Adapting to Technology and Competition: A New Industrial Relations System for the 21st Century

This article draws heavily on my long-term research on the evolution of organizatonal strategies and structures. See Miles Raymond Snow Charles , Organization, Strategy, Structure, and Process (New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 1978); Miles Raymond Snow Charles , “Fit, Failure, and the Hall of Fame,” California Management Review, 26/3 (Spring 1984); Miles Raymond Snow Charles , “Organizations: New Concepts for New Forms,” California Management Review, 28/3 (Spring 1986). The discussion on unions and the industrial relations system builds on ideas presented at the First Berkeley Conference on Industrial Relations, 1982. A version of the present article was presented at the UCLA IIR conference on “Can California Be Competitive and Caring?” in May 1988. Strauss George Cappelli Peter O'Reilly Charles made helpful and important comments.

New York Times, June 21, 1987.

See Chandler Alfred Jr. , Strategy and Structure (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1982).

Though early giants such as Standard Oil and others also grew horizontally with great vigor until constrained legally.

See Galbraith Jay , “Strategy and Organization Planning,” Human Resources Management, 22, Nos. 1/2 (Spring/Summer 1983): 64–77.

For a good discussion of techniques firms are using to assure maximum flexibility, see Way Philip K. , “New Developments in Employment Flexibility,” IRRA, Proceedings of the IRRA Spring Meeting, pp.552–557.

Harrison Bennett Bluestone Barry , The Great U-Turn: Corporate Restructuring and the Polarizing of America (New York, NY: Basic Books, 1988), p.38.

Leavitt Harold J. Whisler Thomas L. , “Management in the 1980's,” Harvard Business Review (November/December 1958), pp.4–48.

For example, Stewart Reinick of Franklin Mint has reduced management layers from six to four in three years and has doubled the people reporting to him. See Fortune, September 26, 1988, p.52. See also the discussion of IBM's force reductions and restructure in the same article.

Cited in Frey Donald N. , “Reflections on Business and Technology”, Business in the Contemporary World, 1/1 (October 1988): 71–79.

“In the beginning 1980's, the average robot displaced 1.7 workers in a General Motors assembly plant and 2.7 workers in a three-shift manufacturing plant.” Shaiken Harley , Work Transformed: Automation and Labor in the Computer Age (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1986), p.168.

“From 1981–1984, 4.9 million workers were displaced from full-time jobs, including 2.8 million blue collar workers … blue collar displacement over this period totalled 11 % or 3.7% per year.” Mishel Larry Podgursky Michael , “The Incident of Displacement,” Industrial Relations Research Association: Proceedings of the Fortieth Annual Meeting, December 28–30, 1987, Chicago, pp.119–120.

Frey , op. cit; p.73.

Labor Research Association, Economic Notes, January/February 1988, pp. 1–9. See also Norwood Janet , “The Future of Employment,” in Mitchel Daniel , ed., The Future of Industrial Relations, Monograph & Research Series, 47, Institute of Industrial Relations, University of California, Los Angeles, 1987, pp.121–136.

The AFL-CIO claims that 37 million people lack health insurance and Mel Glasser, Executive Director, Committee for National Health Insurance, puts the figure at 16–17% of the population or about 40,000,000. Health Pac Bulletin (Winter 1987), pp.6–11. See also Podgursky Michael Swaim Paul , “Health Insurance Loss: The Case of the Displaced Worker,” Monthly Labor Review, 110/4 (April 1987), pp.30–33.

The new organizational form described here and in my earlier writings is examined in detail in the September 26 issue of Fortune, particularly pp.50–60.

Network organizations have in fact been the traditional form of organization in portions of the construction and fashion industries. In fact, as noted the vertically integrated system is a product of the last 100 years or so.

Miles Raymond E. Rosenberg Harold , “The Human Resource Approach to Management: Second-Generation Problems,” Organizational Dynamics (Winter 1982).

Ibid.

Some of the predictions offered here are similar to recommendations made in the report by the AFL-CIO Committee on the Evolution of Work chaired by Donahue Thomas R. , See The Changing Situation of Workers and their Unions, AFL-CIO, February, 1985, particularly pp.20–22.

Note that many of the employee services described here are provided in whole or part by some of the strongest craft unions. Examples are numerous in printing and construction.

Heckscher Charles , The New Unionism (New York, NY: Basic Books, 1988).

See Way , op. cit; p.553.