This Article Full Text (PDF) References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via HighWire Citing Articles via Google Scholar Citing Articles via Scopus Google Scholar Articles by VALLAS, S. P. Articles by YARROW, M. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                         What's this?

Advanced Technology and Worker Alienation

Comments on the Blauner/Marxism Debate

New York Institute of Technology

MICHAEL YARROW

Ithaca College

This article critically examines a study of work and technology that recently appeared in Work and Occupations in order to identify a series of methodological and theoretical issues that confront researchers in the field. The study in question is Hull, Friedman and Rogers's study on the impact of advanced technology in both the organization and the experience of blue collar work. This article's findings would appear to cast serious doubt on Marxist predictions of deskilling and heightened alienation. Careful examination of their study, however, reveals several important limitations that we feel command attention. These relate to the authors' use of job satisfaction indicators to measure Marx's concept of alienation; their tendency to abstract from the social context of labor/management relations within which technologies are introduced; and finally, their uncritical acceptance of technological determinism, which places technology `above' or beyond societal influence. We find that these and other problems simultaneously undermine the validity of their analysis, while closing off dialogue with the theoretical perspective that Hull et al. would debunk. We suggest that the outcome of technological change is approached more fruitfully as an indeterminate process shaped by the prevailing relations between workers and management, as well as among the workers themselves.

Work and Occupations, Vol. 14, No. 1, 126-142 (1987)
DOI: 10.1177/0730888487014001007


CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter    What's this?

This article has been cited by other articles:

				F. HULL and K. AZUMI Technology and Participation in Japanese Factories: The Consequences for Morale and Productivity Work and Occupations, November 1, 1988; 15(4): 423 - 448. [Abstract]