Efficiency, Satisfaction and Democracy in Work: Conceptions of Industrial Relations in Post-war Sweden

Abstract

This paper is part of an extensive one-man project (Social Trends and Movements in Post-war Sweden) exploring structural changes, and relating them to trends and social movements and seeing the development both as a result of naturalistic forces and as a human drama of conscious movements. It is also a personal document from an industrial sociologist with socialist visions, who started research far back in the 40's. It is a shortened and revised version of the original paper presented in a preliminary version at the Polish-Swedish Seminar on Sociology of Work and Social Policy in Warsaw (October 1976), and later introduced at a seminar on Participation, Workers Control, Self Management, Self Govern ment in Dubrovnik, February 1977. The original analyses the structural and political changes in Sweden as a background for understanding changes in industrial relations and is available as a mimeographed research report from the sociological department of Gothenburg. Some of the references in the original paper have been omitted in this shortened version.