This paper examines the role which multinational corporation (MNC) branch plants play in the development and maintenance of the boundaries between technical occupations in the Irish Republic. In doing so, it examines recent attempts to characterise such workers as incumbents of `high-discretion high-trust' work roles and also as `trusted workers'. This paper argues that such attempts are lacking in explanatory power because they fail to account for other factors. In the Irish case, these include levels of qualification, the higher status of theoretical and abstract knowledge, the fusion of technical and managerial functions and the greater organisational importance of the more senior technical positions.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Armstrong, P. (1987) `Engineers, Management and Trust', Work, Employment and Society, 1, 4, 421-440.
2.
Armstrong, P. (1989) `Management, Labour Process and Agency', Work, Employment and Society, 3, 3, 307-322.
3.
Bacharach, S.B., Bamberger, P. and Conley, S.C. (1991) `Negotiating the "See-saw" of managerial strategy: a resurrection of the study of professionals in organizational theory', Research in the Sociology of Organizations, 8, 217-238.
4.
Barley, S.R. and Bechky, B.A. (1994) `In the backrooms of science: the work of technicians in science labs', Work and Occupations, 21, 1, 85-126.
5.
Blackburn, R.M. and Mann, M. (1979) The Working Class in the Labour Market, London: Macmillan.
6.
Causer, G. and Jones, C. (1990) `Technical workers, work organisation and career structures in the electronics industry'. Paper presented to the Organisation and Control of the Labour Process Conference, Aston University, 28th-30th March.
7.
Child, J. and Fulk, J. (1982) `Maintenance of occupational control: the case of the professions', Work and Occupations, 9, 2, 155-192.
8.
Clark, J., McLoughlin, I., Rose, H. and King, R. (1988) The Process of Technological Change: New Technology and Social Choice in the Workplace, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
9.
Clark, J. (1991) `Skill changes in maintenance work in British Telecom: an alternative view', New Technology, Work and Employment, 6, 2, 138-143.
10.
Collins, R. (1990) `Changing conceptions in the sociology of the professions', in R. Torstendahl and M. Burrage (eds.) The Formation of Professions: Knowledge, State and Strategy, London: Sage Publications, 11-23.
11.
Crawford, S. (1989) Technical Workers in an Advanced Society: the Work, Careers and Politics of French Engineers, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
12.
Edwards, P.K. (1990) `Class and work: in search of the connections', Warwick Papers in Industrial Relations, No. 17, IRRU, School of Industrial and Business Studies, University of Warwick.
13.
EOLAS (1989) Electronics Manpower Survey, Dublin: EOLAS (The Irish Science and Technology Agency).
14.
Fox, A. (1974) Beyond Contract: Work, Power and Trust Relations, London: Faber and Faber.
15.
Gambetta, D. (1988) Trust, Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
16.
Goldthorpe, J.H. (1982) `On the service class, its formation and future', in A. Giddens and G. MacKenzie (eds.) Social Class and the Division of Labour, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 162-185.
17.
Goldthorpe, J.H. and Whelan, C.T. (eds.) (1992) The Development of Industrial Society in Ireland, Oxford: Oxford University Press for the British Academy.
18.
Granovetter, M. (1985) `Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness', American Journal of Sociology, 91, 3, 481-510.
19.
Horrell, S., Rubery, J. and Burchell, B. (1988) `Gender and Skills', ESRC Social Change and Economic Life Initiative, Working Paper No. 5, Nuffield College, Oxford.
20.
Hyman, R (1989) The Political Economy of Industrial Relations, London: Macmillan.
21.
Jaques, E. (1956) Measurement of Responsibility, London: Tavistock Publications.
22.
Jaques, E. (1961) Equitable Payment, London: Heinemann.
23.
Jenkins, R. (1982) `Managers, recruitment procedures and black workers', Working Papers on Ethnic Relations, No. 18, SSRC Research Unit on Ethnic Relations.
24.
Jones, B., Scott, P., Bolton, B. and Bramley, A. (1993) `Graduate engineers and British trans-national business: elite human resource or technical labourers', Human Resource Management Journal, 4, 1, 34-48.
25.
Kanter, RM. (1977) Men and Women of the Corporation, New York: Basic Books.
26.
Lee, G. and Smith, C. (1992) Engineers and Management: International Comparisons, London: Routledge.
27.
McGovern, P.G. (1993) Controlling Commitment: The Management of Technical Labour in Multi-national Firms, University of Oxford, unpublished D.Phil thesis.
28.
McGovern, P. (1995) `To retain or not to retain? Multinational firms and technical labour in the Irish Republic', Human Resource Management Journal, 5, 4, 7-23.
29.
McGovern, P. (1996) `Multinational firms and qualification inflation in a hi-tech labour market', New Technology, Work and Employment11, 1, 67-77.
30.
Meiksins, P. and Smith, C. (1993) `Organizing Engineering Work: A Comparative Analysis', Work and Occupations, 20, 2, 123-146.
31.
Murray, P. and Wickham, J. (1987) `The last boy's club? Training, education and gender in electronics factories'. Paper prepared for the Annual Conference of The Sociological Association of Ireland, April.
32.
O'Canainn, A. (1995) `Herr Ingenieur or the grease monkey? How the managerial prospects of engineers are perceived', Human Resource Management Journal, 5, 4, 74-92.
33.
Roberts, B.C., Loveridge, R., Gennard, J., Eason, J.V. and others (1972) Reluctant Militants: A study of Industrial Technicians, London: Heinemann Educational Books.
34.
Roche, WK. (1991) `Trust dynamics and organizational integration: the micro-sociology of Alan Fox', British Journal of Sociology, 42, 1, 95-113.
35.
Savage, M., Dickens, P. and Fielding, T (1988) `Some social and political implications of the contemporary fragmentation of the "service class" in Britain', International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 12, 3, 455-475.
36.
Savage, M., Barlow, J., Dickens, P. and Fielding, T. (1992) Property, Bureaucracy and Culture: Middle-Class Formation in Contemporary Britain, London: Routledge.
37.
Seidel, J.V. (1988) The Ethnograph, Version 3.0. Qualis Research Associates, P.O. Box 2070, Amherst, MA 01004.
38.
Smith, S. (1987) The Chemical and Allied Products Industry in Ireland, Dublin: AnCo The Industrial Training Authority.
39.
Smith, C. (1987) Technical Workers: Class, Labour and Trade Unionism, London: Macmillan.
40.
Smith, C. (1990a) `How Engineers are Formed?', Work, Employment and Society, 4, 3, 451-470.
41.
Smith, C. (1990b) `Technical workers: A class and organizational analysis', in S. R. Clegg (ed.) Organization Theory and Class analysis: New Approaches and New Issues, New York: De Gruyter, 232-257.
42.
Webb, J. (1992) `The mismanagement of innovation', Sociology, 26, 3, 471-492.
43.
Whalley, P. (1986) The Social Production of Technical work: the Case of British Engineers, London: Macmillan.
44.
Wickham, J. (1989) `The over educated engineer?', Irish Business and Administrative Research, 10, 19-33.
45.
Windolf, P. and Wood, S. with Hohn, H.W. and Manwaring, T. (1988) Recruitment and Selection in the Labour Market: A Comparative Study of Britain and West Germany, Aldershot: Avebury.
46.
Winstanley, D. (1991) `Recruitment Strategies and Managerial Control of Technological Staff', in C. Smith, D. Knights and H. Willmott (eds.) White-Collar Work: the Non-manual Labour Process, London: Macmillan.
47.
Zussman, R. (1985) Mechanics of the Middle Class: Work and Politics Among American engineers, Berkeley: University of California Press.
