Shop-floor workers’ responses to quality management initiatives

Linda Glover and Mike Noon
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Linda Glover: De Montfort University, UK, lghum@dmu.ac.uk
Mike Noon: Queen Mary, University of London, UK, m.a.noon@qmul.ac.uk

Work, Employment & Society, 2005, vol. 19, issue 4, 727-745

Abstract: 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’.

Keywords: disciplined worker thesis; employee experiences; employee responses; human resource management; orientations to work; quality management; shop-floor workers (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:woemps:v:19:y:2005:i:4:p:727-745

DOI: 10.1177/0950017005058056

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