La participación de los trabajadores en la calidad total

Nuevos dispositivos disciplinarios de organización del trabajo

Abstract

During the last decade, Social Sciences of Work have developed a wide academic and business
debate on the possible emergence of new industrial models in companies, centred on the introduction
of organizational or business cultures that allegedly break away from traditional taylorist work
organization practices. Outstanding among these transformations is managerial backing for the
establishment of participatory management of human resources (empowerment) which makes it
possible, on the one hand, to take advantage of the empirical knowledge of employees in the
improvement and perfecting of manufacturing processes and, on the other hand, guarantee their
greater involvement in the achievement of business objectives, through the design of a new
‘organizational culture of quality’. This participation, which is centred on autonomy in the job, is the
base on which a new competitive strategy is being constructed, based on production quality assurance
policies, which are giving rise to transformations in the mechanisms for organization and managerial
inspection of work. However, the actual result of this achievement of quality has involved the design
and introduction of new taylorist practices and increased watchfulness over employee performance,
and so the managerial definition of participation has fashioned, and restricted, this as a device for
expropriation of employees’ knowledge and experience, at the same time as it has meant the
construction of a new discipline and system of detailed control of their productive performance and an
intensification of their activity, as illustrated by the real contents of productive and organizational
restructuring policies carried out in companies that manufacture machine-tools in the Basque Country
during the second half of the nineties (1994-2000).