Economics and Work Organization

Abstract

This volume is the product of a conference held in 1982 under the title ‘Economics and Work Organization’. A quick perusal of the papers included might leave a non-economist somewhat baffled: what do any of them have to do with the organization of work? There is little or nothing about the costs and benefits of different ways of scheduling work flows or factory organization or autonomous work groups, etc. These are the sorts of questions which industrial engineers, industrial psychologists or industrial sociologists might expect to be encompassed by an ‘Economics of Work Organization’. However, the papers in this volume are largely conceptual in nature. They focus on economic concepts which may be appropriate in analysing work organization (widely defined) rather than measuring in detail the economic consequences of given forms of work organization. Hence the conjunction (and) rather than the preposition (of) in the conference title. Modern economists are still in the early stages of addressing themselves to questions of work organization. As a consequence of this they are still grappling with very general questions such as the appropriate framework within which to examine work organization and the development of concepts adequate for this ‘new’ field of enquiry.