Paul Osterman

How Common is Workplace Transformation and Who Adopts it

The author, using data on 694 U.S. manufacturing establishments from a 1992 survey, examines the incidence of innovative work practices (teams, job rotation, quality circles, and Total Quality Management) and investigates what variables, including human resource practices, are associated with the adoption of these practices. He finds that about 35% of private sector establishments with 50 or more employees made substantial use of flexible work organization in 1992. Some factors associated with an establishments adoption of these practices are being in an internationally competitive product market, having a technology that requires high levels of skill, following a “high road” strategy that emphasizes variety, service, and quality rather than low cost, and using such human resource practices as high levels of training and innovative pay systems.

The mutual gains enterprise : forging a winning partnership among labor, management, and government

Human resources, national competitiveness and employee welfare the mutual gains enterprise choice and diffusion of mutual gains strategies human resources and organizational governance the role of labour and worker representation institutions and policies for human resource development toward a mutual gains labour-management policy building a mutual gains coalition.

An Empirical Study of Labor Market Segmentation

Results of an empirical test of some ideas about the segmentation of the labor force. Classification of the different jobs within the primary sector; Social status of occupations; Empirical analysis; Empirical results. (Abstract copyright EBSCO.)

Broken ladders : managerial careers in the new economy

This book is the first comprehensive view, based on hard evidence, of how the role of managers in organizations is changing. The business press is full of stories about managers as an endangered species. Though there is some truth to this, the actual state of affairs is more complex and important to understand.

The Impact of Computers on the Employment of Clerks and Managers

This paper investigates how the increased use of computers affects clerical and managerial employment. The author hypothesizes that the much-discussed displacement effect—computers taking over for clerks—is offset at least in part by complementary effects. For example, computers may increase clerical and managerial employment by lowering unit cost, thus expanding production, and by inducing structural reorganization of the firm. Analyzing new data from a national survey of computer installations by industry, the author finds that the net effect of computers in 1972–78 was to depress the employment of clerks and managers substantially, but that the pattern over time—a larger displacement effect in the first few years, followed by increased clerical and managerial employment—supports the bureaucratic reorganization hypothesis.

Internal Labor Markets

Contrary to the popular image of change and turnover, most Americans spend the majority of their working lives employed in a single firm. The original essays in this book discuss the origins and importance of these internal labor markets, providing new insights into their changing power and influence. They also explore the more varied and dynamic employment practices that have evolved in large companies in response to new government regulations, increased competition for managerial talent, the difficult economy of the 1970s, and to the threat of unions.

Community Organizing and Employee Representation

The decline in the scope and power of American unions has led to a search for new strategies and new organizational forms to better succeed in representing the interests of employees in the labour market. This paper examines the role of community-based organizations of the sort that proved so powerful during the Civil Rights Movement. The subject of the paper is a strong national network of community organizations that is neighbourhood-based and draws heavily on churches and other community institutions. The organizations are put together in neighbourhoods, yet they also wield power at the city and state levels. The paper describes the organizations and examines and assesses their labour market policies. The second part of the paper takes up organizational issues and, in particular, describes how the structure and culture of these organizations enable them to avoid some of the organizational perils that have befallen unions and other social movement organizations. The paper concludes by comparing these organizations with traditional unions and by discussing their prospects for growth as well as their limitations.

Overcoming Oligarchy: Culture and Agency in Social Movement Organizations

A case study of the Southwest Industrial Areas Foundation is used to examine how a mass-movement social organization has been able to avoid the consequences of an oligarchic leadership structure, which previous scholars have claimed leads inevitably to loss of membership commitment, “becalming,” and goal displacement. The case describes this network of community organizations, which has a very strong and self-perpetuating authority structure but has nonetheless maintained the commitment and involvement of its membership for many decades as it addresses issues such as school reform, living wages, training programs, health insurance, and physical community infrastructure. The case shows how the organization maintained its membership commitment and a clear focus on its original objectives by enhancing the memberships sense of capacity and agency and building a culture of contestation within the organization that encourages the membership to push back against the elite who dominate the organization.

Welfare Participation in a Full Employment Economy: The Impact of Neighborhood

This paper employs original survey data on female single parents in Boston to examine the determinants of welfare participation. Particular attention is paid to the hypothesis—growing out of the literature on the urban underclass—that there are important neighborhood effects. The results provide support for the existence of neighborhood effects. These effects remain after controls for the personal characteristics of the respondents and for the possible endogenaity of neighborhood choice. The study also provides support for an explanation in which neighborhood effects are a result of the level of resources, particularly resources related to the percent of family heads who work. There is less support for the influence of stigma attached to welfare.

Employer-centered training for international competitiveness: Lessons from state programs

There has been a surge of new interest in federal training policy. This momentum has been fueled by concerns with productivity and competitiveness, whereas past federal policy has been more focused upon distributional issues. A wide range of new proposals have been put forth, and high on the list are initiatives to work directly with firms. As making employers the clients of training programs is a relatively new idea, there is very little past federal experience to draw upon. However, in recent years states have experimented with similar efforts, and these experiments provide an underused data source for assessing the traps and opportunities inherent in any national program. This paper reports the results of case studies in four states, two of which based employer-centered training in new state agencies and two of which housed the programs in community colleges. We identify issues of concern that arise in employer-based training programs and also suggest some possible solutions.