Publisher's Synopsis
This book sets out to explore an emergent discourse between the designers of new products and processes and those whose control over strategic resources is helping to shape the creation of new markets and organizational forms. Its origins lie in the weekly meetings between members of the ESRC Work Organization Research Centre (WORC) at the Aston Business School between the years 1982 and 1987.;This was a period during which the context of work organization was adapting to the challenges presented by potentially revolutionary changes in technology. In order to understand the nature of these changes it became clear that WORC had to move its focus away from that contained in the labour processes alone to the wider contextual influences on managerial thought and action.;Over the last decade scholarship in the field of organizational studies has become increasingly focused on the strategic aspects of management. In other disciplines such as political economics the impact of new technology on strategic action has been of increasing concern. To some extent also the influence of strategic action on technological choices has been treated in the management literature.;The balance is still perhaps toward the technologically deterministic approach. One of the goals of this volume is to make a modest contribution to redressing this balance.
