The New Ruthless Economy

Work and Power in the Digital Age

Simon Head - Collection Economics

222 pages, parution le 10/05/2005

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Résumé

"As this hard-hitting book shows, most American companies have used information technology not to liberate workers from drudgery but to further their regimentation.... A sobering view of the new workplace."
Harvard Business Review

In the great boom of the 1990s, top management's compensation soared, but the wages of most Americans barely grew. Here, Simon Head points to information technology as the prime cause of this growing wage disparity. Many economists, technologists, and business consultants have predicted that IT would liberate the work force, bringing self-managed work teams and decentralized decision making. Head argues that the opposite has happened. Reengineering, a prime example of how business processes have been computerized, has instead simplified the work of middle and lower level employees and fenced them in with elaborate rules. Drawing upon ten years of research visiting work places across America, ranging from medical offices to machine tool plants, Head offers dramatic insight into the impact of information technology on the quality of working life in the United States.

"Head's acute and clearly presented book shows how innovations in software are making work more onerous and closely controlled. In each chapter, Head takes the reader to actual work sites employing 'technologies that are essentially human-proof,' i.e., in which personal choice is practically eliminated."
The New York Review of Books

"A welcome caution against believing all the claptrap we have heard about 'empowered' workplaces."
The New Leader

"In a fascinating book Simon Head shows how the American system of Scientific Management has been applied to the now dominant service sector. At its heart is the ubiquitous 'corporate call center'."
Lord Robert Skidelsky, Biographer of John Maynard Keynes, and Chairman of the Center for Global Studies, London

L'auteur - Simon Head

Simon Head is Director of the Project on Technology and the Workplace at the Century Foundation. He has been a correspondent for the Financial Times and the New Statesman, and his writings have also appeared in The New York Review of Books.

Sommaire

Foreword
Preface
Acknowledgments
A New Economy?
The Roots of Mass Production
The Past Alive: Automobiles
The Rise of the Reengineers
The Customer Relations Factory
On the Digital Assembly Line
The Scientific Management of Life-and Death: Part I
The Scientific Management of Life-and Death: Part 2
Foucault's Tower
The Economics of Unfairness
Notes
Index

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Caractéristiques techniques

	PAPIER
Éditeur(s)	Oxford University Press
Auteur(s)	Simon Head
Collection	Economics
Parution	10/05/2005
Nb. de pages	222
Format	13,5 x 20
Couverture	Broché
Poids	203g
Intérieur	Noir et Blanc
EAN13	9780195179835
ISBN13	978-0-19-517983-5