Review of Engineering Culture - Control and Commitment in a High-Tech Corporation, by G. Kunda

Review of Engineering Culture - Control and Commitment in a High-Tech Corporation, by G. Kund

Review of The Challenger Launch Decision: Risky Technology, Culture and Deviance at NASA

Reviews the book The Challenger Launch Decision: Risky Technology, Culture and Deviance at NASA, by Diane Vaughan

Review of Workers in a Lean World: Unions in the International Economy/Illusions of Opportunity: Employees Expectations and Workplace Inequality

Review of Workers in a Lean World: Unions in the International Economy by Kim Moody and Illusions of Opportunity: Employees Expectations and Workplace Inequality by Sonia Ospina

Why American Engineers Aren\u27t Unionized - A Comparative Perspective

This article presents a comparative perspective on why U.S. engineers are not unionized. The decline of organized labor in the U.S. has stimulated a new interest in comparative research. Explanations of the prolonged stagnation and contraction of the U.S. labor movement that focus on the U.S. alone run the risk of assuming that the U.S. case is normal, and that the decline of organized labor is a structural inevitability of advanced capitalism. By broadening their scope to include other industrialized countries with similar political economies and different labor histories, students of the labor movement will be better able to identify what is truly distinctive in the U.S. case, and whether it is its distinctiveness or its typicality that accounts for the apparent demise of the U.S. labor movement. One phenomena comparative labor studies reveal is that labor unions in Canada and Western Europe have been more successful than their U.S. counterparts in organizing employees outside of the traditional strongholds of industrial workers and public employees. One key task for students of U.S. organized labor is to account for its relative failure, when compared to its counterparts in other industrialized countries, to organize new constituencies

System, Society and Dominance Effects in Cross-National Organizational Analysis

Current cross-national organisational theory remains tied to stark polarisation between convergence and divergence, universal and relative, frames of analysis. Attempts at synthesis between these forces allow for, but do not always explain, why the organisation of work should be constantly pressured to conform to one particular `best practice\u27. Our approach examines three sources of external influence on work organisation practices: (i) the economic mode of production; (ii) national legacies and institutional patterns; and (iii) `best practice\u27 or universal modernisation strategies generated and diffused by the `society-in-dominance\u27 within the global economy at a particular period of time. In other words, the influences upon work within a particular country are the result of a three-way interaction of what we call system effects, societal effects and dominance effects. All societies are marked by these three influences, although the order of influence varies historically and between societies

Organizing Engineering Work - A Comparative-Analysis

This article analyzes the organization of engineering work in six industrial capitalist countries. It identifies four major models for the organization of engineering work; the engineering profession did not succeed in achieving professional “closure” in any of the six countries under review. A review of the historical evolution of the organization of engineering work in each of the six countries reveals that engineering has been shaped by a complex interaction among the profession itself, employers, the state, labor, and preindustrial forces. However, none of the national variations on the four models for organizing engineering labor is stable or without internal contradiction because of the ambiguous “intermediate” position of engineers

Organizing Engineering Work - A Comparative-Analysis

This article analyzes the organization of engineering work in six industrial capitalist countries. It identifies four major models for the organization of engineering work; the engineering profession did not succeed in achieving professional “closure” in any of the six countries under review. A review of the historical evolution of the organization of engineering work in each of the six countries reveals that engineering has been shaped by a complex interaction among the profession itself, employers, the state, labor, and preindustrial forces. However, none of the national variations on the four models for organizing engineering labor is stable or without internal contradiction because of the ambiguous “intermediate” position of engineers

Review of The Challenger Launch Decision: Risky Technology, Culture and Deviance at NASA

Reviews the book The Challenger Launch Decision: Risky Technology, Culture and Deviance at NASA, by Diane Vaughan

Changing contours of work

Tharough engaging vignettes and ric data, this texk rrames the development of jobs and employment opportunities in an international comparative perspectiv