Documents shop floor level 10 results

"Recent contributions on the discrimination of black and minority ethnic (BME) groups in organizations have suggested that overt forms of discrimination are now ‘old-fashioned' and researchers are urged to focus on identifying different, ‘modern' forms of discrimination. These are, however, set against studies that continue to report evidence of overt racism in organizations. This article argues that it may be premature and potentially counterproductive to celebrate the demise of overt discrimination in that such binary classification (‘old-fashioned' and ‘modern') may discourage efforts to investigate the full gamut of experiences of BME groups. The article contends that additional insights will be gained by concurrently studying not only the victims and the perpetrators of discrimination but also the organizational context in which discrimination occurs. Through the theoretical lens of gatekeeping, the article presents evidence of shopfloor discrimination against BME groups that is neither fully overt nor entirely covert."

"In 1946, after a series of stormy strikes and a mass occupation at Ford Motor Company's plant in Dagenham, Essex, thousands of workers came together in a new branch of the Transport and General Workers Union. Later, in the early 1980s, a band of dedicated workplace activists brought branch 1/1107 to explosive life with support for a number working-class causes, from equal opportunities to the stunningly effective boycott of parts for South Africa. Notoriously Militant, which takes as its title a tabloid journalist's verdict on the branch, covers the history of Ford's Dagenham plant—and its roots in Henry Ford's early U.S. activities—from 20th-century shop-floor struggles to the 21st-century fight against plant closure. Based on original research and oral history, this study offers a primer for activists and analysts on the confrontation between worker militancy and the rigors of “Fordism.” This book is a lively look at working-class history as made daily by so-called “ordinary” workers, the links between basic workplace struggles and revolutionary conflict, the pressures toward “cooperation” between union and management, and the interweaving of gender and ethnicity issues with the class-based structures of a major industrial workplace."

"The term ‘sociotechnical' was first coined in the context of industrial democracy. In comparing two projects on shipping in Esso to help define the concept, the essential categories were found to be where systems boundaries were set, and what factors were considered to be relevant ‘human' characteristics. This is often discussed in terms of values. During the nineteen-sixties and seventies sociotechnical theory related to the shop-floor work system, and contingency theory to the organisation as a whole, the two levels being distinct. With the coming of information technology, this distinction became blurred; the term 'socio-structural' is proposed to describe the whole system. IT sometimes is the operating technology, it sometimes supports the operating technology, or it may sometimes be mistaken for the operating technology. This is discussed with reference to recent air accidents."

"First published in 1985, this multi-author volume discusses the contentious issue of the relationship between shop floor bargaining and the state. Previous studies of this area tended to focus on macro-economic concerns and labour legislation, avoiding a more empirical approach that would draw out specific examples of the relationship. The seven essays in this text attempt to redress the balance through rigorous analysis of historically particular circumstances and events. In doing so, they show that the state is not always the defender of managerial centralisation and give examples of government intervention to the benefit of shop floor autonomy. This highly informative volume draws attention to the contradictory and ambiguous nature of industrial relations, and will be of value to anyone with an interest in politics and economics."

"Quality management (QM) is now a mainstream management initiative, but few researchers have explored worker experiences of it. An exception is found in the work of Edwards et al. (1998) who make an important contribution by offering the ‘disciplined worker thesis' (meaning that workers prefer an ordered and disciplined work environment over disorganization or chaos) as a basis for explaining why workers may respond positively to QM initiatives, despite finding that these often require extra effort. We explore the utility of this concept by reference to empirical data from two detailed case studies. We found the disciplined worker thesis to be substantive but not comprehensive, in that it leaves some inexplicable results. In particular it does not capture the non-work factors that shaped workers responses to QM initiatives. As a result, we suggest that the conceptual remit of the disciplined worker thesis could usefully be enlarged to incorporate ‘orientations to work'."

"Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly discussed as an innova-tion enabler for the enhancement of circular economy (CE) approaches in industries. The further deployment of intelligent technologies is considered to be very promising particularly in remanufacturing, which can be regarded as an implementation approach of CE at a firm level. AI's potential to contribute to advancements in remanufacturing can be traced back to these modern technologies' extended capacities of supporting and assisting humans during rather manual processes which are regarded as more common in remanufacturing than in traditional linear production. As a result, we argue that in future application scenarios, humans are going to interact more often with AI agents who may direct and assist humans' behaviour and deci-sion-making processes. We assume that a better understanding of the specific dynamics and novel aspects of these kind of newly emerging human-AI systems is a key prerequisite for sustainable process innovation, particularly in remanufacturing organisations. However, empirical-based contributions about humans' beha-vioural changes in interaction with AI agents have so far been rather rare and limited, especially in the field of remanufacturing and CE. In this article, we seek to contribute to this gap in research by exploring the interaction between shop floor workers and an AI agent based on a case study research approach at a plant of a German automotive supplier that is remanufacturing used parts. We conducted semi-structured interviews among the shop floor workers who are involved in a joint decision-making task with an AI agent. We interpret the findings of our qualitative data in the light of related research in the field of AI in CE, AI implementation in organisation and human-AI interaction litera-ture. In summary, our analysis reveals 13 behavioural patterns that shop floor workers reported on referring to their interaction with the AI agent. The behavioural patterns are systemised into a cognitive, emotional and social dimension of a competence framework. These findings shall contribute to a more specific understanding about how humans interact with AI agents at work, while considering the specific context variables of the interaction paradigm and the AI agent's role during joint decision-making in a human-AI system. Implications for literature in the field of human-AI interaction as well as AI implementation in organisations with a particular focus on CE are discussed."