DIGNITY IN THE WORKPLACE UNDER PARTICIPATIVE MANAGEMENT - ALIENATION AND FREEDOM REVISITED

Participative management provides a profound challenge to traditional organizations of work. Some researchers view participative management as providing an opportunity for workers to exercise increased power ba sed on heightened responsibilities. Other researchers view participati ve management as management's newest ploy to extract not only labor bu r also the knowledge of production from workers. I use a model of work place organizations that combines elements from Blauner's (1964) techn ology-based model and Edwards's (1979) labor-control model to evaluate workers' experiences of alienation and freedom across different syste ms of production. Data for the analysis are provided by the population of published English-language workplace ethnographies. The results pr ovide partial support for Blauner's U-shaped curve of declining then i ncreasing freedom under modern forms of production. Under participativ e organizations of work, however positive and meaningful experiences i n the workplace do not return to the same levels that they achieved un der the craft organization of work. Relations among coworkers evidence less improvement under participative organizations of work than task and management-related aspects of work. This incomplete recovery of th e positive experiences of craft production leaves at least some room f or less optimistic visions of emergent workplace relations.