On Work and Authority

Continued debate over the nature of work is adding to an existing vast literature in labor economics, business and personnel administration, industrial sociology and social psychology. Both theory and experience indicate that the authoritarian workplace results in social costs through reduced labor productivity and increased worker dissatisfaction. But progress toward shared authority and worker participation in the administration of the production process promises to be slow. Management generally preserves a legitimized authority, defending it with the misplaced rationale of elitism, i.e., the presumed functional superiority of managers. Unions will not press for shared authority, for to do so would undermine their basic and formal function of organizational restraint of managerial authority. Thus, while management and union logically protect their traditional roles, the worker and society are denied the potential benefits of basic changes in work and authority

Administration (probate law) · Authoritarianism · Business · Democracy · Economic growth · Economics · Labour economics · Political science · Productivity · Public relations · Resizing · Sociology · Work (physics) · Labor Movements and Unions · Law

• The Limits and Shortcomings of Humanistic Organization Theory

  Open Access•Mats Alvesson•Acta Sociologica•1982

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