Richard Ennals

Work Organization and Europe as a Development Coalition

Work Organization has achieved recent prominence in European policy, as new employment guidelines are embodied in the policies of all European Member States. New forms of Work Organization, properly understood, offer collaborative competitive advantage to European enterprises. This book, based on decades of action research in separate European nations, identifies the research background from which these new insights and policy initiatives have emerged, with continuing lessons to be learned from differences. Work Organization is the missing link which enables innovation and training to produce sustainable increases in productivity: this is not mere academic theory but also vital practical business. The book launches a new European research agenda, which is attracting interest from across the developed world and beyond. Rather than arguing for a stronger role for the state, or simply leaving matters to the market, the book presents a “third way” based on networks and coalitions, illustrated with numerous current European case studies, which provide explanations for developments at the level of enterprises, regions and the European Union itself. The book provides valuable insights into new European Commission initiatives and Transatlantic Dialogue, and provides the foundations for renewed democratic dialogue.

Psychosocial Factors at Work

During the last 25 years many things have happened in the world and on the labour market. There has been a constant global population growth, structural unemployment, an IT revolution, free global markets, gender awareness, increased education, an increasing similarity in social policies, and the continuation of wars, the threat of wars and migrating populations. This new society’s characteristics will probably include a regional instead of a state-based structure and a transformation from a local to a global perspective. Transnational companies will create large centres of creativity and small units of production and distribution near the market. There will be an increase of mobility of people and information, and increasing complexity. In future the labour force is likely to be divided into 20% attractive elite workers, 40% highly skilled, 20% low paid flexible workers and 20% unemployed.

Knowledge management in construction companies in the UK

Knowledge management is important in the construction industry, but there is a dramatic gap between rhetoric and reality, highlighting mistaken expectations of technology. We report on a case study of a major construction company. The UK construction industry, with scarce academic qualifications, and limited use of IT, depends on knowledge sharing, and, crucially, on tacit knowledge. Economic crisis presents particular problems, and recent trends in work organization have far-reaching implications. The industry depends on human knowledge, with limited systems support. A shared concern for health and safety provides the surest guarantee of sustainability of both knowledge and the company.

Virtual Links: intergenerational learning and experience sharing across age divides and distances

This article presents and discusses “Virtual Links”. This builds on “The Golden Link”, a model which was developed to address the challenge of how to make experience based competencies of senior workers available to the organisation and to younger workers with less experience. “Virtual Links” support cross-generational communication and learning, as well as enabling access for mobile workers to the knowledge of experienced seniors not physically present.

Age, mobility, and knowledge: an action research approach

The article reports a pilot project at the Norwegian Employment Service, where an intervention enabled older workers to teach younger workers, using older technology. Older workers are regarded as a resource, not as a problem.

Skills and Competence

We are at the start of a new epoch, where efforts to reduce human work and knowledge are no longer seen as appropriate or profitable ways to advance businesses and economies. Technological advancement should have benefited society to a much greater extent than it has, and it is a lack of skilled human capital that has prevented this from happening. All too often organisations have ignored, or sometimes forgotten, the importance of a skilled and competent workforce. Even at the international level of the World Bank we can see a change of strategic direction, as development of human resources is recognised as a top priority.

Executive guide to preventing information technology disasters

Organisations of all kind, from healthcare to aerospace, are critically dependent in Information Technology systems. The prevention of catastrophic IT failure is now an essential part of management. The critical factor is not technology, but people and communication.

E-redesigning of society: towards experiential connectivity of generations in Lithuania

The paper reflects on the unique experience of social and technological development in Lithuania since the regaining of independence as a newly reshaped society constructing a distinctive competitive IST-based model at global level. This has presented Lithuanian pattern of how to integrate different experiences and relations between generations in implementing complex information society approaches. The resulting programme in general is linked to the Lisbon objectives of the European Union. The experience of transitional countries in Europe, each different but facing some common problems, may be useful to developing countries in Africa.

Working life across cultures: "Work Life 2000: Quality in Work" and occupational health education in developing countries.

The article reflects on the changing world of work, and the challenges presented to both occupational health and occupational health education. We draw on the 63 preparatory workshops and the international conference in the “Work Life 2000: Quality in Work” program, an initiative of the Swedish Presidency of the European Union. The International Commission on Occupational Health is introduced, with particular concentration on a current practical project initiated by the Department of Health in South Africa, intended to lead to a set of projects, networking for occupational health education in developing countries. The practical initiatives cast light on a new set of issues that arise when occupational health and safety crosses cultural barriers, and previously separate comparative cases are linked.

Work Life 2000 Yearbook 1: 1999

This volume reported the proceedings of a series of international research workshops in 1999, funded by the Swedish National Institute for Working Life, in preparation for the Swedish Presidency of the European Union in 2001.