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completely unacknowledged by NEO theorists, who fail to recognise the diversity of employment and skill trends. We will return to the issue of the growth of knowledgeability in work in the final section of the chapter.

Corporate structures: organised capitalism

The rhetoric of replacing centralised bureaucracy by decentralised, ‘disorganised’ networks does not rely solely on the balance of large and small firms, but on the nature of modern corporate structure. Hierarchical structures are more durable than the business literature would have us believe. In fact a consistent theme of previous studies has been the gap between the potential for decentralisation and skill enhancement, and the reality of subordination to traditional functional structures, narrowly defined cost efficiency and conservative cultures (Cummings and Blumberg, 1987; Child, 1987; Williams, 1988).

However, there is little doubt that there have been considerable changes in organisational structure. Traditional bureaucracies are, in one sense, being broken up with the creation of a myriad of smaller units such as profit centres and internal markets within large firms. Business periodically adjusts the balance and mechanisms of central control as it seeks to adapt to new economic and political conditions, though these vary considerably by sector and country. In the UK, current changes are part of a longer-term shift away from ‘Americanised’ strategies and structures which were relatively unresponsive to market flexibility and product and process innovation (McKinlay, 1999). However, both the intent and the outcome of such changes have been misunderstood and misrepresented. We have to distinguish between the delegation of operational autonomy, and strengthened financial and other controls by the central structures.

Just as studies of the labour process such as Shaiken et al. (1986) show that the primary managerial concern remains that of centralising control and reducing unpredictability, so analysis of new corporate structures demonstrates that decentralisation of the form is accompanied by centralisation of the substance of power. At companies such as GEC and British Telecom, the system of profit centres relies on accounting structures, marketing forecasts and limits on the discretion of plant managers to control and monitor costs (Hallet, 1988; McKinlay, 1999). As Hallet observes, ‘District managers, supposedly freer than ever in the age of devolution, complain of now being more tightly restricted by budgets imposed from above over which they have less influence’ (1988: 35). Research into newly privatised utilities in the UK report a large gap between the rhetoric of autonomous units transacting with each other and the reality that profit centres are mostly monopoly suppliers to each other. In addition they are closely controlled through corporate business plans, capital expenditure, employment and revenue allocations and targets (O’Connell Davidson, 1993). ‘Empowered’ managers are often equally as sceptical as their shop floor equivalents:

I’m going to be constrained by my management. My management is going to be constrained by their management. And so on up the ladder.The chairman of the board is going to be constrained by the board and the financial market. (Product manager quoted in Potterfield, 1999: 84).

The sheer spatial and functional diversity of units at national and international level,

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particularly following complex patterns of merger and acquisition, has led to a considerable strengthening of financial control systems that give corporate headquarters much more sophisticated means of monitoring and regulating the management of subsidiaries (Thompson, Wallace and Flecker 1992; Ackroyd and Proctor, 1998). A survey of the largest companies operating in the UK revealed that in a substantial majority, ‘headquarters exerts tight controls over business unit operations and profitability targets are not devolved’ (Armstrong et al., 1994: 13). This may vary by function, with more autonomy devolved in areas such as human resource policy, though constrained by strict budget allocations (Sisson and Marginson, 1995; McKinlay, 1999). In such areas the route to centralisation is likely to be indirect. As we saw in Chapter 6, the capacity of transnational companies to establish standardised management systems and production organisation is facilitated by their ability to transfer know-how and ‘best practice’ within the organisation. The real networks are increasingly globally integrated production or service chains, with standardisation rather than local autonomy the main feature (Thompson et al., 1998).

Disaggregation or de-concentration of functions and operations is another real trend, though, as we have seen, the evidence for some of its supposed forms such as flexible specialisation and industrial districts is vastly exaggerated (Amin, 1989). A much more characteristic and bureaucratic mechanism of disaggregation has been franchising. Case studies (Felstead, 1994) demonstrate that business formats imposed by the central company dictate precise procedures and criteria governing operations, finance, and transfer of ‘know-how’. In the case of the shift from direct employment to franchised operations in milk delivery, managers contradicted the new philosophy of partnership between company and franchisee. They admitted that the system of supervising roundsmen was exactly the same as before, and that their work was closely prescribed by the franchise contract, with the added ‘bonus’ that the franchisees had lost all previous employment rights and benefits. Like the self-employed workers studied by Rainbird (1991), any autonomy was largely lost in longer days, intensified labour and other signs of self-exploitation. Even where groups such as freelance media workers have a reasonable degree of telework autonomy, research shows that almost half are dependent on a single client for business, often their former employer (Baines, 1999). UK Labour Force Survey data reveals that 12 per cent of the self-employed had only one customer and that 7 per cent were previously an employee of their main customer (Teasdale, 2000: 9).

The reality of dependency has also been established in Rainnie’s (1988) authoritative study of small–large firm relationships. In industries such as clothing, the large firm is able to dictate methods and profit margins, transfer costs and uncertainties to the smaller unit. This is similar to supplier networks in JIT systems. Nissan established the first British and possibly European example of a spatially concentrated production process (Crowther and Garrahan: 1987). A large site enabled the company to maximise influence over the industrial environment and the supply of components. Car manufacturers have been able to put a similar squeeze on component suppliers. The Fiat Melfi plant in Southern Italy includes 22 component makers who simply run their products onto the production line.

Benetton has been held up as the archetypal post-bureaucratic firm. In fact, such companies indicate the existence of a new type of extended hierarchy that takes in decentralised and desegregated units, but still has the powerful large firm at the centre. As Wood (1989a: 24) observes, ‘the Benetton case does not match up to the

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image of a nexus of firms all flexibly specialised and employing highly committed, skilled workforces. It appears if anything more like a network dominated by the large firm along the lines of Atkinson’s flexible firm’. Harrison (1994: 25), too, refers to Benetton’s complicated layering of high-end design in the core, sub-contractors and homeworkers as a hierarchical production system. For him, this is just one example of ‘concentration without centralisation’. Instead of dwindling, concentrated economic power is changing shape through downsizing and disaggregation, networks and alliances. But at the centre remain big players: ‘production may be decentralised, while power finance, distribution, and control remain concentrated among the big firms’ (1994: 20).

What about the other sense of hierarchy – removing the middle layers? Again, this is undoubtedly a significant trend. But delayering is not synonymous with the destruction of hierarchy, at least not if it means any diminution of centralised power. Paradoxically, the thinning-out of middle levels of command can actually lead to the power of strategic decision-makers increasing. In an organisational world constituted through line management, direct reporting and accountability, the removal of intermediate levels, with their attendant committees and other structures, also removes the potential for removing obstacles to central control and coalitions of countervailing power. For example, in some firms, ‘radical delegation of decision-making also had the explicit objective of reducing the power of divisional “barons” and sharpening executive responsibilities’ (McKinlay, 1999: 155).

McKinlay also details the growth of qualitative measures, such as rates of new product and process innovation and customer satisfaction that complement budgetary controls. This is particularly the case in the public sector, where forms of control and co-ordination based on professional autonomy and self-regulation have been under attack from expanded corporate and state influence. In higher education, universities have had to respond to research and course evaluation exercises through external funding agencies by greatly increasing the monitoring and control of performance at departmental and individual level: ‘increased bureaucracy becomes necessary to cope with the proliferation of control, audit, monitoring, reporting and accounting functions that carry out the tasks previously undertaken by academics themselves’ (Parker and Jary, 1994: 7). In schools, a recent survey showed 91 per cent of teachers and 95 per cent of lecturers identified a growth of bureaucracy as being one of the main factors shaping their recent experience of work (Guardian, 7 and 14 March 2000).

IT has a powerful role in all these processes, for example when automated purchasing cuts out the need for specialised functions. But the idea that technology automatically redistributes power and democratises information flows is both naïve and deterministic. Though IT is flexible enough to allow for varied uses, the vast increase in information available on work activities can in itself reproduce managerial power to monitor, control and predict performance. Giordano accurately observes that this means ‘the development of an industrial organisation whose planning and financial decisions are centralised and whose operations are frequently decentralised and highly interdependent’ (1985: 11). The chairman of the international conglomerate ABB, whose global information system helps control the 400 companies and 240 000 employees gives an example of this:

We also have the glue of transparent, centralised reporting through a management information system called Abacus. Every month Abacus collects

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performance data on our 4500 profit centres and compares performance with budgets and forecasts. You can aggregate and disaggregate results by business segments, countries and companies within countries. (Taylor, 1991: 100)

The practices described in this section are incompatible with images of disorganisation and firms being ‘out of control’. In contrast to the rhetoric of ‘disorganisation’, capitalism remains ‘organised’, whether at the macro or micro level; though structures of control and co-ordination change. While greater complexity is undoubtedly being introduced into those processes, there can be little doubt that whether it is TQM, financial monitoring or integrated computer-based models to predict yield and return, standardised central planning systems remain an essential feature of business practice.

A new flexible firm?

The less theoretical cousin of NEO perspectives has been the flexible firm model (Atkinson, 1984) that laid out a core–periphery explanation based on maximising the possibilities for functional and numerical flexibility. Though less sweeping in its range, the model made claims of sufficient strength and visibility to attract a degree of criticism similar to that of flexible specialisation/post-Fordism. Pollert (1988a, 1988b) argued that both share vital commonalties, including a celebration of the market and consumer sovereignty, legitimation of the view that the solution to organisational and economic problems lies in altering the behaviour of labour, the resurrection of a dual labour market analysis, and a futurological discourse underwritten by a post-indus- trial analysis in which flexibility marks the vital break from the past. In a memorable phrase, Pollert observes that both flexibility arguments fuse ‘description, prediction and prescription’ (1988a: 43).

These points are widely accepted, and a considerable scepticism is now attached to the claims of strategic intent and novelty surrounding flexibility. Legge (1995) notes that there have been three types of problem raised by critics: empirical support, conceptual clarity and ideological agenda. With respect to the latter, though the IMS did function indirectly as intermediary between employers and government policy in the labour market, description was always more important than any prescriptive message. How accurate, then was the description? We tried to summarise the evidence on extent of change in the previous chapter. Teasdale’s analysis of UK Labour Force Survey data sums the picture up succinctly: ‘there is little sign of irrevocable long term trends or of recent dramatic shifts . . . [People] will continue to spend most of their working lives in “conventional” jobs as full time permanent employees. Indeed with women spending more of their life in the labour market, the conventional job will be the experience of a greater proportion of the population’ (2000: 26). But what of issues of conceptual accuracy in flexibility models?

The idea of a new core workforce has attracted a significant body of critical comment. A central point has been that the multiskilling at the heart of functional flexibility represents a modest enlargement of the range of tasks required rather than any more fundamental change in the direction of skill enhancement (Elger, 1991), and that the pace of change has been slowed by worker resistance (Turnbull, 1986; Storey, 1992). Geary (1995) argues that employers have been seeking to change the work–effort bargain through removing demarcation boundaries rather

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than instituting a new model of skill. The novelty of flexibility agreements can be challenged by making comparison to the productivity deals and general manning agreements of the 1960s that also reduced demarcation and restrictive practices in exchange for greater rewards (Towers, 1987; MacInnes, 1987). Others have pointed to the somewhat underwhelming evidence collected by the IMS itself, for example in the NEDO study (1986). This found that though changes were widespread, they were uneven by sector, there was little evidence for any extensive flexibility, and that the changes themselves were mostly the result of short-term costsaving and threats of job loss, without sinking deeper roots or employment cultures at the ‘core’.

Such observations coincided with scepticism in other commentaries (Elger, 1987; Hakim, 1990; Hunter and MacInnes, 1992) which raises the possibility that talk of flexibility may often be a post-hoc managerial rationalisation, rather than a product of the valued goal of strategic planning. Research on FMS confirms that in most cases new arrangements were piecemeal, improvised and contained a variety of forms of skill utilisation (Jones, 1998). The degree of strategic intent may, however, vary across countries, demonstrating the ‘societal effects’ we discussed in Chapter 6. O’Reilly’s (1992) research on banking contrasts functional flexibility accompanied by training and upgrading in France, compared to its ad-hoc manner and orientation to work intensification in the UK.

A highly critical examination of the evidence in relation to the peripheral category was made by Pollert (1988a, 1988b). She pointed out that evidence has tended to conflate long-term changes and standard practices to vary production with genuinely new employment patterns, an argument supported by Marginson’s (1991) distinction between high level of use and change in use of non-standard employment. Pollert went on to use a variety of sources to show that most of the figures for temporary, part-time, homeworking, self-employment and subcontracted work were greatly exaggerated. Again, where there has been an increase it is often on the basis of already-established practices, and on the basis of state sponsorship in the public sector rather than management strategy in the private. Finally, the use of ‘peripheral’ itself does not really do justice to the centrality of such forms of work, particularly that done by women, to a modern capitalist economy.

Most of the worst aspects are at the ‘periphery’. Trends towards decentralisation in industries such as clothing are resulting in a modern ‘burgeoning sweatshop economy’ based on women and ethnic minority workers (Mitter, 1986). In an interrelated way the purpose of some policies is not flexibility per se, but the avoidance of remaining legislation that protects employee rights. For example Italian laws giving job security can be avoided in firms with less than 15 on the payroll. The reality of homeworking is more likely to be superexploitation and casualisation rather than the happy, autonomous employee in the electronic cottage (Allen and Wolkowtiz, 1987; Phizacklea, 1987). In fact flexibility analyses largely set aside the issues of gender and ethnicity by recasting dual labour markets as benign, progressive or inevitable (Pollert, 1988a).

A precise differentiation between sectors is not always possible. Fast food chains are one of the fastest growing parts of the economy. But this ‘core’ sector, employing mainly the young, black people and women on part-time and unsocial hours, has workers with decidedly peripheral employment conditions (Transnationals Information Centre, 1987). Alternatively, one can have regular, continuous employment such

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as that experienced by contract cleaners, but still be insecure due to the particularistic choices available to clients and incoming management (Allen and Henry, 1994: 9); or be performing core functions such as research and development, but gradually be losing privileged status due to competitive, external contracting (Whittington, 1991a). Taken together with the problem of whether the model is a strategy to aspire to or a description of existing practices (Legge, 1995), this illustrates the conceptual ambiguities involved in identifying and operationalising the central categories.

These critiques have provided an important corrective to exaggerated flexibility claims and to weaknesses in the flexible firm model. However, for all the unevenness of theory and practice, looking back on the last two decades it is uncontestable that functional and numerical flexibility are significant global trends. While full flexibility was always likely to remain a ‘holy grail’ that is desired but never quite attained (IPM Digest, 1986: 11), employment dualism is a reflection of increasing reorganisation of person–power resources and control over the headcount. Proctor et al. (1994) rightly point out that it is too easy to adopt stringent criteria for strategic intent by employers that prevent a recognition of emergent strategy demonstrated through consistent patterns and decisions. This judgement reflects the broader argument about strategy and control made in Chapter 8.

Furthermore, commonalties between flexible firm and flexible specialisation can be overstated. Precisely because one is a management policy model and the other a grand theory, the flexible firm can be utilised in some instances as an explanatory tool, without the burden of any wider conceptual and historical baggage. This argument has been forcefully extended by Proctor et al. (1994), who note that almost all contributors to the flexibility debate carefully distinguish between their descriptions and critiques of flexible specialisation (or post-Fordism) and the flexible firm. It is perfectly possible to accept that employers may find the labour control potential of the latter more attractive and more feasible than ushering in the return of the craft worker.

Once universalistic empirical claims are scaled down, it is possible to identify more ‘local’ flexibility strategies. While, as we saw in Chapter 12, there is no automatic link between labour market deregulation at national level and the incidence of non-standard labour, it is perfectly possible to recognise state or employer action aimed at shifting the balance of power through flexibility in labour markets. The embrace of labour market deregulation and legal weakening of employee protection has been particularly prevalent in countries such as New Zealand and Australia where the state has traditionally played a significant role. Under right-wing governments in both countries, there has been a reciprocal growth of employment insecurity and some forms of non-standard work, notably of a casual and part-time nature (Ryan, 1992; Burgess and Strachan, 1999)

We have already indicated the limited progress towards any form of job security in large firms. In some sectors it has been the reverse. For example, the British and American steel industries have both re-hired redundant workers under subcontractors with significant loss of pay, benefits and health and safety protection (Fevre, 1986; Mather, 1987). The most dramatic example is provided by the Burton Group in the UK who announced in 1993 that they were turning most of their retail employees into part-timers who had to wait each day for a phone call to indicate whether they would be needed! Such concern for the casualties of flexibility echoes experience from Japan, where the commonly referred-to six ‘pillars’ of company practice are lifetime

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employment, company welfare, quality consciousness, enterprise unions, consensus management and seniority-based reward systems. Even taking this sympathetically as an ideal type, evidence suggests that it applies at best to the 20 per cent of core employees in large private and public corporations (Briggs, 1987; Dickens and Savage, 1987). The 80 per cent working in smaller firms and for subcontractors are largely excluded from fringe benefits, company welfare and job security, as (obviously) are the large number of those on temporary contracts, and casual and part-time workers within both sectors. Such secondary labour market characteristics are indeed found within the big companies themselves, as Kamata’s (1982) graphic account of life as a temporary worker at Toyota illustrates. Contemporary accounts indicate that the deliberate measures to erode employment security and increase the number of workers on non-standard contracts are characteristic of a growing number of large Japanese corporations (Kyotani, 1999).

While many researchers would probably be happy to accept a scaled down, less prescriptive version of the flexible firm, there have been attempts to recast the model. Using evidence from a database of large British manufacturing firms, Ackroyd and Proctor (1998) argue that a distinctive pattern of production at plant level can be identified and described as ‘the new flexible firm’. They agree with the ‘old’ model, that labour is a central source of flexibility, but can see no evidence that it is associated with highly skilled polyvalence. Influenced by their diversified activities and finance-based forms of control, such firms have substituted flexible labour and organisation for capital investment. Managers work within a framework of reorganisation and re-regu- lation of existing resources, focusing on elimination of unproductive activities, broadening roles and responsibilities and adjusting external relations, rather than constituting qualitatively new practices.

While this contribution is valuable, it is a description of a particular ‘local’ strategic approach that may not be as accurate for the manufacturing regimes of other countries, or indeed in the service sector. We also have to be able to identify the varied and sometimes new ways in which flexibility, work and employment are constructed.

Changing employment relations and the new insecurity

NEO arguments recognise that employment relations may be less secure than in the past and that increased flexibility for firms has disrupted the old ‘psychological’ contract-based job tenure and long career ladders. It is widely accepted that downsizing and delayering have had an impact on middle managers. However in NEO writings, the consequences are seen in predominantly benign terms, the new scenarios creating opportunities for a bargain to be struck between organisations wanting expertise and commitment, and highly mobile professionals who can use their knowledge to increase employability and build portfolio careers within occupational communities (Heckscher, 1997). There are certainly some glowing reports of the work conditions and employment packages of highly mobile net workers in the US, of whom 15 per cent are apparently offered free massages and 31 per cent free dry cleaning (Guardian, 21 September 2000). But how typical are they?

Given the somewhat diffuse nature of the ‘portfolio’ category we do not really have any reliable indication of the numbers involved. Census data in the UK suggests an upper limit of about 2.5 per cent of the total workforce involved in teleworking (see Baines, 1999: 20, for more detail). But there are problems with how to calculate

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numbers from the diverse composition of people who work in some way from the home. Taking a narrower definition of those whose main work is in the home, Teasdale argues that ‘homeworking proper’ constitutes just 600 000 people. Noting that these numbers have not changed, he notes that, ‘It would appear that teleworking has changed how homeworkers do their job rather than making more homeworking possible and moving jobs from larger workplaces’ (2000: 24).

On another front, while temporary help agencies are growing, particularly in the US, the figures do not tell us whether those involved are reluctant conscripts or enthusiastic adherents. What we can say is that there is a huge difference in significance between the casualties or survivors of corporate restructuring, and the smaller number of people with scarce skills who can set themselves up as independent contractors. The little evidence available suggests that the growth in contingent work is primarily driven by changing employer preferences (Goldin and Applebaum, 1992; Burchell et al., 1999).

The problem with the benign view is that the new social or psychological contract is a somewhat one-sided ‘bargain’. Employees are being asked unconditionally to invest more of themselves and work collaboratively in the job, while any employer promises are purely conditional; the result is a ‘collectivisation of effort and decollectivisation of risk’ (Burchell et al., 1999: 60). This is recognised by some NEO theorists: ‘In all the talk about the new responsibilities of employees, there is little talk about the new responsibilities of managers . . . the fact is that most employees feel that they are the company’s most expendable resource’ (Hamel and Prahalad, 1996: 239). Furthermore, there is little indication that employers are living up to expectations of return investment. Not only are employees being asked to take over responsibility for career development, studies show that employers are making less investment in training and skill development, in part because of fear that such investment will be lost through redundancy or exit from their firm (see Cappelli, 1995: 576–7). Contrary to the portfolio worker argument, management frequently tries to convert contractors with the most knowledge into permanent workers, precisely because of this (Ó Riain, 1998: 294, 298).

The impact on employees goes far wider than the ‘“casualties” expelled from core to periphery because they cannot add value’ (Handy, 1995: 6–7). As Cappelli (1995: 589) notes, decreasing job security, job switching and flatter hierarchies, contrary to the flexible firm model, are not a core–periphery issue. Downsizing and delayering have become central to successive waves of corporate restructuring, as firms seek ways of cutting costs to improve financial performance and meet competitive pressures. There is a threefold impact on employees, especially in middle management: the removal or diminution of career ladders, greater insecurity, and intensification of work for the survivors of restructuring. This holds good across a number of countries, including the US (Cappelli, 1995); Australia (Bramble, Parry and O’Brien, 1996); New Zealand (Inkson, 1993), Britain (Institute of Management, 1995, 1996) and Japan (Japan Labour Bulletin, 1 May 1994), though there are variations, such as slightly increasing job tenure among women and the retention of internal labour markets and career structures in the public sector.

While a number of studies of job tenure have shown greater than expected stability (Burgess and Rees, 1996), and an increase in tenure for women (Teasdale, 2000: 17), it is important to distinguish between job stability and insecurity. As Burchell et al. (1999: 21) observe, their survey and others demonstrate that professional workers have

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gone from the most secure to the most insecure group between 1986 and 1997. Yet greater uncertainty in the external labour market influences employees to stick with their downsized organisations. As these are general trends, it is not possible for employees to ‘act out their frustration with the break in the psychological contract’ (Cappelli, 1995: 588). Given that overt resistance is small and corporate performance on balance improving, it would seem that organisations have not incurred any significant ‘costs’ from this broken bargain. This interpretation, however, would be mistaken. Both case studies (for example, Newell and Dopson, 1996) and surveys (see Cappelli, 1995: 586) show sharp declines in employee commitment and morale, particularly in downsized companies. Moreover, demotivation and lack of identification with company goals are directly related to feelings of job insecurity (Burchell et al., 1999: 53–7).

Among the consequences of such changes are increased defensive behaviours and attitudes, with emphasis put on securing the positional advantage of individuals and functional groups, and exacerbation of competitive struggles to ‘impress’ the corporate hierarchy between generational, gender and professional groups among managers (Collinson and Collinson, 1997; Hallier and James, 1997; Mulholland, 1998). In one sense, employees have got the message: individual ambition, not organisational loyalty, is what matters. As Sennett (1998) eloquently argues, whether this is a solid basis for the kind of trust relations that can sustain creativity and commitment in organisations is another matter.

Participation, control and commitment in the labour process

The labour process is at the heart of any transformative ambition of NEO perspectives given the emphasis on the move from command and control, low-trust relations and fragmented tasks, towards creative, high-commitment, participative work. Empowerment has been the dominant rhetoric for change at this level. Yet, analysis of survey data (Harley, 1998) and case studies (Potterfield, 1999; Hales, 2000) shows that little connection exists between managerial mechanisms of empowerment and employee autonomy. Neither employee ‘voice’ in decisions nor ‘choice’ in work arrangements show any sign of substantive improvement, nor organisational hierarchy any sign of diminution. What empowerment does mean in practice we shall explore at various points in the rest of the chapter.

However, we have seen the argument shift from particularistic claims, such as those about enhanced involvement, to ones based on a general, strategic combination of high performance work practices (for example, Osterman, 1994). At times it can sound as if management has reached the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, with better soft (for example, trust) and hard (performance) outcomes. For example Huselid (1995: 635) argues that the combination of high-performance practices can improve knowledge, skills and motivation, and enhance retention of good employees, while reducing shirking and ‘encouraging’ non-performers to leave! However, in their favour, HPWS theorists, unlike pop management writers, are relatively hard-headed about what ‘high road’ practices consist of and have empirical tests for their presence. There is recognition that new work systems are not about general empowerment, but much more localised involvement, and are contingent in their positive and negative effects on workers (Applebaum and Berg, 2000). We saw in Chapter 11 that there is evidence for the existence of clusters of innovative practices in American and UK surveys.

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Claims concerning HPWS should, therefore, be taken seriously, but they do remain open to question. Scepticism focuses on two main areas. First, there is alternative evidence for the persistence of traditional ‘low-road’ managerial practices. Evaluating a range of British evidence, Marchington and Wilkinson (1998) observe that a range of direct participation measures have been implemented in a half-hearted, limited and ad hoc manner rather than in a holistic and integrated way. This is confirmed in a number of surveys (Millward, 1994; Wood and Albanese, 1995; Edwards et al., 1996). Many British firms continue to rely on labour flexibility and reorganisation of existing resources (Ackroyd and Proctor, 1998). Milkman (1998) reaches similar sceptical conclusions that most firms remain wedded to a low-trust, low-skill road from her own and other research on US workplaces. There is, of course, a variety of forms of research being considered here, which sometimes makes it difficult to make comparisons. Quantitative research that examines HPWS in its own terms is therefore of particular importance. Using large data sets from the British WERS and Australian AWIRS surveys, Harley, Scholarios and Ramsay (2000) examine the relationships between various high-commitment variables and employee outcomes such as job discretion and management relations, and the impact of such relationships on commitment, satisfaction and stress. Their findings give little comfort to HPWS theorists, as such management practices are only weakly related to outcomes such as greater discretion, and have limited links to any positive attitudinal data.

The second area of scepticism concerns the methodologies of many HPWS studies. While recognising that useful general pictures can be created on the spread of practices, it remains the case that the information gathered might also be superficial and therefore potentially misleading. The main drawback is the reliance on mail questionnaires or telephone surveys to managerial informants for data on practices and their impact. Such informants are being asked to report practices in which they have a role or status, and may slip into a normative or intentional mode (Guest, 1999a). Reliability is also problematic because in many case studies, ‘high-road’ companies are being identified as ‘transformed’ if a certain number of practices are present, telling little about the substance of any of the changes, or the extent to which they have really challenged traditional structures or correspond to employee experience (Biewener, 1997). Finally, in assessing performance outcomes, it is hard to disentangle the effects of direct participation from that of other variables and to determine the direction of causality (Marchington and Wilkinson, 1998). None of these factors are reasons for not doing survey work, and there have been attempts to overcome some of these limitations (for example, Guest, 1999b; Applebaum et al., 2000). They do, however, point to the need for extreme caution about interpreting the results. It is helpful for such approaches to be complemented by qualitative, case study methods, and to disaggregate the component features of high commitment or performance. With this in mind, the rest of the section focuses on three areas: autonomy, control and surveillance; skills, tasks and rules; and the effort bargain and work intensification.

Autonomy, control and surveillance

Scepticism concerning specific claims in the area of enhanced autonomy is informed by negative experience of previous waves of reform. Evidence from varied contexts, including Australia and the UK (D. Smith, 1987; Dunford and McGraw, 1987), showed that quality circles, briefing groups and other two-way communication