations have commonly been under long-term cost cutting or cost containment pressure since the late 1970s. Most are limited in the capacity to increase their revenue base, and so general pressures to reduce or limit government budgets necessarily impact on them in the long term. Perhaps the health sector is particularly susceptible here, since it also faces strong tendencies that increase costs, primarily arising from new health technologies and growing social expectations about health. Pressures to reduce costs in the public agencies have usually arrived alongside moves to restructure how the agencies are managed. These often conform broadly to a model of New Public Management (NPM). While there is no simple consensus about exactly what this model entails, it usually involves re-imagining public agencies as goods or service producing organisations, and then applying management techniques familiar from the private sector.. These techniques include increased autonomy of agencies, with more market-like relations between them, the development of performance targets and standards, the fostering of a more entrepreneurial approach amongst employees and assessment of whether privatisation or contracting out of some parts of service delivery would increase efficiency (Pollitt and Bouckaert 2004). Cost cutting couched in moves to NPM often produces new work arrangements as solutions designed to increase efficiency and ensure that agencies meet newly specified performance criteria. The exact form these take may vary. Stack's (2003) research on the effects of NPM in nursing homes shows one outcome: work intensification based on sharper specification of the key tasks workers are required to undertake. In the case of nursing homes, the implementation of the NPM model was further complicated by the increasing compliance requirements placed on nursing homes to protect against the deregulation that unfettered NPM principles might have produced. The result was that many nursing home workers, particularly personal carers, found themselves working in a 'production line' mode. As attempts were made to contain and cut costs, they were required to undertake the main tasks of physical care of nursing home residents in a newly regimented fashion, with resulting reduction in time spent on softer aspects of caring. This work intensification produced considerable resistance and reduced morale amongst workers. It effectively reduced the scope of work undertaken by workers, as is often the case in work intensification. Another response to cost pressures associated with NPM in the health sector is to redesign jobs so as to increase the range and scope of tasks to be performed, while reducing the overall number of employees. Willis (2005) describes the creation of a new position of Personal Service Attendant (PSA) in one public hospital in South Australia. This new position combined the tasks of several prior jobs, including orderly, nurse assistant, cleaner and kitchen hand. It was developed in response to sharp budget cuts to public hospitals and the long-term effects on the availability of relatively low skill workers in hospitals of the move away from hospital-based training of nurses. The development of PSAs clearly increased the range of skills that workers required compared to those needed for any of the previous occupations superseded by PSAs. It was also associated, however, with reductions in overall employment numbers, and there was strong evidence of work intensification. Workers had considerably less 'down time' as PSAs than they had previously and were required to take responsibility for juggling the range of tasks they were required to perform. The greater variety of job tasks and range of skills required did appear to increase workers' job satisfaction. At a different point in the occupational hierarchy, White and Bray (2003) found that reorganisation of management arrangements, prompted partly by cost pressures, produced a significant alteration in the job roles of Nursing Unit Managers (NUMs). With management change, NUMs took on a wider range of tasks, including budgeting, occupational health and safety and human resources responsibilities. Again, this resulted in the relevant employees requiring a larger range of skills, but also experiencing significant work intensification as they juggled responsibilities and added tasks to existing workloads. In addition, their work was intensified simply because responsibilities to manage reduced or contained budgets led them to reorganise staffing and staff work responsibilities in ways that ultimately increased their own workloads. Here, work reorganisation has little 'up' side: NUMs may develop some additional skills, but they receive little support for doing so, and they are constrained to manage those in their units in ways that simply increase their workloads. In cases where no significant management reorganisation occurs, responses to cost pressures may simply be to alter staffing arrangements to reduce costs. One obvious response is to increase the use of casual workers so as to optimise staffing as work peaks and troughs occur (see Allan 1998). This involves some work reorganisation, as some kinds of responsibilities are confined to permanent staff. But the effects are limited compared to those of other forms of work reorganisation. Cost pressures and public sector management fads can produce short-lived changes in work organisation that initially appear promising, but revert to type quite quickly. Germov (2005) analysed the development of teams in 11 organisations prompted by a federal government program called the Best Practice in the Health Sector (BPHS) program. The public sector health organisations in the study were generally under considerable budget pressure. They responded to the BPHS program strategically, aiming to take advantage of the competitively allocated funding it offered by implementing 'best practice' projects to reorganise work in the organisation. All projects involved teamwork models. These models, however, were generally abandoned when funding was withdrawn following the ending of the BPHS program, indicating the lack of organisational hold the work reorganisation had established. These cases illustrate that sustained cost pressures in public organisations lead to a variety of responses. In each case, the impact on skill requirements is largely unintended, and any change in skill requirements is not an explicit focus of employment policy. It is therefore often under-resourced. Cost pressures may, however, lead to different outcomes where the pressures can be displaced from the public sector organisation itself. This may be achieved by contracting out services, and thereby displacing cost pressures on to external contractors. In the case of one South Australian local government, this appears to have led to a sustained range of changes in work organisation that involved teamworking which was quite egalitarian, greater employee autonomy and requirements that employees become more entrepreneurial (Johnston and Hawke 2002). These changes were generally matched by appropriate formal training and informal support. Implications for VET The Australian evidence about changes in the organisation of work is not ideal for drawing conclusions about how training authorities should respond. This is primarily because the relevant research does not cover all major industries in ways that produce a representative picture. Our analysis of the existing case study research indicates, however, that it would be inappropriate to build substantial elements of curriculum on the assumption that Australian workplaces have experienced substantial change in work organisation during the past decade or are likely to do so in the near future. In broad terms, this is because organisations have responded in different ways to the four 'demands' about work reorganisation that we described at the outset. They have dealt with the flexibility demand mostly by increasing the flexibility of employment contracts, rather than increasing flexibility in how workers are moved between jobs. Where the latter form of flexibility has occurred, it has required some worker training or retraining, but this has usually not been extensive, and has been easily accomplished at the organisational level. In government bureaucracies, experiments with increased job flexibility have usually ended with a return to sharply delineated job responsibilities. Despite expectations amongst some advocates of HWPSs, few team experiments have been used to try to deal with this demand. There is certainly evidence that increasing worker autonomy has been an important goal in some organisations. Various work reforms have been implemented to augment workers' independence from direct supervision. Where the research covers a sufficient period, however, there are strong indications that organisations do not find the results of these moves satisfactory, and move back towards more management-directed working patterns. Teamwork experiments have had this character frequently, and moves to make employees more autonomous in government bureaucracies have generally been sharply attenuated over time. A focus on customer service is quite evident in a number of our case studies, though in some this is not an issue at all (e.g., manufacturing) or is of secondary concern. Responses to the customer service demand included government organisations seeking to give employees greater scope to deal with a range of citizen issues and problems. Again, many of these reforms appeared to be attenuated or reversed over time. There were a few examples where a customer service focus did become more important, as markets became more competitive, to jobs that had previously been primarily technical. This did have the sustained effect of requiring customer service orientations and skills from workers who previously did not need them. Of course, in some new forms of work, the customer service focus was central from the beginning, as in the case of call centres. Many service sector organisations viewed the ability to provide customer service as virtually a personality characteristic, and therefore focused their selection processes on choosing appropriate staff, rather than looking for appropriately trained recruits or training them once they were appointed. Changes in how knowledge is distributed and used in organisations were fairly limited in our case studies. Where shifts in work organisation were directed at altering knowledge flows, these tended to be narrowly based or temporary. One of the more common uses of greater information sharing was to attempt to alleviate employees' concerns in organisations undergoing rapid organisational change. A small group of case studies of 'learning organisations' did show some evidence of a move towards work arrangements that facilitated the development and accumulation of greater knowledge and skill. In some cases, however, this was associated with increased use of a peripheral workforce, through employment of casuals or outright outsourcing of work, which did not participate in the learning processes. The net result is often that knowledge flows and participation, and worker skills, are enhanced in the centre of an organisation, but that their appearance in the periphery is reduced. In some organisations, there was evidence of a range of work organisation changes that required new skills or workers, of the kind expected by many analyses of the new world of work. Rather paradoxically, however, these seemed to be organisations in which the primary impetus for change was the need to cut or contain costs. Work intensification driven by this imperative sometimes involved expanding the work demands on lower skilled workers. This required that they develop not only a range of skills necessary to perform their expanded jobs, but also skills to allocate time between the various demands on them. These consolidated findings from cases studies of workplace change make it clear that the VET sector should not respond by broadly accepting the need for training appropriate for HPPs or similar work systems. Thus, a sector-wide emphasis on teamwork skills, or customer service skills, or communication skills, would be inappropriate. Beyond this, there is a range of possible responses. These include: * The VET system might not respond to these putative changes in work organisation at all. A defensible view is that where work organisation change is evident, employers are able to provide the relevant training, and should be expected to do so. This applies both to intentional change and change in work organisation that is an unintended consequence of cost cutting or cost containment. * The VET system might respond by being ready to assist in training workers in specific situations where employers consistently indicate that new forms of work organisation are demanding new skills. For example, there is clearly a range of areas where customer service training may be relevant. It is likely that VET providers are already focusing on relevant skills in these areas, notably in service occupation training. But the system may choose to adopt responsiveness to these needs as a matter of curriculum policy. * The VET sector may focus on imparting skills that are likely to be particularly useful to employees faced with the exigencies of unplanned change in work organisation. First, these would be skills in cooperation and negotiation, relevant to working effectively with others when organisational change occurs. Secondly, they would be basic skills in administration and management, since the unintended consequences of changes in workplace organisation are quite often to increase requirements that staff administer and manage aspects of their work and that of others. The VET sector or, perhaps, individual VET providers will need to decide which of these options to adopt. The implications of each will be complex. * We thank our NILS colleagues, Megan Moskos and Diannah Lowry, for helping to locate and analyse the case studies that form the basis of this research. References ABS (2002), "Measuring a Knowledge-based Economy and Society: An Australian Framework' (catalogue no. 1375.0). 'Allan, C. (1998), "Stabilising the Nonstandard Workforce: Managing Labour Utilisation in Private Hospitals',' Labour and Industry, vol. 8, pp. 61-76. Allan, C. and Lovell, K. (2003), "The Effects of High Performance Work Systems on Employees in Aged Care.', Labour and Industry, vol. 13, pp. 1-17. 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(1999), On the Front Line: Organization of Work in the Information Economy, Cornell University Press. Germov, J. (2005), 'Managerialism in the Australian Public Health Sector: Towards the Hyper-rationalisation of Professional Bureaucracies.', Sociology of Health and Illness, vol. 27, pp. 738-758. Gibb, J. and Curtin, P. (2004), 'Overview', in Generic Skills in Vocational Education and Training: Research Readings, NCVER, Adelaide. Godard, J. (2004), 'A Critical Assessment of the High-performance Paradigm.', British Journal of Industrial Relations, vol. 42, pp. 349-378. Green, F. (2004), 'Why Has Work Effort Become More Intense?', Industrial Relations, vol 43, pp. 709-741. Hall, R. (2004), 'The Changing Nature of IT Work: The Reconfiguration of Control in Computer Consultancy.', Proceedings of the 22nd International Labour Process Conference, Amsterdam. Harley, B., Allen, B., and Sargent, L. (2006), 'New Forms of Work in the Service Sector: The Case of High Performance Work Systems and Employee Experience of Work in the Aged-care Industry', Department of Management and Marketing, University of Melbourne. Harris, A. and Sohal, A.S. (2002), 'Managing Change in an Aluminium Can Manufacturing Plant: A Case Study', Technovation, vol. 22, pp. 615-623. Harvey, D. (1990), The Condition of Post-Modernity, Blackwell, Malden and Oxford. Johnston, R. and Hawke, G. (2002), 'Case Studies of Organisations with Established Learning Cultures', NCVER, Adelaide. Kitay, J. (2001), 'Financial Services Industry Case Study', in ACIRRT (ed.) Changing Nature of Work: Industry Case Studies, NSW Board of Vocational Education and Training (BVET), Sydney: Kunda, G. (1992), Engineering Culture: Control and Commitment in a High-Tech Corporation, Temple University Press, Philadelphia. Lambert, R., Gillan, M., and Fitzgerald, S. (2005), 'Electrolux in Australia: Deregulation, Industry Restructuring and the Dynamics of Bargaining', Journal of Industrial Relations, vol. 47, pp. 261-275. Lansbury, R.D., Wright, C., and Baird, M. (2006), 'Decentralized Bargaining in a Globalizing Industry: The Automotive Assembly Industry in Australia', Relations Industrielles-lndustrial Relations, vol. 61, pp. 70-92. Littler, C.R. and Innes, P.A. (2003), 'Downsizing and Deknowledging the Firm', Work, Employment and Society, vol. 17, pp. 73-100. Macneil, J. and Rimmer, M. (2006), 'Where Does It Go Wrong?: The Pathology of Teamwork in Australian Manufacturing.', AIRAANZ Refereed Papers, Adelaide. Morehead, A., Steele, M., Alexander, M., Stephen, K., and Duffin, L. (1997), Changes at Work: The 1995 Australian Workplace Industrial Relations Survey, Longman, South Melbourne. Murakami, T. (1999), 'Joint Committees on Teamwork in a British, German and Australian General Motors Plant', Labour and Industry, vol. 10, pp. 107-125. O'Brien, J. and O'Donnell, M. (2000), 'Creating a New Moral Order?: Cultural Change in the Australian Public Service', Labour and Industry, vol. 10, pp. 57-76. Park, R., Erwin, P.J., and Knapp, K. (1997), 'Teams in Australia's Automotive Industry: Characteristics and Future Challenges', International Journal of Human Resource Management, vol. 8, pp. 780-796. Pollitt, C. and Bouckaert, G. (2004), Public Management Reform: A Comparative Analysis (Second Ed.), Oxford University Press. Reich, R.B. (1991), The Work of Nations: Preparing Ourselves for 21st-Century Capitalism, A. A. Knopf, New York. Russell, B. (2002), 'The Talk Shop and Shop Talk: Employment and Work in a Call Centre', Journal of Industrial Relations, vol. 44, pp. 467-490. Senge, P.M. (1990), The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization, Doubleday/Currency, New York. Simmons, D.E. and Bramble, T. (1996), 'Workplace Reform at the South East Queensland Electricity Board, 1984-1994', Journal of Industrial Relations, vol.38, pp. 213-240. Stack, S. (2003), 'Beyond Performance Indicators: A Case Study in Aged Care', Australian Bulletin of Labour, vol. 29, pp. 143-161. Thompson, P. (2003), 'Disconnected Capitalism: Or Why Employers Can't Keep Their Side of the Bargain', Work, Employment and Society, vol. 17, pp. 359-378. Thompson, P. and Findlay, T. (1999), 'Changing the People: Social Engineering in the Contemporary Workplace,' in Sayer, A. and Ray, L. (eds.), Culture and Economy After the Cultural Turn, Sage, London. Tutt, K. and Chadbourne, R. (1998), 'Enterprise Bargaining and Work Organisation Reform: The Case of Catholic Secondary Schools in Western Australia', Leading and Managing, vol. 4, pp. 131-143. Van den Broek, D. (1997), 'Human Resource Management, Cultural Control and Union Avoidance: An Australian Case Study', Journal of Industrial Relations, vol. 39, pp. 332-348. Van den Broek, D., Callaghan, G. and Thompson, P. (2004), 'Teams without Teamwork?: Explaining the Call Centre Paradox', Economic and Industrial Democracy, vol. 25, pp. 197-218. White, N. and Bray, M. (2003), 'The Changing Role of Nursing Unit Managers: A Case of Work Intensification?', Labour and Industry, vol. 14, pp. 1-19. Willis, E. (2005), 'The Hidden Traps in Multi-tasking: The Experience of Work Intensification for Personal Service Attendants in the Healthcare Sector', AIRAANZ Refereed Papers, Sydney. Wright, C. and Lund, J. (2003), 'Supply Chain Rationalization: Retailer Dominance and Labour Flexibility in the Australian Food and Grocery Industry', Work, Employment and Society, vol. 17, pp. 137-157. Wright, C. and Lund, J.(2006), 'Variations on a Lean Theme: Work Restructuring in Retail Distribution', New Technology, Work and Employment, vol. 21, pp. 59-74. Bill Martin and Josh Healy * * National Institute of Labour Studies, Flinders University
Table 1: Case Studies of Australian Work Reorganisation
Source Study site Timeframe Work Practice
Lansbury Automotive 1992-2004 Lean production is
al. (2006) manufacturing common to all our
industry mayor manufacturers,
as are consultative
committees--although
these tend to be
convened for a
single, often
temporary, issue.
Teamwork is more
varied, from an
inclusive group-work
model at GMH, to more
narrowly focused
teams at Mitsubishi.
Across the industry,
a push
for 'flexibility' has
seen increased use of
non-standard
employment forms, but
labour hire remains
unusual. Broadening
of job
responsibilities has
been the norm, with
an increasing
emphasis on generic
competencies or
general duties',
rather than
traditional
task-specific skills.
Macneil & Manufacturing 1994-2001 Documents three
Rimmer industry phases of teamwork
(2006) for three
manufacturing firms
that participated in
the Best Practice
Demonstration
Program. In the first
phase, teams were
adopted in various
forms but their role
was small and there
were few
complementary HR
practices suggestive
of a broader shift to
HPWS. The second
phase saw company
managers exerting
increased influence
over workplace teams,
as Federal funds and
union support
evaporated. The
surviving teams were
functional but
minimalist, their
main function being
to deliver on
strategic targets
devised by
management. Phase 3
saw the teams
embedded within their
respective companies,
with the major threat
to their continuation
represented by the
prospect of external
company takeover.
Wright & Grocery distri- Labour-intensive.
Lund (2006) bution centre 1 Workers manually
(dry goods) Assemble orders to
specification of the
end retailers,
leaving completed
pallets at a loading
dock once complete. A
central computer
assigns each job and
monitors time to
completion. These
records are later
used in performance
reviews. No evidence
here of teams or
other factors
associated with HPPs.
The basic modus
operandi is lean
production.
Wright & Grocery distri- Not stated Manual labour
Lund (2006) bution centre combined with an
2 (frozen and automated sorting
cold goods) line. Information
sharing and limited
use of casualisation
give workers job
security, while
process improvement
teams' allay concerns
about use of new
technology. Wage
incentives avoided
for fear of safety
breaches.
Wright and Grocery distri- Not stated Workers operate once
Lund (2006) bution centre again in a
(continued) 3 (general high-technology
merchandise) environment, with
sophisticated sorting
machines and conveyor
lines. The centre has
a 'team culture' but
there appears to be
little to this
besides designated
team leaders who
monitor performance.
The rate of work is
dictated mainly by
the automated system,
and management resist
further speed-up
believing this would
jeopardise the
centre's
constructive'
workplace relations
and lead to
offsetting quality or
safety costs. An
effort is made,
however, to select
and recruit new
workers carefully,
often based on
performance during a
probationary time as
a casual.
Anderson et Australian 1989-2002 Initial shift from a
al. (2005) Taxation Office very hierarchical
organisation to
devolved structure
where agencies have
more autonomy.
However, less scope
for employees to
increase individual
autonomy-hierarchical
structure tended to
reappear, at least
partly, over time.
Despite initial
increase in workers'
autonomy and
flexibility of task
performance, this
fairly quickly
returned to previous
patterns. In
particular, sharp and
clear boundaries
around work roles and
agencies were
reinforced. Work
teams are used, but
these are quite
rigidly and
hierarchically
structured, with
fixed roles and
responsibilities.
Evidence that work
intensification
occurred, and some
rise in use of
contract staff.
Germov Public health 1995-96 Combined case studies
(2005) sector of 11 organisations
involved with the
Best Practice in the
Health Sector
program. Teamwork
structures adopted in
all 11 cases. Project
leaders emphasised
benefits of teamwork,
but participants'
experiences were more
varied. Some
considered teams to
be lacking
independence from the
directions of project
leaders. It proved
difficult to overcome
informal power
relations, even when
the formal structures
for teamwork were in
place. Following
withdrawal of BPHS
program funding in
1996 due to change of
government, team
structures were
generally
discontinued in the
cases observed
Lambert et Whitegoods 2003-03 Characterised by a
al. (2005) manufacturer reversion to
Taylorist practices
after a period of
experimentation with
alternative flexible
work models.
Employees are
confronted with
considerable job
insecurity from
knowing that their
performance is
measured only by
shareholder returns.
Nothing here to
suggest the company
is contemplating a
shift to a HPWS.
Indeed the opposite,
since working
routines and roles
are determined solely
by the need for
labour to operate
significant
production machinery.
To the extent that
casual workers can be
substituted for
permanent staff at
lower cost, this has
occurred, alongside
general cuts in the
overall workforce
size (from 1800 to
750 plus casuals).
Willis (2005) Public hospital 1996-2000 Examines the creation
of a new Personal
Service Attendant
(PSA) position in one
public hospital. The
PSA position resulted
from the amalgamation
of several prior jobs,
including orderly,
nurse assistant,
cleaner, and
kitchen-hand. The
author described the
PSA position as an
outcome of 'radical
job redesign'. For
the individuals who
became PSAs,
particularly those
who formerly held one
of the more narrow
positions, there was
multi-skilling and
attractive task
variety. To some
extent there was also
decentralisation of
authority. But
teamwork was limited,
nurses exerted strong
control, and work was
on a JIT basis.
Hall (2004) IT consultancy ?2001-03 Work is organized
around projects, with
a strong emphasis on
customer service.
Project organisation
probably means quite
a lot of teamwork,
though this is not
explicit, and is
probably not done
with the common HPWS
notions of teams.
Employees do have
considerable
autonomy,
particularly in their
dealings with
customers--the
customer focus
requires this
autonomy. The
customer focus means
that, to be
successful, employees
need the skills to
positively interact
with customers. The
company also recruits
very carefully, and
aims to employ people
with a range of
skills (because work
practices mean that
they need to be
flexible in what they
can do), along with
the appropriate
'attributes'--
personal
characteristics
relevant to customer
service. The paper
argues that the
result of project
based work and the
emphasis on customer
service is that
workers, though they
have considerable
autonomy, are
nevertheless
controlled' through
the market mechanism.
van den Telephone call Not stated Examines in detail
Broek et al. centres the characteristics
(2004) of teams in two
Australian call
centres. Despite the
'individualistic'
nature of call centre
work, teams are
widely found, and are
generally seen as
integral to centre
design. Teams in call
centres are, however,
qualitatively
different from those
found in
manufacturing. These
service-based teams
have low or
non-existent
autonomy, and do not
facilitate job
rotation or
multi-skilling. In
the main their role
is to reinforce
cultural norms:
conscientious workers
must 'play by the
rules of the team'
and can expect to
receive periodic
coaching from their
team leader.
Allan and Nursing home 1998-2000 Shift to teamwork,
Lovell (2003) coupled with
increased vertical
information-sharing
and decentralisation
of authority. Teams
used to monitor
performance and
suggest to managers
potential changes to
work processes. Only
senior managers
seemed to be
convinced, however,
that the benefits of
teams outweighed
their costs, in terms
of extra work for
employees, and loss
of internal authority
structures.
Stack (2003) Nursing home 1999-2000 New Public Management
has produced
significant increase
in demands for aged
care workers to
document and record
their activities. In
addition, cost
cutting pressures
produced by
competitive demands
of NPM result in work
intensification,
especially aged care
workers' tasks being
treated in a
production line'
mode. True caring
work is heavily
reduced by the
demands of cost
containment.
White and Public hospital, 1997-2002 Examines the role of
Bray (2003) but focusing six Nursing Unit
only on the Managers (NUM) within
role of Nursing a single public
Unit Managers hospital. Provides
(NUM) evidence that NUM
faced substantially
wider task
responsibilities in
their jobs, including
budgeting, OHS, and
HRM. NUM have taken
on additional tasks
as authority
structures have been
decentralised--
consistent with the
HPWS paradigm--but
have done so without
additional resources
or support, resulting
in 'intensification'
of their work.
Wright & Food and Evident preference
Lund (2003) grocery manu- for a 'flexible firm'
facturing model of production,
wherein a casual
periphery'
supplements a 'core'
of permanent workers.
This strategy has
been accompanied by
the outsourcing of
maintenance work to
labour hire firms.
One outcome of this
flexibility has been
a reduction in
employment costs
associated with
leave, compensation
for injury, etc.
Automation of
production has
increased the need
for multi-skilling
and competencies, but
structured training
is still focused on
permanent workers
whose numbers are
falling relative to
casuals.
Wright & Food and gro- Numerical flexibility
Lund (2003) cery retail achieved through
casual labour,
although some signs
of reversal here to
moderate staff
turnover. Broader
push to precisely
match employee levels
to consumer demand
means that all
inputs, including
labour, are rationed;
work is intensified
as a result.
Buchanan Metal 1991-97 Examined experiences
and Hall manufacturing with teamwork in 19
(2002) industry metals and
engineering firms
involved in the Best
Practice
Demonstration
Program. Actual forms
of teamwork were
diverse. Some were
consultative, with a
view to introducing
TQM or new capital
equipment; others
involved negotiation
of future job cuts or
implementation of
substantially new
work processes. More
similarities were
evident with respect
to the low amounts of
autonomy that the
teams were ordinarily
permitted. In
particular, they seem
to have had little
impact on strategic
decisions related to
personnel or training
requirements. The few
experiments with
self-managed' teams
were either
abandoned entirely or
brought back within
direct managerial
control. While teams
restricted to single
functions sometimes
survived, the more
ambitious
cross-functional'
teams quickly lost
their initial support
and appeal.
Dunford Travel agency Not stated High-performance
and Palmer practices are
(2002) well-established. A
large workforce is
divided into small
teams at the
workplace level. The
team ethos is
bolstered with
team-based
performance bonuses,
giving individuals an
incentive to identify
with their colleagues
and, if necessary,
attend to each
other's clients. As
well as teams, there
is internal
promotion,
information sharing,
and 'a strong
egalitarian culture'
minimising status
differences. Steady
business expansion
and a rising share
price suggest these
practices are likely
to be relatively
stable.
Harris and Aluminium can Relaxation of
Sohal (2002) manufacturer internal hierarchies
and distinctions
between workers
(e.g., fitters,
electricians). The
traditional work
process meant that
the single production
line could easily be
stopped by groups of
workers standing
down--and others
declining to take up
their tasks. After
the change, all
workers were treated
as 'Production
System' employees. No
evidence regarding
long-term course of
change, or whether
other HPPs,
especially teamwork,
were adopted.
Johnston District nursing ?1996- RDNS has a strong
and Hawke service 2001 emphasis on
(2002) participation in
decision-making by
all employees.
Communication is said
to have shifted from
an 'autocratic' style
to a more open and
cooperative style. A
new call centre has
been a key
development, with
work there being
organised around
providing high
quality service to
clients. The call
centre uses
performance
measurement to track
its activities.
Training for staff in
the centre has been
focused on quality of
service to clients.
Other parts of the
organisation take the
call centre as a role
model, particularly
in performance
management and focus
on quality of service
to clients. There has
also been an
increasing emphasis
on coordination of
care, which requires
communication between
employees and
knowledge sharing.
Staff perceive higher
autonomy.
Johnston Pharmaceutical Basis of work
and Hawke firm organisation is a
(2002) team-based system,
with skill-based pay.
This was a new
development, as the
company restructured
to become more
efficient and
globally
competitive. Teams
seem to work
effectively, with a
strong emphasis on
learning amongst
staff to become more
efficient. Learning
is rewarded with
higher pay via the
skill-based pay
system. Some initial
problems with staff
concerns about
favouritism, but
these have largely
been resolved. There
is a preference for
permanent staff, but
the company continues
to employ up to 20
per cent casuals, due
to fluctuating
demand. A key aspect
of the learning
culture is that staff
understand their role
in the whole
operation of the
company. This does
appear to be
associated with
knowledge sharing. No
apparent roll-back or
attenuation of
practices.
Johnston Poultry pro- Collaborative
and Hawke ducer development of 'work
(2002) instructions' for
chicken processing
workers has involved
workers in
participatory ways.
Career paths
identified and pay
linked to
achievement.
Increased focus on
training, assessment
and certification.
Claimed that this has
increased skill
levels, and improved
employee relations
with each other and
with management. A
focus has also been
on recruiting 'right
people'. TQM adopted
in late 1980s, and
continuous
improvement models
since then.
Johnston Local council 1997-2001, Staff organized into
and Hawke approx. teams in the form of
(2002) business units, with
each developing
a 'business plan'.
Organisation provided
support for staff to
undertake formal
training and informal
learning. Staff took
more initiative and
worked more
autonomously, which
involved much more
negotiation with
other business units
and external
stakeholders. Staff
therefore required
new 'organising' and
networking' skills;
they developed these.
Overall, the change
in work organisation
appears to have
functioned well,
although there were
some difficulties:
there were not always
sufficient resources
to support the
changes; senior
management did not
always support staff
when problems
occurred; there was
some resistance to
change, especially to
potential job loss
Russell Banking call 2000 Evidence of task
(2002) centre multiplicity:
employees must talk
to customers on the
phone and navigate
and update computer
databases 'all in one
nearly seamless job
action'. However,
employees perceive
that the work is
routine, offering
little variety or
task discretion.
Teams exist not to
decentralise
authority or share
information, but to
improve the
sociability' of the
work environment.
Teams have little
impact on the
essentially
individualistic'
nature of the work in
this environment.
Kitay (2001) Westpac 1991-2000 The first change
involved more
structured training
practices instead of
the previous
piecemeal' system.
Induction training
was expanded for
branch and call
centre staff as part
of this effort, with
much of the focus on
'cross-selling' and
encouraging customers
to use lower-cost
transaction options
such as ATMs and
Internet banking.
Recruitment into the
bank has become much
more concerned with
psychological
characteristics and
aptitudes than any
specific knowledge of
banking. As employees
acquire progressively
higher skills, their
pay rises, and job
rotation becomes
possible. Management
has taken to heart
the 'learning
organisation' credo,
and has adopted
guidelines to achieve
this through employee
empowerment and
teams. However,
turnover remains a
problem, and
outsourcing of
certain functions
runs counter to
otherwise
well-developed
internal training and
promotion efforts.
Barry (2000) Coal mine 1 Mid-1990s BHP's strategy to
(BHP) combat falling coal
prices was to take
advantage of its
prominence in the
market and ability to
sell its total
product reliably on
international
markets. The increase
in productivity was
to be achieved
principally through
labour productivity
growth, facilitated
by a new continuous
shift roster. Workers
were to diversify
their skills,
allowing them to move
more easily between
roles, as required.
But this posed
several problems. The
opportunity costs of
training a large
workforce, and then
rotating workers
geographically
through different
mines, proved
excessive in terms of
output foregone. In
the process of
accrediting new
skills, corners were
cut, and the support
of frontline
supervisors
evaporated when it
became clear that
newly-trained'
individuals often
were not competent in
their relevant areas
once in the field. A
return to task
specialisation
eventually occurred.
Barry (2000) Coal mine 2 Mid-1990s Increased task
(Callide) flexibility was more
successfully
implemented in this
second case. A
smaller workforce
meant it was easier
to provide (and
maintain) necessary
new skills.
Reorganisation at
this site was also
aided by geology.
Where BHP was forced
to locate its best
miners at the
least-accessible
mineral seams,
Callide found its
coal at various
depths, and could
rotate workers
through different
sites as these came
into operation.
Finally, unlike BHP,
Callide supplied to
the domestic coal
market. It could
focus on decreasing
unit costs of
production rather than
maximising total
output. Because its
viability was not
directly affected by
fluctuating
international coal
prices, 'continuous
production' was not
essential. Callide
miners had more time
to train in fewer
areas, ensuring their
operational
readiness.
O'Brien and Commonwealth Work is apparently
O'Donnell government organised largely on
(2000) agency bureaucratic lines,
as previously. The
implementation of
performance appraisal
and performance-based
pay is said to be
flawed. The changes
led to lowering of
morale as staff saw
favouritism and
political alliances
being rewarded,
rather than
performance. Staff
also adopted very
strategic responses
to the new systems,
most of which did not
produce rising
performance.
Murakami GM Holden 1989-96 The first step in
(1999) improving shopfloor
relations was the
establishment of a
Site Committee, which
then met regularly
over industrial
issues. The
introduction of
teamwork arrangements
proved more
difficult, because of
differences in the
preferred model.
Unions proposed a
participative and
democratic
group-work' system,
while management
favoured a more
authoritative regimen
of directed teams.
After years of
indecision, the union
approach prevailed,
and has remained.
Allan (1998) Two private 1994 No evidence relating
hospitals to teamwork or the
other components of
HPWS. The major shift
documented in the
hospitals is away
from reliance on
permanent staff to
meet labour
requirements. While
consistent with
evidence that
employment is
generally becoming
more precarious, the
form of 'flexibility'
indicated here is not
the task variety or
multi-skilling
thought to represent
HPWS. These hospitals
have confronted real
difficulties in
managing their
contingent labour
pools at low cost
while still
maintaining
satisfactory levels
of patient care.
Tutt and Secondary 1993-96 Concerned with moves
Chadbourne school to change
(199) organisation of
teaching work in WA
schools. Principals
were in favour of
various forms of
change, including
change in how
students were
grouped, time
arrangements (start
and finish of school,
etc.), and staff mix
and deployment. Very
little change
actually occurred.
The main changes were
one case where a new
centre for
independent learning
was to be open beyond
traditional school
hours, and an
information centre
that had strong
cross-curricular
(disciplinary?)
inclinations. There
is no information
about the course of
these developments.
Park et al. Automotive 1996 Of 36 companies
(1997) manufacturing surveyed, half sought
industry to introduce
self-managed' teams.
But at the time of
study, with teams
having been in place
for an average 3
years, only 17 per
cent had such team
arrangements. More
common were directed
or 'semi-autonomous'
teams. Other changes
included development
of multi-skilled
rather than
single-task jobs, and
decreasing emphasis
on individual
rewards. But no clear
signs that
organisational
structures became
flatter' or power
more equally shared.
Senior managers and
union leaders saw
teams as beneficial
for productivity and
safety standards, but
the only tangible
indicator of employee
perceptions was
higher measured
morale. Not
clear whether teams
could survive 'lean
production' in the
long-term.
Van den Financial insti- 1994-96 Work organisation and
Broek (1997) tution recruitment are
characterised by:
individual
bargaining, selective
recruitment and
induction, direct
communication between
managers and workers,
and the use of
teamwork. Emphasis in
recruitment is on
securing employees
who seem amenable to
participating in the
organisation's
culture of achieving
the company's goals.
Researcher suggests
this approach may be
threatened if cost
pressures rise, but
there is no evidence
presented of any
change in work
organisation.
Performance-based pay
is also important,
with a component
being on the basis of
team input. Teams
exist to motivate
workers, by creating
competition between
them, and also to
facilitate
performance
appraisal. This
produced some
feelings of
favouritism.
Simmons Electricity 1984-94 Introduction of
and Bramble utility teams, largely
(1996) focused on quality
circles in the
TQM model. The
organisation sought
to increase vertical
and horizontal
knowledge sharing,
and break down some
of the barriers
between engineers and
other workers. It
increased its
spending and focus on
training. At the same
time, the permanent
workforce was reduced
by 44% during the
period, with a large
rise in the use of
con- tractors. During
the early period of
reform (from 1984),
employment insecurity
increased sharply.
Source Rationale for Work Practice
Lansbury Search or efficiency gains, brought on by
al. (2006) declining tariff protections and increasing
international competition from low-wage
manufacturing countries. Although these
were initially countered through redundancies
and the adoption of more 'precarious'
employment arrangements, it is clear that
more sophisticated forms of work reorganisation
have also gained a foothold in the
industry.
Macneil & Motives for the initial experimentation with
Rimmer teamwork included to restore profitability,
(2006) compete in global markets via higher productivity,
and improve industrial relations. Teams
survived beyond this early phase because
they enjoyed the support of employees and
were the main mechanism by which man-
agement persuaded the workforce of the
need for ongoing efficiency improvements.
However, they may be unable to withstand
the pressures to drive costs lower in the
interests of shareholders.
Wright & The common context for workplace reform
Lund (2006) in the three centres is the maximisation of
efficiency. This is an environment in which
it may be difficult to navigate toward HPPs.
However, the different methods of efficiency
improvement observed at the three centres
suggest that there are possibilities for what
the authors of the paper call 'variations on
a lean theme'. Factors that appear to
determine how far each firm moves away from
a pure cost-driven model include managers
views about best practice, the structure of the
firm and its existing capital, and employee
and union attitudes to change.
Wright & Efficiency remains a major determinant
Lund (2006) of work practices, and this is the basis on
which teams are formed: 'process improvement'.
At the same time, there appears to be
a genuine concern for skills retention
and employee morale, hence the limits on
casualisation.
Wright and See above, plus the aim of minimising
Lund (2006) storage times. At this centre goods received
(continued) from grocery suppliers are distributed to end
retailers on the same day, with handling and
storage costs kept to a minimum. The major
impediment to this is not error caused by
manual handling (i.e., the fault of workers),
but incorrect coding of cartons received at
the start of the distribution line (i.e., from
grocery suppliers).
Anderson et 'Modernization' of tax office beginning in
al. (2005) 1989 as it shifted from an orientation towards
policing tax returns and compliance towards
providing a service to tax payers and
educating them. Modernisation was based on New
Public Management (NPM) model--focus
on use of private sector-like practices to
improve efficiency, including use of
performance management in managing staff, and
establishment of more market-like relations
between agencies. Some reforms seek to
increase employee involvement at all levels
in workplace decision making. This research
finds evidence of gradual roll-back of much
of this reform, as the organisation reverts
to more hierarchical patterns, particularly
within workgroups and agencies.
Germov There was no groundswell of support for
(2005) HPPs among management or workers in
these 11 cases. The shift to teamwork was
instigated by the availability of program
funds. All project participants admitted that
their involvement was opportunistic, in that
it would contribute to alleviation of an
existing funding crisis. For this reason the
teams that did emerge must be considered
experimental and temporary, rather than products
of a concerted shift to new forms of work
organisation.
Lambert et Hospitality to teamwork and other HPPs in this
al. (2005) organisation (at least among the managers
interviewed) was due to the perception that
productivity and efficiency gains to be made
from teamwork were inferior to those achievable
through large fixed capital investment and
ongoing workforce restructuring (downsizing).
The widespread use of teams was seen
as having contributed to the declining
relative position of Western manufacturers
compared to their Asian rivals in the past
two decades.
Willis (2005) Creation of the PSA position had little to do
with 'post-Fordist' notions of multi-skilling,
although the position itself involved a range
of tasks. Instead, the PSA role was
created because of: (1) budget cuts which
drove hospital-wide staffing reductions, (2)
desire of nurses to reduce some of their
own workloads by passing certain tasks
onto PSA, and (3) government pressure to
outsource 'non-core' activities. Creation of
the PSA position allowed several important
non-core activities, such as kitchen and ward
cleaning, to remain 'in-house', but did little
to alleviate the pressure on nurses.
Hall (2004) Main aim to maintain, increase profitability
of business. The customer focus of work-
ers is a central strategy here. This latter is
not a 'culture' in the sense often used by
organisational analysts (instilling values,
etc.). Instead it operates as the real focus of
work-workers know that having customers
view their work positively is the most important
factor in their careers. In this sense, the
customer focus is the mechanism by which
the market for workers directly affects (and
'controls') workers. This all takes place in
an environment of increasing competition
and growing client demands in IT.
van den The purpose of call centre work organisation
Broek et al. is to reduce costs, improve the speed of
(2004) service, and minimise errors (hence 'scripting'
of typical query responses). Teams exist
to reinforce these objectives and to soften
the reality of low task discretion and pervasive
performance monitoring. If teams exercise
any authority, it is likely to be over
minor issues such as how the work area
is decorated.
Allan and No clear 'efficiency' motivation for the
Lovell (2003) change. Instead the goal of senior management
appears to have been change in the
organisational culture, with the aim of
fostering an environment in which employees
would take 'ownership' of their own work,
rather than merely following managers'
directions. Not clear that this particular
HPWS will survive.
Stack (2003) Work practices are produced by New Public
Management models of service provision.
Focus is on efficiency, cost containment and
reduced interference in day to day management.
However, at the same time increased
reporting requirements and regulation
appear to contradict aspects of NPM that
emphasise autonomy of management.
White and Not apparent that changes in the NUM role
Bray (2003) are due to any deliberate rationale. Rather,
they are outcomes of: (1) an increased
emphasis on the customer and the resolution
of complaints, which NUM have been largely
responsible for, and (2) the rationalisation or
restructuring of management tiers within the
hospital, leaving several downstream tasks
uncovered. NUM jobs have expanded into
the void left by consolidating or removing
existing bureaucratic layers.
Wright & Increasingly the large grocery retailers have
Lund (2003) come to dominate their supply chain. This
has led them to carefully scrutinise which
product lines are on display in retail outlets,
guided by sales information. The consequences
for grocery manufacturers include increased
outlays to get particular items increased
by the two main retail chains, pressure
to cut production costs generally, and
a renewed impetus for flexible production
to meet the evolving needs of major retailers,
especially if repackaging is required for
temporary promotion of particular lines.
Wright & An industry 'marked by low margins and
Lund (2003) close scrutiny from investors for improved
returns and reduced costs' (p.141). The ECR
principle--'Efficient Customer Response'
--adapts the JIT philosophy to retail, and
involves reduced inventories and 'supply-
chain rationalisation'.
Buchanan The cases were from a variety of manufacturing
and Hall sectors, but all had in common an
(2002) increase in exposure to competition, an
associated 'crisis of profitability', and
historically conflict-ridden IR cultures.
With respect to outcomes, 'managed' teams
typically had negative effects: downsizing,
intensification of work, increased use of
precarious forms of labour, and higher stress
levels for workers who 'survived' change. In
these 19 cases, the need to achieve objectives
such as reduced employee numbers and
higher productivity. trumped the 'softer'
aims of reorganisation such as employee
'empowerment'.
Dunford Work practices are strongly shaped by
and Palmer the personal philosophy of the company's
(2002) founder, who considered a 'cell-like' structure
to be the antidote to excessive bureaucracy
within the large and growing firm. A 'cap'
is placed on the size of any one branch of
the company, so that if demand expands,
a new branch will usually be opened, in
preference to increasing the size of existing
branch teams.
Harris and The principal drivers of change seem to
Sohal (2002) have been to implement new technology
which would raise productivity, to change
the production process so as to make it
less vulnerable to stoppage, and to reduce
or eliminate existing union demarcations
(and the influence of unions over employee
attitudes more generally).
Johnston RDNS was shifted towards a new style of
and Hawke management and organisation with the
(2002) appointment of a new CEO in 1996, and
a new emphasis on strategic management
and thinking. This is largely in response to
rising demands for service, and a desire to
maintain the quality of its service.
Johnston Company is part of a multinational which
and Hawke spreads production across its facilities
(2002) according to comparative advantage.
Company is therefore driven by needs of
global competition. Specializes in producing,
packaging and distributing therapeutic
pharmaceutical products.
Johnston A poultry and egg producer that grew from
and Hawke a family company to be one of the country's
(2002) largest producers. Has worked in recent
years to establish a collaborative culture
within the organisation.
Johnston Local council was under pressure to restructure
and Hawke due to funding cuts, impact of national
(2002) competition policy and general pressure for
public sector reform. The council undertook
some restructuring involving some redundancies.
It also shifted to a business model of
local government administration.
Russell The call centre is organised in a way that
(2002) allows extensive control over timing and
monitoring of work. Employees have quite
narrowly-defined roles, and expectations
about the quantity of work to be performed
in a fixed time. These norms are enforced by
performance 'coaching', carried out where
necessary by 'team leaders'. But call centre
teams are unlike those in manufacturing:
their primary functions are social support
and discipline, not empowerment.
Kitay (2001) Deregulation and privatisation, along with
new technology, have increased the pressures
to minimise costs and diversify the range
of retail products which are actively
sold' to customers. Where it was once possible
for relatively young workers to acquire
informal skills in the branch office and to
ascend through a safe internal career, staff
practices have become more flexible. And as
the banking market has been 'segmented'
into high- and low-value activities, so the
functions within Westpac have become
more specialised. The formation of skill is
now a highly-refined process. While this
alone is in tune with the tenets of 'learning
organisation', cost containment remains
a central part of the banking culture, and
contributes to ongoing problems with
under-staffing and staff turnover in significant
parts of the business.
Barry (2000) Training and reorganisation efforts at both
these mines came in response to a 'crisis of
profitability'. This had two proximate causes.
The first was a decline price for coal on
international markets, though this affected
the first operator (BHP) more substantially
than the second (Callide), which supplied
the domestic market. The second was that
many of the richest coal deposits close to
the surface had already been extracted. In
order to maintain past production, mining
companies were forced to dig increasingly
deeper into the earth, with consequently
higher exploration and equipment operating
costs (and risks to workers).
Barry (2000) (See above)
O'Brien and Research focused on introduction of
O'Donnell performance management via appraisal systems
(2000) and performance based pay systems in three
Commonwealth Departments (Department
of Finance and Administration, Department
of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and Public
Service and Merit Protection Commission).
These changes were aimed at developing a
culture of performance in the Departments
to lift efficiency and productivity.
Murakami Adoption of some form of team-working
(1999) arrangement was originally suggested during
wage negotiations, around the question of
how to improve efficiency. These negotiations
with trade unions generated 'a real and
deep conflict' over how much authority
management would cede to new shopfloor
teams. A subsequent study (Lansbury et
al., 2006) indicates that the union model
of 'group-work' has survived, despite the
difficulty of its initial implementation.
Allan (1998) Reduce total costs of patient care by closely
matching the demand for care to the supply
of hospital labour. This has been achieved
chiefly through the use of non-standard
and contingent employment arrangements,
although local labour market conditions
appear to be central to whether such a
strategy is sustainable in the longer-term.
Tutt and The rationale for these changes is not very
Chadbourne clear. The point of the article is that they were
(199) contemplated following the introduction of
enterprise bargaining, which was thought to
be a set of industrial relations arrangements
that would assist principals in introducing
workplace change. The conclusion is that
IR changes alone are not enough to make
this possible.
Park et al. Context for work practices involved increased
(1997) global competition and falling domestic tariffs,
following Federal government determination
to foster increased industry efficiency in the
1980s and 90s. Ability to move the industry
as a whole toward high-performance practices
was partly contingent on the extent of
union-management co-operation, although
relations in this area were generally seen
as positive.
Van den The company is a client service company
Broek (1997) whose primary activity appears to be a call
centre. The research appears to cover the
period of establishment of the company in
which it operated with an established model
of employee recruitment and work organisa-
tion. One effect of the forms of recruitment
and organisation used was to sharply reduce
likelihood that employees would seek
unionisation. Teams are used to build
employee commitment.
Simmons Deals with reforms to the organization of
and Bramble SEQEB beginning in 1984, and prompted
(1996) by a desire to make the organisation more
efficient and more focused on customers. In
the past, it had been focused on producing
electricity. A new CEO in 1984 attempted to
introduce Total Quality Management (TOM)
reforms. He was not an engineer, and sought
to alter the engineering dominated culture
of the organisation. Following his departure
in 1989, various of the reforms were
attenuated.
Note: The studies are organised first by date of publication (in
descending order), then by author (alphabetically), and finally
by study site (alphabetically).
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