Inhuman relations : quality circles and anti-unionism in American industry
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Inhuman relations : quality circles and anti-unionism in American industry
(Labor and social change)
Temple University Press, 1988
Available at 45 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
  Switzerland
  France
  Belgium
  Netherlands
  Sweden
  Norway
  United States of America
Note
Bibliography: p.211-225
Includes index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
This vivid expose of the use of Quality Circles by a major company to defeat a union organizing drive dramatically presents a negative view of the highly acclaimed new humanism in American management. Guillermo Grenier gives a unique insider's account of Johnson & Johnson's implementation of the workplace reform technique called Quality of Worklife or Quality Circles as a union-busting tactic. He describes this and other methods of controlling workers, which are veiled by the benevolent rhetoric of the new managers, and shows how the supposed "democratic reforms" often have autocratic underpinnings and results. For seven months in 1982-83, the author worked as a graduate researcher under the social psychologist in charge of Team development at a Johnson & Johnson division in Albuquerque. "Team" is the name used by the company for the quality circle technique of organizing workers into small groups that discuss problems on a regular basis. The Team approach, Grenier explains, "in fact increased the conflict not only between management and worker but between the workers themselves.
With calculated precision, the workforce was divided and eventually conquered because management controlled their formal and informal interactions while at the workplace." Timely, controversial, and dramatic, Inhuman Relations presents the view that human relations management techniques have a strong anti-union tradition and have developed into liberal, acceptable methods of controlling the workforce. Author note: Guillermo J. Grenier is Assistant Professor of Sociology and Director of the Center for Labor Research and Studies at Florida International University.
by "Nielsen BookData"