Management techniques are faced with the challenge of keeping up with the greater manufacturing flexibility made possible by the development of programmable automation systems. These challenges arise in 5 areas: 1. strategy, 2. project evaluation, 3. managing change, 4. implementation of...

Braverman's landmark study, Labor and Monopoly CapitaL (1974) opened a fruitful arena for research with its argument that close study of the labor process could yield insight into the trajectory of the capitalist form of society. However, the empirical implausibility of his deskilling diagnosis...

Typical of many cases of technology diffusion and implementation, machine tool automation has stimulated debate about the relative influence of social and technological factors. It is argued that reconciliation of these views requires (a) a realistic model of the firm in its environmental and...