How do new organizational practices shape production jobs ? Results from a matched employer-employee survey in French manufacturing

"In this paper, we use a French matched employer-employee survey, the C.O.I. survey, conducted in 1997, to describe the general features of organizational change in manufacturing firms with more than fifteen employees. We work with a sample of 3,286 firms and two samples of “core” employees (wi...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Greenan, Nathalie, Mairesse, Jacques
Institution:ETUI-European Trade Union Institute
Format: TEXT
Language:French
Published: Noisy-le-Grand 2003
CEET
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.labourline.org/KENTIKA-19294849124910120219-How-do-new-organizational-prac.htm
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author Greenan, Nathalie
Mairesse, Jacques
author_facet Greenan, Nathalie
Mairesse, Jacques
collection Library items
description "In this paper, we use a French matched employer-employee survey, the C.O.I. survey, conducted in 1997, to describe the general features of organizational change in manufacturing firms with more than fifteen employees. We work with a sample of 3,286 firms and two samples of “core” employees (with at least a year of seniority): 2,612 blue collars and 1,162 technicians and supervisors. We have two main aims: discuss new ways of measuring organizational change, allowing for diversity in its orientation and analyze empirically how new organizational practices have been shaping production jobs in French manufacturing firms throughout the nineties. In the first section, we describe the statistical anatomy of organizational change, using the point of view given by management in the business section of the C.O.I survey. We then turn to the labor force section of the survey where we analyze the patterns of work organization in our samples of blue collars and of technicians and supervisors. We finally confront the information gathered on these two different levels. We find that a common ingredient to new organizational practices is the production of a collective knowledge on the shop floor allowing continuous improvement of the production process. In other words, organizational changes would drive a new way of rationalizing knowledge making where production workers are asked to explicitly contribute to technological progress. The structure of blue-collar effort becomes more complex as they are required to participate intensively both in information and production flows. However, some results suggest that the core of organizational changes in the nineties has changed direction after the 1993 recession, switching from product and quality strategies to low cost strategies and implying more pressure on the work of technicians and supervisors and a slowdown in the “enrichment” of blue-collar jobs." (Authors' abstract)
format TEXT
geographic France
id 19294849124910120219_332b6474daae4a4d994d6cfea2eaff3c
institution ETUI-European Trade Union Institute
is_hierarchy_id 19294849124910120219_332b6474daae4a4d994d6cfea2eaff3c
is_hierarchy_title How do new organizational practices shape production jobs ? Results from a matched employer-employee survey in French manufacturing
language French
physical 45 p.
Paper
publishDate 2003
publisher Noisy-le-Grand
CEET
spellingShingle Greenan, Nathalie
Mairesse, Jacques
industrial production
manufacturing industry
new work practices
survey
technological change
work organization
How do new organizational practices shape production jobs ? Results from a matched employer-employee survey in French manufacturing
title How do new organizational practices shape production jobs ? Results from a matched employer-employee survey in French manufacturing
topic industrial production
manufacturing industry
new work practices
survey
technological change
work organization
url https://www.labourline.org/KENTIKA-19294849124910120219-How-do-new-organizational-prac.htm