Business and Management

Blyton, P. , Noon, M. (2007), The Realities of Work. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. This Chapter explores the key concepts of survival in the workforce. The aim is to explore how employees survive the alienating tendencies at work by developing different coping strategies in different circumstances. According to Karl Marx employees develop four types of estrangement; self-estrangement, estrangement from the product of their labour, their species being and from others which leads to alienation. Under capitalism)all the means for developing production are transformed into means of power over and exploitation of the producer; that they mutilate the worker into a fragment of a human being, degrade him to become a mere appurtenance, make his work such a torment that its essential meaning is destroyed(Marx, 1930: 713, quoted in Fox, 1974: 224) Blauner suggests that greater automation will free workers hard work of assembly lines and machine minding, it will result in decreasing alienation for employees (Blauner, 1964:182-3) We have acknowledged the authors and the investigators opinions to alienation.
According to the writers there are five main strategies that help to survive alienation tendencies such as fiddling, making out, joking, sabotage and escaping. Michael Burawoy (1979) suggests employees should use the term making out. Making out in Burawoy’s theory suggests employees are allowed to miss behave and control their working day if they are still working within the rules, management’s instructions and tasks are completed. (Burawoy, 1985: 126) Management Today (2000) state fiddling is a rule breaker but managers turn a blind eye.
It can be seen in any job from supermarkets to call centres. In call centres employees manipulate the call monitoring system in order to gain extra rest breaks. (Townsend,2005:56) Radcliffe-Brown (1952) is an anthropologist who acknowledged the survival strategy joking. Joking maintains social order, releases tension, challenges authority and forges group identities. However occasional joking can challenge the power of hierarchy. Identified by Linstead (1985a) sabotage can be a result of rational behaviour.

It can purposely be a spiteful attempt to ruin or disturb the process or the product. This is where whistle blowing comes in to determine the result of behaviour. Escaping is expressed in two different ways. Physical escape is to temporarily take time off or to permanently quit the job to escape alienation. Mental escape is taking their mind somewhere else so that they can express their own thoughts in their own head. Overall employees should interoperate the five survival strategies’ which will help them to survive the alienation.
However employees should interoperate them as a form of consent and not a form of resistance. McHugh, D. , Thompson, P. (2002) Work Organisations: A Critical Introduction. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. In This Chapter the author explores how scientific management and bureaucratisation helped transform the workplace. Fredrick Taylor is known for inventing the term scientific management. Some management and work organisations were already in place ‘the less skilled worker’.
It was down to Taylor who acknowledged the influences of other systematic management inventions such as inspection systems, and employment departments. (Urwick and Breech, 1949:33) Nyland, (1988:56) believed that “The Systematisers” were a diverse group of engineers , accountants, and work managers who argued that US firms had grown to a size where the internal functioning of the enterprise was becoming increasingly chaotic and waist full. This suggests not all work was available to everyone so therefore used his system which he believed was the best to manage the workforce.
Bringing a new approach to managerial skills needed a new set of rules to help the labour process that Taylor was most concerned about. New rules meant stricter working environments. Taylor used idea’s to help shape the work place conflicting beaurocratic management. Braverman (1974:120) objects that it sanctions the mistaken view that such work arrangements belongs to large scale organisations rather than a product of capitalist social relations. This suggests not everyone agreed with the theory, some writers said the idea of bureaucrasation and systematic management was problematic.
To understand the beucratic rules it needs to be clear through different modes of production and business systems. Clawson (1980; 248) believed Taylorism is in contrast with Weber Stress on the remote and impersonal qualities of beuocrasy. This suggests Taylor and Weber worked in contrast with each other because weber believed in Taylor theory of systematic management. Therefore Webers theory of rationalisation worked with Taylor’s theory. To summarise beaurocratic management has risen in the ervice industry. Recent studies state that evidence is showed in Ritzler’s (1993) ‘The Mcdonaldisation of society’. The authors state the key point of this chapter is that Taylorism and other management theories are distinct elements not packages. People are diverse and uneven when it comes to the legacy of Taylorism. Traditions have in fact shaped the industry aiding managers to use different approaches.
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