Emerging Trends in The Social and Behavioral Sciences

The Reorganization of Work

Item

Title

The Reorganization of Work

Author

Heckscher, Charles

Research Area

Social Institutions

Topic

Work and the Economy

Abstract

In recent decades, the bureaucratic organization of work in stable hierarchies of “jobs” and “offices” has come under increasing fire, seen as unresponsive and resistant to innovation. Practice has turned to two major alternatives: freeing individual “stars” to take independent initiative and building cooperative teamwork. Academic research has lagged far behind practice, often stuck in narrow positivist frames that miss the systemic and evolving nature of these organizational shifts. The emerging paradigm is not yet clear, but it certainly involves major modifications of the Weberian principles of bureaucratic efficiency.

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etrds0348

extracted text

The Reorganization of Work
CHARLES HECKSCHER

Abstract
In recent decades, the bureaucratic organization of work in stable hierarchies of
“jobs” and “offices” has come under increasing fire, seen as unresponsive and
resistant to innovation. Practice has turned to two major alternatives: freeing individual “stars” to take independent initiative and building cooperative teamwork.
Academic research has lagged far behind practice, often stuck in narrow positivist
frames that miss the systemic and evolving nature of these organizational shifts. The
emerging paradigm is not yet clear, but it certainly involves major modifications of
the Weberian principles of bureaucratic efficiency.

INTRODUCTION
The principles of work organization are undergoing major upheaval, especially in knowledge-focused enterprises struggling to manage fluidity, multiple projects and accountabilities, and “on-demand” networks of relations.
Academic research lags behind this practice: The understanding of adaptive
teams is growing but still weak, and most studies still focus on individual
jobs or on small, stable teams within clear hierarchies.
The last transformation of this magnitude occurred roughly a century ago.
The focus then was on the emergence of the bureaucratic mode of production
suited to strategies of scale and scope. The rise of large corporations caused a
transformation of work from traditional structures of small status-based hierarchies or autonomous crafts to the extensive “chains of command” familiar
throughout the twentieth century. However, this latter model has been subject to increasing attack for rigidity and lack of responsiveness to customers.
The current period is putting in question, theoretically and practically,
almost every aspect of the bureaucratic paradigm. Understanding this shift
requires a move beyond the piecemeal, positivist, low-to-middle-range
research that has been in fashion for some decades, and a return to some of
the approaches of general systems theory that strive for an integrated view
of values, structures, and motivations.
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Edited by Robert Scott and Stephen Kosslyn.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.

1

2

EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

CLASSIC FOUNDATIONAL RESEARCH
Any review of foundational research on work organization must start with
Max Weber’s seminal discussion of bureaucracy (1924, pp. 650–678). For
Weber, the core work structure was the office: a formally-defined, delimited,
rationally justified set of duties independent of any particular person.
Nowadays, we generally call it a “job.” The nature of each office was
determined by the requirements of the organization, so that persons were
essentially defined as functions in a “mechanical” system (Burns & Stalker,
1961). Frederick Taylor’s “scientific management” (1911) took the concept to
a further extreme for shop-floor workers, seeking to control every motion
through rational analysis and incentives.
Bureaucracy and scientific management never operated in pure form: Any
organization designed like a machine would quickly break down in the face
of everyday complexity. Many critical studies, such as Gouldner (1964) and
Crozier (1964), explored the unintended rigidities and conflicts caused by
efforts to run organizations purely on the basis of formal rules.
In practice, few organizations were so limited; in the real world, there was
always a great deal of problem-solving and mutual adjustment. By the 1930s,
the “Hawthorne studies” showed the importance of teamwork even for routine tasks (Roethlisberger, Dickson, Wright, Pforzheimer, & Western Electric
Company, 1939), and Chester Barnard’s landmark Functions of the Executive
(1938) highlighted the importance of informal organization, with a strong
emphasis on loyalty. Elton Mayo codified these insights into the practice of
the emerging function of “Human Relations” management. The successful
corporations of the 1950s and 1960s were not simple Weberian hierarchies,
but hybrids of formal rationality and informal “family” culture. The formal
organization of work, however, remained tied to a paradigm of individual
accountability for performance of stable job duties.
In the 1950s, there developed the first significant break in this paradigm.
The theorists grouped in the Tavistock Institute began to articulate notions
of formalized teamwork in which jobs, with clear accountabilities and spheres
of autonomy, gave way to groups with shared responsibility and flexible
structure. In these “sociotechnical” environments, workers were expected
to gain the skills for multiple tasks, to fill in for each other as needed,
and even to make significant decisions together about methods of work
(Trist & Murray, 1993). In the following decades, there was growing experimentation with such work reforms in order both to reduce job alienation
and to increase flexibility and productivity through improved problemsolving.

The Reorganization of Work

3

THE LEADING EDGE(S)
The critique of the bureaucratic model, and its central concept of stable
offices or jobs, has led to two major avenues of practice and research. One,
which might be called the star paradigm, focuses on motivating individuals
to take initiative and risk. The contrasting approach explores coordinated
teamwork—the combination of diverse capabilities in pursuit of a shared
purpose.
DECENTRALIZATION AND THE EMERGENCE OF STARS
The period of heightened international competition starting in the 1980s generated a wave of decentralizing efforts, including reducing organizational
layers and increasing divisional autonomy. This is not new: Alfred Sloan
restructured General Motors into decentralized units in the 1920s, and there
have been frequent decentralizing periods in order to bureaucratic inertia.
However, decentralization creates its own problems: lack of coordination,
duplication of effort, and customer confusion. Thus, the history of large corporations has often seen an oscillation: periods decentralization to spur innovation, followed by centralization to increase efficiency. Recent decades have
been no exception to this pattern.
The “star” conception, however, takes decentralization beyond prior limits.
Its premise is that organizations are just gatherings of talented people, and
the main problem is to get out of their way by minimizing rules and supervision. Instead of hierarchy, these organizations have sought to solve the
problem of coordination through “agency theory,” which recommends monetary rewards for performance that meets the goals of the “principals”—that
is, shareholders (Jensen, 1994).
Evidence on the effectiveness of star models is weak. Although heavy use
of incentives may improve individual performance, it may hamper organizational performance by encouraging manipulation and competition, undercutting the mutual adjustment needed for complex tasks. Both quantitative
and qualitative research have shown that stars are highly dependent on their
environment and that they can undermine attention to systemic issues (Beer
et al., 2004; Groysberg, 2010; Pfeffer, 2001).
TEAM APPROACHES
The growing emphasis on teams has gone through a number of phases
and forms, and remains less clear in its outlines than the talent/agency
model.

4

EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

Stable Teams. The oldest efforts build small teams—usually 6–10 people—
from existing units of the hierarchy: a single function, a single supervisor. The
model accelerated in the 1970s under such rubrics are “quality of work life,”
“autonomous teams,” and “high-performance work systems” (Appelbaum
& Berg, 2000). They are most often found at shop-floor levels, including wide
use in assembly-line work in the automobile industry. The team members
may simply meet periodically to make recommendations for improvement
in work processes and environment, but increasingly they have gained some
new powers of direct decision over scheduling, work organization, and even
hiring and discipline. This sharply changes the daily experience of work:
Team members must learn to analyze problems, structure decision-making
processes, and deal with conflict among peers.
Research evidence indicates that these teams work well in direct comparisons with comparable groups managed through bureaucratic methods,
primarily because of lower turnover and absenteeism, and sometimes innovative redesign. However, they also have significant long-term weaknesses,
due primarily to the strong emphasis on internal cohesion and stability. They
are often resistant to changes coming from outside and may communicate
poorly beyond their boundaries. The literature also emphasizes the need for
employment stability to maintain commitment. These tendencies may make
them slow to adapt to shifts in markets or production. As a result, even
successful ones often fail to survive: Some of the most touted exemplars
of the last few decades, such as Saturn’s Spring Hill plant (Rubinstein &
Kochan, 2001) and NUMMI in the automotive industry (Adler, Goldoftas, &
Levine, 1997), are no longer operating.
Stable teams, in short, increase flexibility and innovation within the boundaries of the group, but they do not reliably extend those gains to a larger
system.
Project Teams (Task Forces). In recent decades, organizational innovation
has centered on a different kind of team: ones that come together from
different functions and levels for particular projects (Donnellon, 1993;
Gulati, 2010). An important early focus of cross-functional teams, in the
1980s, was automobile design: rather than going through the cumbersome
process of throwing plans back and forth “over the wall” between functions,
a new process pioneered in Japan brought together designers and engineers
and marketers into a single process. This greatly speeded new product
development and improved end quality. Since then, driven by the growing
importance of knowledge in business competition (Nonaka, Toyama, &
Nagata, 2000), project teams have spread widely throughout management

The Reorganization of Work

5

ranks; in some instances, such as certain “total quality management” processes or Toyota’s product launch reviews, it has even included shop-floor
workers.
Project teams are generally more flexible than stable work teams, with
greater ability to adapt to change and less need for stable relations. However,
they create even greater strains on the regular bureaucratic organization.
Where stable teams remain encapsulated within existing bureaucratic units,
project teams cross boundaries by design. Thus, they create conflicts of
accountability and upset the traditional career ladders. Members are often
concerned about who will evaluate them and how their work will be viewed
in the long run. The internal management of project teams is also difficult
because they combine very different areas of knowledge, often leading to
misunderstanding and mistrust. For all these reasons, failure is common.
Project teams need explicit process management because they need full
involvement of participants. There has been great innovation in recent
decades in methods of group decision-making, assignment of responsibilities, and peer accountability. (Bryk, Gomez, & Grunow, 2011; Colfer &
Baldwin, 2010).
POSTBUREAUCRATIC ORGANIZATION
Some studies have sought to analyze this interconnected set of changes
as a system. They remain largely disparate and disorganized, as reflected
in the plurality of terms used—including “adhocratic” (Mintzberg, 1998),
“networked” (Powell, 1990), “collaborative” (Heckscher, 2007), and “matrix”
(Galbraith, 2008) organization. All these organizational forms make use of
flexible project teams as described earlier. In organizations approaching
adhocracy, such teams form and recombine frequently and with few formal
restrictions. In a decentralized or modular organization, such teams may
serve as links between the autonomous parts.
The most complex forms of collaborative organization, in companies such
as IBM out Procter & Gamble, combine a skeleton of stable functions with
an overlay of strongly structured project teams with formal procedures
and objectives These organizations combine centralization and decentralization through elaborate “process management”: that is, people can form
cross-functional teams fairly freely, but they must justify and document
what they are doing so can they coordinate effectively with other groups.
A large set of practices—from techniques of team problem-solving to the
drawing of complex process maps—has developed to help organize fluid
projects. Where these methods are widely understood, organizations have
improved their ability to mobilize initiatives across functions. They are more
widely used at higher levels, but in some instances, even shop-floor workers

6

EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

are drawn into project teams for quality improvement or implementation of
new technology.
These developments present challenges to virtually all aspects of systems
and enterprises. For example, while bureaucratic organizations reserved
strategy for the top team, and expected everyone else just to focus on particular pieces, the need for autonomy and teamwork has led most companies
to push strategic understanding to all employees so that they do not have to
wait for instructions form superiors. The promotion system, which used to
center on moving upward in a hierarchy, has become much more complex
and uncertain. There is strong evidence that internal job ladders have
weakened, especially for males, but no effective models of alternative career
structures. Compensation can no longer be linked simply to hierarchical
level; nominal subordinates may make more than their bosses. Leaders
cannot be expected to have all the knowledge of their subordinates. The
reorganization of work, in short, is just part of a reorganization of the system
of work.
CHALLENGES FOR FUTURE RESEARCH
Many aspects of these changes in work have not yet been dealt with effectively in research. The trend of management research for several decades,
along with many other social sciences, has been toward positivism, characterized by a focus on statistical analysis of quantifiable data, an inductive
approach to theory, and an assumption of motivations based on rational individualism. Major journals have relegated other kinds of research, especially
qualitative and “meaning”-focused approaches relying on interviews or general systems analysis, to secondary status.
In periods and fields of fundamental change, however, positivist methods
may be less appropriate. First, it is almost impossible to gather rigorous data
on large social system shifts involving many companies: The relatively few
studies attempting this use surveys with low response rates, questionable
comparability, and unknown reliability of respondents. Variance of terminology and policies among companies makes it difficult to formulate questions
that give consistent results over a wide scope. Second, positivist research is
almost never practical over significant time periods: Even the few surveys
that have been repeated over several decades find that they need continuously to revise their items as new issues come to the fore. In effect, the very
process of change undermines rigorous quantitative comparison across periods. For these reasons, there is value in the work of theorists with a broad historical view, such as Max Weber, Alfred Chandler (1977) and Peter Drucker
(1946), relying on qualitative reflection (Adler, 2009).

The Reorganization of Work

7

Important areas for future research include the following:
Structure: Network studies have greatly helped in studying nonhierarchical
patterns of communication: There has been progress, for instance, in identifying strengths and weaknesses of core-periphery and modular network structures, and in showing the importance of organizational “bridgers.” However,
there is so far no convergence on “ideal type” alternatives to the familiar
pyramid of authority.
Culture: There is much qualitative evidence that the evolution of work
involves a shift in values and meanings. Research on bureaucracy produced
broadly accepted definitions of culture such as Weber’s original focus on
rational legitimation, Barnard’s exploration of loyalty in the informal organization, and Merton’s definition of an “sentiments” of “devotion to one’s
duties, a keen sense of the limitations of one’s authority and competence,
and methodical performance of routine activities.” Most managers now
would say those are insufficient: There is a need for initiative, innovation,
and going beyond the limits of job descriptions. However, these orientations
have not yet been adequately defined in the research literature.
In addition to these broad themes, many particular areas of organization
and human resources research have paid insufficient attention to their
relations to the broader changes under way. For example, both growing
autonomy and teamwork challenge the traditional form of performance
assessment by a single boss. The “star”-focused literature has increasingly
recommended assessments based on objective outcome measures, but the
evidence on whether this actually improves system performance remains
weak. In ore team-focused situations, there has been growing use of multisource or “360-degree” assessment, but research in this area lags particularly
far behind the practice.
Finally, emerging corporate work practices have generated a set of societal
problems. As bureaucratic systems focused on internal development, companies were willing to provide many benefits in order to maintain stability
and loyalty and had strong training arms to develop the capabilities they
needed. With more fluidity, companies have less interest in such investments.
It seems likely that training budgets are in decline and that more employees
are turning to professional associations and adult education, but the extent
and effectiveness of these trends are not well understood.
Large sectors of the economy still involve relatively routine tasks and have
not been much affected by the trends reviewed previously. However, there is
also evidence that automation of such jobs is accelerating and that the move
to knowledge value will continue to spread (Acemoglu & Autor, 2010; Autor,
Levy, & Murnane, 2003).

8

EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

CONCLUSION
The changes and experiments under way in workplaces across almost all
industries are highly dynamic, bordering on chaotic. The consistent driver
is an attempt to overcome the limitations of bureaucratic organization:
restriction of communication channels, inward focus, rigidity of rules, lack
of cross-unit cooperation, and other well-documented weaknesses.
The two broad directions sketched previously—of individual agency and
cooperative teamwork—are not entirely incompatible in practice: most
“postbureaucratic” organizations involve a combination of both. However,
they do create tensions. Where cross-boundary teams are common, it
becomes very difficult to establish clear spheres of autonomy for stars and
to measure their performance. Some research also indicates that high levels
of inequality may undermine commitment and cooperation (Wilkinson &
Pickett, 2009).
Both routes, however, lead to work organization very different, at both
the shopfloor and managerial levels, from the tightly controlled, bounded
model of the 1940s and 1950s. The dominant criticism of work in that
era was that it was boring, overemphasizing conformity and obedience.
The dominant concern today is that it may be too uncertain and unstable,
giving employees too little guidance and support. There are clearly positive
potentials in the increasing emphasis on initiative and independence, but
too little understanding of how it may create a system that meets long-term
needs.

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The Reorganization of Work

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Groysberg, B. (2010). Chasing stars: The myth of talent and the portability of performance.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Gulati, R. (2010). Cisco Business Councils (2007): Unifying a functional enterprise with an
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Jensen, M. C. (1994). Self interest, altruism, incentives, and agency theory. Journal
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Rubinstein, S. A., & Kochan, T. A. (2001). Learning from Saturn: possibilities for corporate
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CHARLES HECKSCHER SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Charles Heckscher is a Professor at Rutgers University and Director of the
Center for the Study of Collaboration in Work and Society. His research has
focused on organization change and the changing nature of employee representation; he is currently working on a book on the transformation of the
societal community. He has also worked as a practitioner and consultant on
processes of organizational development, primarily in the telecommunications industry. Before coming to Rutgers, he worked for the Communications
Workers’ union and taught Human Resources Management at the Harvard
Business School. His books include The New Unionism, White-Collar Blues,
Agents of Change, and The Collaborative Enterprise.
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The Reorganization of Work

11

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The Reorganization of Work
CHARLES HECKSCHER

Abstract
In recent decades, the bureaucratic organization of work in stable hierarchies of
“jobs” and “offices” has come under increasing fire, seen as unresponsive and
resistant to innovation. Practice has turned to two major alternatives: freeing individual “stars” to take independent initiative and building cooperative teamwork.
Academic research has lagged far behind practice, often stuck in narrow positivist
frames that miss the systemic and evolving nature of these organizational shifts. The
emerging paradigm is not yet clear, but it certainly involves major modifications of
the Weberian principles of bureaucratic efficiency.

INTRODUCTION
The principles of work organization are undergoing major upheaval, especially in knowledge-focused enterprises struggling to manage fluidity, multiple projects and accountabilities, and “on-demand” networks of relations.
Academic research lags behind this practice: The understanding of adaptive
teams is growing but still weak, and most studies still focus on individual
jobs or on small, stable teams within clear hierarchies.
The last transformation of this magnitude occurred roughly a century ago.
The focus then was on the emergence of the bureaucratic mode of production
suited to strategies of scale and scope. The rise of large corporations caused a
transformation of work from traditional structures of small status-based hierarchies or autonomous crafts to the extensive “chains of command” familiar
throughout the twentieth century. However, this latter model has been subject to increasing attack for rigidity and lack of responsiveness to customers.
The current period is putting in question, theoretically and practically,
almost every aspect of the bureaucratic paradigm. Understanding this shift
requires a move beyond the piecemeal, positivist, low-to-middle-range
research that has been in fashion for some decades, and a return to some of
the approaches of general systems theory that strive for an integrated view
of values, structures, and motivations.
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Edited by Robert Scott and Stephen Kosslyn.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.

1

2

EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

CLASSIC FOUNDATIONAL RESEARCH
Any review of foundational research on work organization must start with
Max Weber’s seminal discussion of bureaucracy (1924, pp. 650–678). For
Weber, the core work structure was the office: a formally-defined, delimited,
rationally justified set of duties independent of any particular person.
Nowadays, we generally call it a “job.” The nature of each office was
determined by the requirements of the organization, so that persons were
essentially defined as functions in a “mechanical” system (Burns & Stalker,
1961). Frederick Taylor’s “scientific management” (1911) took the concept to
a further extreme for shop-floor workers, seeking to control every motion
through rational analysis and incentives.
Bureaucracy and scientific management never operated in pure form: Any
organization designed like a machine would quickly break down in the face
of everyday complexity. Many critical studies, such as Gouldner (1964) and
Crozier (1964), explored the unintended rigidities and conflicts caused by
efforts to run organizations purely on the basis of formal rules.
In practice, few organizations were so limited; in the real world, there was
always a great deal of problem-solving and mutual adjustment. By the 1930s,
the “Hawthorne studies” showed the importance of teamwork even for routine tasks (Roethlisberger, Dickson, Wright, Pforzheimer, & Western Electric
Company, 1939), and Chester Barnard’s landmark Functions of the Executive
(1938) highlighted the importance of informal organization, with a strong
emphasis on loyalty. Elton Mayo codified these insights into the practice of
the emerging function of “Human Relations” management. The successful
corporations of the 1950s and 1960s were not simple Weberian hierarchies,
but hybrids of formal rationality and informal “family” culture. The formal
organization of work, however, remained tied to a paradigm of individual
accountability for performance of stable job duties.
In the 1950s, there developed the first significant break in this paradigm.
The theorists grouped in the Tavistock Institute began to articulate notions
of formalized teamwork in which jobs, with clear accountabilities and spheres
of autonomy, gave way to groups with shared responsibility and flexible
structure. In these “sociotechnical” environments, workers were expected
to gain the skills for multiple tasks, to fill in for each other as needed,
and even to make significant decisions together about methods of work
(Trist & Murray, 1993). In the following decades, there was growing experimentation with such work reforms in order both to reduce job alienation
and to increase flexibility and productivity through improved problemsolving.

The Reorganization of Work

3

THE LEADING EDGE(S)
The critique of the bureaucratic model, and its central concept of stable
offices or jobs, has led to two major avenues of practice and research. One,
which might be called the star paradigm, focuses on motivating individuals
to take initiative and risk. The contrasting approach explores coordinated
teamwork—the combination of diverse capabilities in pursuit of a shared
purpose.
DECENTRALIZATION AND THE EMERGENCE OF STARS
The period of heightened international competition starting in the 1980s generated a wave of decentralizing efforts, including reducing organizational
layers and increasing divisional autonomy. This is not new: Alfred Sloan
restructured General Motors into decentralized units in the 1920s, and there
have been frequent decentralizing periods in order to bureaucratic inertia.
However, decentralization creates its own problems: lack of coordination,
duplication of effort, and customer confusion. Thus, the history of large corporations has often seen an oscillation: periods decentralization to spur innovation, followed by centralization to increase efficiency. Recent decades have
been no exception to this pattern.
The “star” conception, however, takes decentralization beyond prior limits.
Its premise is that organizations are just gatherings of talented people, and
the main problem is to get out of their way by minimizing rules and supervision. Instead of hierarchy, these organizations have sought to solve the
problem of coordination through “agency theory,” which recommends monetary rewards for performance that meets the goals of the “principals”—that
is, shareholders (Jensen, 1994).
Evidence on the effectiveness of star models is weak. Although heavy use
of incentives may improve individual performance, it may hamper organizational performance by encouraging manipulation and competition, undercutting the mutual adjustment needed for complex tasks. Both quantitative
and qualitative research have shown that stars are highly dependent on their
environment and that they can undermine attention to systemic issues (Beer
et al., 2004; Groysberg, 2010; Pfeffer, 2001).
TEAM APPROACHES
The growing emphasis on teams has gone through a number of phases
and forms, and remains less clear in its outlines than the talent/agency
model.

4

EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

Stable Teams. The oldest efforts build small teams—usually 6–10 people—
from existing units of the hierarchy: a single function, a single supervisor. The
model accelerated in the 1970s under such rubrics are “quality of work life,”
“autonomous teams,” and “high-performance work systems” (Appelbaum
& Berg, 2000). They are most often found at shop-floor levels, including wide
use in assembly-line work in the automobile industry. The team members
may simply meet periodically to make recommendations for improvement
in work processes and environment, but increasingly they have gained some
new powers of direct decision over scheduling, work organization, and even
hiring and discipline. This sharply changes the daily experience of work:
Team members must learn to analyze problems, structure decision-making
processes, and deal with conflict among peers.
Research evidence indicates that these teams work well in direct comparisons with comparable groups managed through bureaucratic methods,
primarily because of lower turnover and absenteeism, and sometimes innovative redesign. However, they also have significant long-term weaknesses,
due primarily to the strong emphasis on internal cohesion and stability. They
are often resistant to changes coming from outside and may communicate
poorly beyond their boundaries. The literature also emphasizes the need for
employment stability to maintain commitment. These tendencies may make
them slow to adapt to shifts in markets or production. As a result, even
successful ones often fail to survive: Some of the most touted exemplars
of the last few decades, such as Saturn’s Spring Hill plant (Rubinstein &
Kochan, 2001) and NUMMI in the automotive industry (Adler, Goldoftas, &
Levine, 1997), are no longer operating.
Stable teams, in short, increase flexibility and innovation within the boundaries of the group, but they do not reliably extend those gains to a larger
system.
Project Teams (Task Forces). In recent decades, organizational innovation
has centered on a different kind of team: ones that come together from
different functions and levels for particular projects (Donnellon, 1993;
Gulati, 2010). An important early focus of cross-functional teams, in the
1980s, was automobile design: rather than going through the cumbersome
process of throwing plans back and forth “over the wall” between functions,
a new process pioneered in Japan brought together designers and engineers
and marketers into a single process. This greatly speeded new product
development and improved end quality. Since then, driven by the growing
importance of knowledge in business competition (Nonaka, Toyama, &
Nagata, 2000), project teams have spread widely throughout management

The Reorganization of Work

5

ranks; in some instances, such as certain “total quality management” processes or Toyota’s product launch reviews, it has even included shop-floor
workers.
Project teams are generally more flexible than stable work teams, with
greater ability to adapt to change and less need for stable relations. However,
they create even greater strains on the regular bureaucratic organization.
Where stable teams remain encapsulated within existing bureaucratic units,
project teams cross boundaries by design. Thus, they create conflicts of
accountability and upset the traditional career ladders. Members are often
concerned about who will evaluate them and how their work will be viewed
in the long run. The internal management of project teams is also difficult
because they combine very different areas of knowledge, often leading to
misunderstanding and mistrust. For all these reasons, failure is common.
Project teams need explicit process management because they need full
involvement of participants. There has been great innovation in recent
decades in methods of group decision-making, assignment of responsibilities, and peer accountability. (Bryk, Gomez, & Grunow, 2011; Colfer &
Baldwin, 2010).
POSTBUREAUCRATIC ORGANIZATION
Some studies have sought to analyze this interconnected set of changes
as a system. They remain largely disparate and disorganized, as reflected
in the plurality of terms used—including “adhocratic” (Mintzberg, 1998),
“networked” (Powell, 1990), “collaborative” (Heckscher, 2007), and “matrix”
(Galbraith, 2008) organization. All these organizational forms make use of
flexible project teams as described earlier. In organizations approaching
adhocracy, such teams form and recombine frequently and with few formal
restrictions. In a decentralized or modular organization, such teams may
serve as links between the autonomous parts.
The most complex forms of collaborative organization, in companies such
as IBM out Procter & Gamble, combine a skeleton of stable functions with
an overlay of strongly structured project teams with formal procedures
and objectives These organizations combine centralization and decentralization through elaborate “process management”: that is, people can form
cross-functional teams fairly freely, but they must justify and document
what they are doing so can they coordinate effectively with other groups.
A large set of practices—from techniques of team problem-solving to the
drawing of complex process maps—has developed to help organize fluid
projects. Where these methods are widely understood, organizations have
improved their ability to mobilize initiatives across functions. They are more
widely used at higher levels, but in some instances, even shop-floor workers

6

EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

are drawn into project teams for quality improvement or implementation of
new technology.
These developments present challenges to virtually all aspects of systems
and enterprises. For example, while bureaucratic organizations reserved
strategy for the top team, and expected everyone else just to focus on particular pieces, the need for autonomy and teamwork has led most companies
to push strategic understanding to all employees so that they do not have to
wait for instructions form superiors. The promotion system, which used to
center on moving upward in a hierarchy, has become much more complex
and uncertain. There is strong evidence that internal job ladders have
weakened, especially for males, but no effective models of alternative career
structures. Compensation can no longer be linked simply to hierarchical
level; nominal subordinates may make more than their bosses. Leaders
cannot be expected to have all the knowledge of their subordinates. The
reorganization of work, in short, is just part of a reorganization of the system
of work.
CHALLENGES FOR FUTURE RESEARCH
Many aspects of these changes in work have not yet been dealt with effectively in research. The trend of management research for several decades,
along with many other social sciences, has been toward positivism, characterized by a focus on statistical analysis of quantifiable data, an inductive
approach to theory, and an assumption of motivations based on rational individualism. Major journals have relegated other kinds of research, especially
qualitative and “meaning”-focused approaches relying on interviews or general systems analysis, to secondary status.
In periods and fields of fundamental change, however, positivist methods
may be less appropriate. First, it is almost impossible to gather rigorous data
on large social system shifts involving many companies: The relatively few
studies attempting this use surveys with low response rates, questionable
comparability, and unknown reliability of respondents. Variance of terminology and policies among companies makes it difficult to formulate questions
that give consistent results over a wide scope. Second, positivist research is
almost never practical over significant time periods: Even the few surveys
that have been repeated over several decades find that they need continuously to revise their items as new issues come to the fore. In effect, the very
process of change undermines rigorous quantitative comparison across periods. For these reasons, there is value in the work of theorists with a broad historical view, such as Max Weber, Alfred Chandler (1977) and Peter Drucker
(1946), relying on qualitative reflection (Adler, 2009).

The Reorganization of Work

7

Important areas for future research include the following:
Structure: Network studies have greatly helped in studying nonhierarchical
patterns of communication: There has been progress, for instance, in identifying strengths and weaknesses of core-periphery and modular network structures, and in showing the importance of organizational “bridgers.” However,
there is so far no convergence on “ideal type” alternatives to the familiar
pyramid of authority.
Culture: There is much qualitative evidence that the evolution of work
involves a shift in values and meanings. Research on bureaucracy produced
broadly accepted definitions of culture such as Weber’s original focus on
rational legitimation, Barnard’s exploration of loyalty in the informal organization, and Merton’s definition of an “sentiments” of “devotion to one’s
duties, a keen sense of the limitations of one’s authority and competence,
and methodical performance of routine activities.” Most managers now
would say those are insufficient: There is a need for initiative, innovation,
and going beyond the limits of job descriptions. However, these orientations
have not yet been adequately defined in the research literature.
In addition to these broad themes, many particular areas of organization
and human resources research have paid insufficient attention to their
relations to the broader changes under way. For example, both growing
autonomy and teamwork challenge the traditional form of performance
assessment by a single boss. The “star”-focused literature has increasingly
recommended assessments based on objective outcome measures, but the
evidence on whether this actually improves system performance remains
weak. In ore team-focused situations, there has been growing use of multisource or “360-degree” assessment, but research in this area lags particularly
far behind the practice.
Finally, emerging corporate work practices have generated a set of societal
problems. As bureaucratic systems focused on internal development, companies were willing to provide many benefits in order to maintain stability
and loyalty and had strong training arms to develop the capabilities they
needed. With more fluidity, companies have less interest in such investments.
It seems likely that training budgets are in decline and that more employees
are turning to professional associations and adult education, but the extent
and effectiveness of these trends are not well understood.
Large sectors of the economy still involve relatively routine tasks and have
not been much affected by the trends reviewed previously. However, there is
also evidence that automation of such jobs is accelerating and that the move
to knowledge value will continue to spread (Acemoglu & Autor, 2010; Autor,
Levy, & Murnane, 2003).

8

EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

CONCLUSION
The changes and experiments under way in workplaces across almost all
industries are highly dynamic, bordering on chaotic. The consistent driver
is an attempt to overcome the limitations of bureaucratic organization:
restriction of communication channels, inward focus, rigidity of rules, lack
of cross-unit cooperation, and other well-documented weaknesses.
The two broad directions sketched previously—of individual agency and
cooperative teamwork—are not entirely incompatible in practice: most
“postbureaucratic” organizations involve a combination of both. However,
they do create tensions. Where cross-boundary teams are common, it
becomes very difficult to establish clear spheres of autonomy for stars and
to measure their performance. Some research also indicates that high levels
of inequality may undermine commitment and cooperation (Wilkinson &
Pickett, 2009).
Both routes, however, lead to work organization very different, at both
the shopfloor and managerial levels, from the tightly controlled, bounded
model of the 1940s and 1950s. The dominant criticism of work in that
era was that it was boring, overemphasizing conformity and obedience.
The dominant concern today is that it may be too uncertain and unstable,
giving employees too little guidance and support. There are clearly positive
potentials in the increasing emphasis on initiative and independence, but
too little understanding of how it may create a system that meets long-term
needs.

REFERENCES
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employment and earnings. Handbook of labor economics, 4, 1043–1171.
Adler, P. S. (2009). The Oxford handbook of sociology and organization studies: Classical
foundations. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Adler, P. S., Goldoftas, B., & Levine, D. I. (1997). Ergonomics, employee involvement,
and the Toyota Production System: A case study of Nummi’s 1993 model introduction. Industrial and Labor Relations Review, 50(3), 416–437.
Appelbaum, E., & Berg, P. (2000). High-performance work systems: Giving workers
a stake. In M. Blair & T. A. Kochan (Eds.), The new relationship: Human capital in the
American corporation (pp. 102–144). Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.
Autor, D. H., Levy, F., & Murnane, R. J. (2003). The skill content of recent technological change: An empirical exploration. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 118(4),
1279–1333.
Barnard, C. I. (1938). The functions of the executive. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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Beer, M., Cannon, M. D., Baron, J. N., Dailey, P. R., Gerhart, B., Heneman, H. G.,
… , Locke, E. A. (2004). Promise and peril in implementing pay-for-performance.
Human Resource Management, 43(1), 3–48. doi:10.1002/hrm.20001
Bryk, A. S., Gomez, L. M., & Grunow, A. (2011). Getting ideas into action: Building
networked improvement communities in education (Carnegie Perspectives). Stanford,
CA: Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
Burns, T., & Stalker, G. M. (1961). The management of innovation. London, England:
Tavistock.
Chandler, A. D. (1977). The visible hand: The managerial revolution in American Business.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Colfer, L., & Baldwin, C. Y. (2010). The mirroring hypothesis: Theory, evidence and exceptions (HBS Working Paper No. 10–058). Harvard Business School. Retrieved from
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/6361.html
Crozier, M. (1964). The bureaucratic phenomenon. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago
Press.
Donnellon, A. (1993). Crossfunctional teams in product development. Journal of Product Innovation Management, 10(5), 377–392.
Drucker, P. F. (1946). Concept of the corporation. New York, NY: John Day.
Galbraith, J. R. (2008). Designing matrix organizations that actually work: How IBM, Proctor & Gamble and others design for success. New York, NY: John Wiley and Sons.
Gouldner, A. W. (1964). Patterns of industrial bureaucracy. New York, NY: Free Press.
Groysberg, B. (2010). Chasing stars: The myth of talent and the portability of performance.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Gulati, R. (2010). Cisco Business Councils (2007): Unifying a functional enterprise with an
internal governance system (Harvard Business School Case No. 5-409-062). Boston,
MA: Harvard Business School.
Heckscher, C. (2007). The collaborative enterprise. New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press.
Jensen, M. C. (1994). Self interest, altruism, incentives, and agency theory. Journal
of Applied Corporate Finance, VII(2), (pp. 40–45). Retrieved from http://papers.
ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5566
Mintzberg, H. (1998). The innovative organization. In H. Mintzberg & J. B. Quinn
(Eds.), Readings in the strategy process (pp. 309–323). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Nonaka, I., Toyama, R., & Nagata, A. (2000). A firm as a knowledge-creating entity:
A new perspective on the theory of the firm. Industrial and Corporate Change, 9(1),
1–20.
Pfeffer, J. (2001). Fighting the war for talent is hazardous to your organization’s
health. Organizational Dynamics, 29(4), 248–259.
Powell, W. (1990). Neither market nor hierarchy: Network forms of organization.
Research in Organizational Behavior, 12, 295–336.
Roethlisberger, F. J., Dickson, W. J., Wright, H. A., Pforzheimer, C. H., & Western
Electric Company (1939). Management and the worker: an account of a research program
conducted by the Western Electric Company, Hawthorne Works, Chicago. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press.

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Rubinstein, S. A., & Kochan, T. A. (2001). Learning from Saturn: possibilities for corporate
governance and employee relations. Ithaca, NY: ILR Press.
Taylor, F. W. (1911). The principles of scientific management. New York, NY: Harper
Brothers.
Trist, E. L., & Murray, H. (1993). The Social engagement of social science: A Tavistock
anthology. 2, The socio-technical perspective. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Weber, M. (1924). In G. Roth & C. Wittich (Eds.), Economy and society. New York, NY:
Bedminster.
Wilkinson, R., & Pickett, K. (2009). The spirit level: Why greater equality makes societies
stronger. London, England: Bloomsbury Press.

CHARLES HECKSCHER SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Charles Heckscher is a Professor at Rutgers University and Director of the
Center for the Study of Collaboration in Work and Society. His research has
focused on organization change and the changing nature of employee representation; he is currently working on a book on the transformation of the
societal community. He has also worked as a practitioner and consultant on
processes of organizational development, primarily in the telecommunications industry. Before coming to Rutgers, he worked for the Communications
Workers’ union and taught Human Resources Management at the Harvard
Business School. His books include The New Unionism, White-Collar Blues,
Agents of Change, and The Collaborative Enterprise.
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11

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The Reorganization of Work
CHARLES HECKSCHER

Abstract
In recent decades, the bureaucratic organization of work in stable hierarchies of
“jobs” and “offices” has come under increasing fire, seen as unresponsive and
resistant to innovation. Practice has turned to two major alternatives: freeing individual “stars” to take independent initiative and building cooperative teamwork.
Academic research has lagged far behind practice, often stuck in narrow positivist
frames that miss the systemic and evolving nature of these organizational shifts. The
emerging paradigm is not yet clear, but it certainly involves major modifications of
the Weberian principles of bureaucratic efficiency.

INTRODUCTION
The principles of work organization are undergoing major upheaval, especially in knowledge-focused enterprises struggling to manage fluidity, multiple projects and accountabilities, and “on-demand” networks of relations.
Academic research lags behind this practice: The understanding of adaptive
teams is growing but still weak, and most studies still focus on individual
jobs or on small, stable teams within clear hierarchies.
The last transformation of this magnitude occurred roughly a century ago.
The focus then was on the emergence of the bureaucratic mode of production
suited to strategies of scale and scope. The rise of large corporations caused a
transformation of work from traditional structures of small status-based hierarchies or autonomous crafts to the extensive “chains of command” familiar
throughout the twentieth century. However, this latter model has been subject to increasing attack for rigidity and lack of responsiveness to customers.
The current period is putting in question, theoretically and practically,
almost every aspect of the bureaucratic paradigm. Understanding this shift
requires a move beyond the piecemeal, positivist, low-to-middle-range
research that has been in fashion for some decades, and a return to some of
the approaches of general systems theory that strive for an integrated view
of values, structures, and motivations.
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Edited by Robert Scott and Stephen Kosslyn.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.

1

2

EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

CLASSIC FOUNDATIONAL RESEARCH
Any review of foundational research on work organization must start with
Max Weber’s seminal discussion of bureaucracy (1924, pp. 650–678). For
Weber, the core work structure was the office: a formally-defined, delimited,
rationally justified set of duties independent of any particular person.
Nowadays, we generally call it a “job.” The nature of each office was
determined by the requirements of the organization, so that persons were
essentially defined as functions in a “mechanical” system (Burns & Stalker,
1961). Frederick Taylor’s “scientific management” (1911) took the concept to
a further extreme for shop-floor workers, seeking to control every motion
through rational analysis and incentives.
Bureaucracy and scientific management never operated in pure form: Any
organization designed like a machine would quickly break down in the face
of everyday complexity. Many critical studies, such as Gouldner (1964) and
Crozier (1964), explored the unintended rigidities and conflicts caused by
efforts to run organizations purely on the basis of formal rules.
In practice, few organizations were so limited; in the real world, there was
always a great deal of problem-solving and mutual adjustment. By the 1930s,
the “Hawthorne studies” showed the importance of teamwork even for routine tasks (Roethlisberger, Dickson, Wright, Pforzheimer, & Western Electric
Company, 1939), and Chester Barnard’s landmark Functions of the Executive
(1938) highlighted the importance of informal organization, with a strong
emphasis on loyalty. Elton Mayo codified these insights into the practice of
the emerging function of “Human Relations” management. The successful
corporations of the 1950s and 1960s were not simple Weberian hierarchies,
but hybrids of formal rationality and informal “family” culture. The formal
organization of work, however, remained tied to a paradigm of individual
accountability for performance of stable job duties.
In the 1950s, there developed the first significant break in this paradigm.
The theorists grouped in the Tavistock Institute began to articulate notions
of formalized teamwork in which jobs, with clear accountabilities and spheres
of autonomy, gave way to groups with shared responsibility and flexible
structure. In these “sociotechnical” environments, workers were expected
to gain the skills for multiple tasks, to fill in for each other as needed,
and even to make significant decisions together about methods of work
(Trist & Murray, 1993). In the following decades, there was growing experimentation with such work reforms in order both to reduce job alienation
and to increase flexibility and productivity through improved problemsolving.

The Reorganization of Work

3

THE LEADING EDGE(S)
The critique of the bureaucratic model, and its central concept of stable
offices or jobs, has led to two major avenues of practice and research. One,
which might be called the star paradigm, focuses on motivating individuals
to take initiative and risk. The contrasting approach explores coordinated
teamwork—the combination of diverse capabilities in pursuit of a shared
purpose.
DECENTRALIZATION AND THE EMERGENCE OF STARS
The period of heightened international competition starting in the 1980s generated a wave of decentralizing efforts, including reducing organizational
layers and increasing divisional autonomy. This is not new: Alfred Sloan
restructured General Motors into decentralized units in the 1920s, and there
have been frequent decentralizing periods in order to bureaucratic inertia.
However, decentralization creates its own problems: lack of coordination,
duplication of effort, and customer confusion. Thus, the history of large corporations has often seen an oscillation: periods decentralization to spur innovation, followed by centralization to increase efficiency. Recent decades have
been no exception to this pattern.
The “star” conception, however, takes decentralization beyond prior limits.
Its premise is that organizations are just gatherings of talented people, and
the main problem is to get out of their way by minimizing rules and supervision. Instead of hierarchy, these organizations have sought to solve the
problem of coordination through “agency theory,” which recommends monetary rewards for performance that meets the goals of the “principals”—that
is, shareholders (Jensen, 1994).
Evidence on the effectiveness of star models is weak. Although heavy use
of incentives may improve individual performance, it may hamper organizational performance by encouraging manipulation and competition, undercutting the mutual adjustment needed for complex tasks. Both quantitative
and qualitative research have shown that stars are highly dependent on their
environment and that they can undermine attention to systemic issues (Beer
et al., 2004; Groysberg, 2010; Pfeffer, 2001).
TEAM APPROACHES
The growing emphasis on teams has gone through a number of phases
and forms, and remains less clear in its outlines than the talent/agency
model.

4

EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

Stable Teams. The oldest efforts build small teams—usually 6–10 people—
from existing units of the hierarchy: a single function, a single supervisor. The
model accelerated in the 1970s under such rubrics are “quality of work life,”
“autonomous teams,” and “high-performance work systems” (Appelbaum
& Berg, 2000). They are most often found at shop-floor levels, including wide
use in assembly-line work in the automobile industry. The team members
may simply meet periodically to make recommendations for improvement
in work processes and environment, but increasingly they have gained some
new powers of direct decision over scheduling, work organization, and even
hiring and discipline. This sharply changes the daily experience of work:
Team members must learn to analyze problems, structure decision-making
processes, and deal with conflict among peers.
Research evidence indicates that these teams work well in direct comparisons with comparable groups managed through bureaucratic methods,
primarily because of lower turnover and absenteeism, and sometimes innovative redesign. However, they also have significant long-term weaknesses,
due primarily to the strong emphasis on internal cohesion and stability. They
are often resistant to changes coming from outside and may communicate
poorly beyond their boundaries. The literature also emphasizes the need for
employment stability to maintain commitment. These tendencies may make
them slow to adapt to shifts in markets or production. As a result, even
successful ones often fail to survive: Some of the most touted exemplars
of the last few decades, such as Saturn’s Spring Hill plant (Rubinstein &
Kochan, 2001) and NUMMI in the automotive industry (Adler, Goldoftas, &
Levine, 1997), are no longer operating.
Stable teams, in short, increase flexibility and innovation within the boundaries of the group, but they do not reliably extend those gains to a larger
system.
Project Teams (Task Forces). In recent decades, organizational innovation
has centered on a different kind of team: ones that come together from
different functions and levels for particular projects (Donnellon, 1993;
Gulati, 2010). An important early focus of cross-functional teams, in the
1980s, was automobile design: rather than going through the cumbersome
process of throwing plans back and forth “over the wall” between functions,
a new process pioneered in Japan brought together designers and engineers
and marketers into a single process. This greatly speeded new product
development and improved end quality. Since then, driven by the growing
importance of knowledge in business competition (Nonaka, Toyama, &
Nagata, 2000), project teams have spread widely throughout management

The Reorganization of Work

5

ranks; in some instances, such as certain “total quality management” processes or Toyota’s product launch reviews, it has even included shop-floor
workers.
Project teams are generally more flexible than stable work teams, with
greater ability to adapt to change and less need for stable relations. However,
they create even greater strains on the regular bureaucratic organization.
Where stable teams remain encapsulated within existing bureaucratic units,
project teams cross boundaries by design. Thus, they create conflicts of
accountability and upset the traditional career ladders. Members are often
concerned about who will evaluate them and how their work will be viewed
in the long run. The internal management of project teams is also difficult
because they combine very different areas of knowledge, often leading to
misunderstanding and mistrust. For all these reasons, failure is common.
Project teams need explicit process management because they need full
involvement of participants. There has been great innovation in recent
decades in methods of group decision-making, assignment of responsibilities, and peer accountability. (Bryk, Gomez, & Grunow, 2011; Colfer &
Baldwin, 2010).
POSTBUREAUCRATIC ORGANIZATION
Some studies have sought to analyze this interconnected set of changes
as a system. They remain largely disparate and disorganized, as reflected
in the plurality of terms used—including “adhocratic” (Mintzberg, 1998),
“networked” (Powell, 1990), “collaborative” (Heckscher, 2007), and “matrix”
(Galbraith, 2008) organization. All these organizational forms make use of
flexible project teams as described earlier. In organizations approaching
adhocracy, such teams form and recombine frequently and with few formal
restrictions. In a decentralized or modular organization, such teams may
serve as links between the autonomous parts.
The most complex forms of collaborative organization, in companies such
as IBM out Procter & Gamble, combine a skeleton of stable functions with
an overlay of strongly structured project teams with formal procedures
and objectives These organizations combine centralization and decentralization through elaborate “process management”: that is, people can form
cross-functional teams fairly freely, but they must justify and document
what they are doing so can they coordinate effectively with other groups.
A large set of practices—from techniques of team problem-solving to the
drawing of complex process maps—has developed to help organize fluid
projects. Where these methods are widely understood, organizations have
improved their ability to mobilize initiatives across functions. They are more
widely used at higher levels, but in some instances, even shop-floor workers

6

EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

are drawn into project teams for quality improvement or implementation of
new technology.
These developments present challenges to virtually all aspects of systems
and enterprises. For example, while bureaucratic organizations reserved
strategy for the top team, and expected everyone else just to focus on particular pieces, the need for autonomy and teamwork has led most companies
to push strategic understanding to all employees so that they do not have to
wait for instructions form superiors. The promotion system, which used to
center on moving upward in a hierarchy, has become much more complex
and uncertain. There is strong evidence that internal job ladders have
weakened, especially for males, but no effective models of alternative career
structures. Compensation can no longer be linked simply to hierarchical
level; nominal subordinates may make more than their bosses. Leaders
cannot be expected to have all the knowledge of their subordinates. The
reorganization of work, in short, is just part of a reorganization of the system
of work.
CHALLENGES FOR FUTURE RESEARCH
Many aspects of these changes in work have not yet been dealt with effectively in research. The trend of management research for several decades,
along with many other social sciences, has been toward positivism, characterized by a focus on statistical analysis of quantifiable data, an inductive
approach to theory, and an assumption of motivations based on rational individualism. Major journals have relegated other kinds of research, especially
qualitative and “meaning”-focused approaches relying on interviews or general systems analysis, to secondary status.
In periods and fields of fundamental change, however, positivist methods
may be less appropriate. First, it is almost impossible to gather rigorous data
on large social system shifts involving many companies: The relatively few
studies attempting this use surveys with low response rates, questionable
comparability, and unknown reliability of respondents. Variance of terminology and policies among companies makes it difficult to formulate questions
that give consistent results over a wide scope. Second, positivist research is
almost never practical over significant time periods: Even the few surveys
that have been repeated over several decades find that they need continuously to revise their items as new issues come to the fore. In effect, the very
process of change undermines rigorous quantitative comparison across periods. For these reasons, there is value in the work of theorists with a broad historical view, such as Max Weber, Alfred Chandler (1977) and Peter Drucker
(1946), relying on qualitative reflection (Adler, 2009).

The Reorganization of Work

7

Important areas for future research include the following:
Structure: Network studies have greatly helped in studying nonhierarchical
patterns of communication: There has been progress, for instance, in identifying strengths and weaknesses of core-periphery and modular network structures, and in showing the importance of organizational “bridgers.” However,
there is so far no convergence on “ideal type” alternatives to the familiar
pyramid of authority.
Culture: There is much qualitative evidence that the evolution of work
involves a shift in values and meanings. Research on bureaucracy produced
broadly accepted definitions of culture such as Weber’s original focus on
rational legitimation, Barnard’s exploration of loyalty in the informal organization, and Merton’s definition of an “sentiments” of “devotion to one’s
duties, a keen sense of the limitations of one’s authority and competence,
and methodical performance of routine activities.” Most managers now
would say those are insufficient: There is a need for initiative, innovation,
and going beyond the limits of job descriptions. However, these orientations
have not yet been adequately defined in the research literature.
In addition to these broad themes, many particular areas of organization
and human resources research have paid insufficient attention to their
relations to the broader changes under way. For example, both growing
autonomy and teamwork challenge the traditional form of performance
assessment by a single boss. The “star”-focused literature has increasingly
recommended assessments based on objective outcome measures, but the
evidence on whether this actually improves system performance remains
weak. In ore team-focused situations, there has been growing use of multisource or “360-degree” assessment, but research in this area lags particularly
far behind the practice.
Finally, emerging corporate work practices have generated a set of societal
problems. As bureaucratic systems focused on internal development, companies were willing to provide many benefits in order to maintain stability
and loyalty and had strong training arms to develop the capabilities they
needed. With more fluidity, companies have less interest in such investments.
It seems likely that training budgets are in decline and that more employees
are turning to professional associations and adult education, but the extent
and effectiveness of these trends are not well understood.
Large sectors of the economy still involve relatively routine tasks and have
not been much affected by the trends reviewed previously. However, there is
also evidence that automation of such jobs is accelerating and that the move
to knowledge value will continue to spread (Acemoglu & Autor, 2010; Autor,
Levy, & Murnane, 2003).

8

EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

CONCLUSION
The changes and experiments under way in workplaces across almost all
industries are highly dynamic, bordering on chaotic. The consistent driver
is an attempt to overcome the limitations of bureaucratic organization:
restriction of communication channels, inward focus, rigidity of rules, lack
of cross-unit cooperation, and other well-documented weaknesses.
The two broad directions sketched previously—of individual agency and
cooperative teamwork—are not entirely incompatible in practice: most
“postbureaucratic” organizations involve a combination of both. However,
they do create tensions. Where cross-boundary teams are common, it
becomes very difficult to establish clear spheres of autonomy for stars and
to measure their performance. Some research also indicates that high levels
of inequality may undermine commitment and cooperation (Wilkinson &
Pickett, 2009).
Both routes, however, lead to work organization very different, at both
the shopfloor and managerial levels, from the tightly controlled, bounded
model of the 1940s and 1950s. The dominant criticism of work in that
era was that it was boring, overemphasizing conformity and obedience.
The dominant concern today is that it may be too uncertain and unstable,
giving employees too little guidance and support. There are clearly positive
potentials in the increasing emphasis on initiative and independence, but
too little understanding of how it may create a system that meets long-term
needs.

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CHARLES HECKSCHER SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Charles Heckscher is a Professor at Rutgers University and Director of the
Center for the Study of Collaboration in Work and Society. His research has
focused on organization change and the changing nature of employee representation; he is currently working on a book on the transformation of the
societal community. He has also worked as a practitioner and consultant on
processes of organizational development, primarily in the telecommunications industry. Before coming to Rutgers, he worked for the Communications
Workers’ union and taught Human Resources Management at the Harvard
Business School. His books include The New Unionism, White-Collar Blues,
Agents of Change, and The Collaborative Enterprise.
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