Factors behind the Supply and Demand for Less Alienating Work, and Some International Illustrations

An economic framework for understanding the incidence of less alienating job designs in varying industrial settings is developed. Both the supply and demand sides are discussed, and the approach is illustrated by consideration of the frequency of introduction of alienation-reducing job designs in Swedish, Japanese, US and Israeli kibbutz industrial enterprises. The competitiveness of product and labour markets, and the set of available methods of attracting workers and eliciting real effort from them, are among the key explanatory factors found to operate in the cases examined.