Bernd Hofmaier

Concept-Driven Development and the Organization of the Process of Change: An evaluation of the Swedish Working Life Fund

Concept-driven development and the organization of the process of change : An evaluation of the Swedish Working Life Fund

From Linear to Interactive Logics: Characteristics of Workplace Development as Illustrated by Projects in Large Mail Centers

The 1960s and 1970s saw a mushrooming interest in research-based experiments with new forms of work organization. From the latter 1970s, this interest started to decline. When, today, new initiatives are taken to bring research back into the process of workplace restructuring, there is a need to analyze the experiences with the experimental-like projects of the past with a view to defining their limitations and seeing to what extent alternative strategies for change can be developed. Based on Scandinavian experience, the article contains a discussion of field experiments and related approaches, and outlines an alternative in terms of broadly oriented interactive change processes where human communication is the leading element rather than, i.e., a specific theory of design. Projects in mail centers are used as illustrations.

Institutional and Organizational Perspectives on Dialogue: Lessons Learned from Scandinavian Experiences

The contribution deals with the origins of the Scandinavian dialogue approach which is based partly on attempts to develop working life issues and partly rooted in institutional features of the Swedish labour market relations. Thereafter the practical organization of dialogue conferences is described and some experiences and results for improving the dialogue approach for organizational change and development are given.