Workers, Managers, and Technological Change

Robots, office automation and computer-aided design and manufacturing are among the many new technologies challenging traditional labor-management relations, compelling them to reexamine the issue of workplace control and to establish new arrangements for governing the workplace.

Abstract

Robots, office automation and computer-aided design and manufacturing are among the many new technologies challenging traditional labor-management relations. Labor and management in diverse sectors of the U.S. economy are rethinking and rearranging the relationships which bound them throughout most of the post-World War II era. Along with technological change, the globalization of markets, government deregulation, the conglomeration of businesses, and other factors have affected profitability, job security, skill requirements, and the balance of power between labor and management. These changes have raised divergent issues for labor and management, compelling them to reexamine the issue of workplace control and to establish new arrangements for governing the workplace.