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VIDAL_empowerment and satisfaction Critical Sociology draft revision.pdf (145.31 kB)

Lean production, worker empowerment, and job satisfaction: A qualitative analysis and critique

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journal contribution
posted on 2017-11-27, 11:25 authored by Matt VidalMatt Vidal
Many argue that increased employee involvement in manufacturing is central to lean production. Increasing the responsibilities and abilities of front-line workers has been labeled empowerment. Such empowerment is said to increase job satisfaction. Yet, there is surprisingly little qualitative research directly addressing the relationship between participatory work arrangements and job satisfaction, and the quantitative evidence is much less clear than oft en presented. Qualitative data presented here show that workers can be satisfied under relatively traditional Fordist arrangements and that increasing employee involvement does not necessarily increase satisfaction. My research highlights the role of individual work orientations in mediating the effects of objective characteristics of job design - such as participatory work arrangements - on job satisfaction. Further, individual preferences for work arrangements are shown not to be consistent and invariable, but context-dependent and subject to reevaluation. © 2007 Koninklijke Brill NV.

Funding

The research for this paper was made possible by a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation for the Advanced Manufacturing Project (AMP) research consortium. This paper is a revision of a presentation given at the 16th Annual Meeting on Socio-Economics, George Washington University, Washington DC, USA, July 8-11, 2004.

History

School

  • Mechanical, Electrical and Manufacturing Engineering

Published in

Critical Sociology

Volume

33

Issue

1-2

Pages

247 - 278

Citation

VIDAL, M., 2007. Lean production, worker empowerment, and job satisfaction: A qualitative analysis and critique. Critical Sociology, 33(1-2), pp. 247-278.

Publisher

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, Published by Sage

Version

  • AM (Accepted Manuscript)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Publication date

2007

Notes

This paper was accepted for publication in the journal Critical Sociology and the definitive published version is available at https://doi.org/10.1163/156916307X168656

ISSN

0896-9205

eISSN

1569-1632

Language

  • en