Jenseits von Beruf und Beruflichkeit? : neue Formen von Arbeitsorganisation und Beschäftigung und ihre Bedeutung für eine zentrale Kategorie gesellschaftlicher Integration (Beyond occupation and professionality : new forms of labour organisation and employment and their importance for a central category of social integration)

"The authors advocate the thesis that in spite of increasing qualification requirements on the demand side and increasing average qualifications on the supply side of labour, the occupation is becoming increasingly questionable as that specific link between (occupational) professionality and social orientation and integration which constitutes the German tradition of the occupational category, and is eroding. They see the fundamental reason for the increasing erosion of the occupation as a category of social structure in a serious change in the organisation of enterprises and labour, which businesses see themselves compelled to follow under the conditions of world-wide competition in costs, quality and innovation. The change in the forms of company regulation is described by the authors as a way from an occupation-related and function-related organisation to a process-oriented organisation which aims at greater flexibility and at a detailed cost-related regulation of the company exchange relations.The core of this change is a dynamic performance image, the decentralisation of the enterprise, a customer-related division of labour, cross-functional cooperation, a partial removal of heirarchy in the status organisation as well as a more flexible working hours regime. In their context not only the requirement profile of the skilled worker experienced in a trade is dissolved, but at the same time the enterprises are refraining from now apparently dysfunctional, traditional patterns of social integration (grading, exclusive deployment according to speciality, institutionalised career paths) and in this way are exploding the social basis of the occupation. The authors explain their thesis on the basis of the results of a new study on industrial skilled work/training. A look at the service sector also confirms the conclusion that the occupation is eroding on a broad front as a mode of organisation and that this is having an effect on education and vocational training, on the labour market and on collective bargaining policy and social policy." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))