Who Wants Harmonisation? Image and Reality in Single Status Working

New evidence from a British electronics plant on the experience of a harmonisation programme is presented and questions the generally accepted favourable image of moves towards single status working. The presentation is novel in that instead of offering a traditional literature review followed by the empirical data, the article develops two forms of case description. The first case is a fictional “Composite” account derived from previously published materials in which we have assembled the key themes into a single arrative to convey an image of harmonisation as it is presented in the literature. This can then be compared with the more contradictory experience of harmonisation found during ethnographic research at the Collaborating Company, where management was more constrained and the process was not conflict free. The two cases can be read as a contrast between image and reality which then needs to be explained.