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A growing body of social science literature has examined the organizational innovations and staffing practices comprising new flexible forms of work. Researchers have investigated the depth and scope of these changes and questioned how they affect diverse groups of workers in the United States. Reviewing the research on this transformation reveals a model of combined and uneven flexibility, characterized by the opening of opportunities that are differentially distributed across different groups of American workers, emerging under conditions in which effort is intensified, control is decentered, and employment is destabilized. The essay concludes by suggesting additional areas of inquiry for sociologists concerned with new forms of work organization.

Es wird versucht, einige Elemente in der Entwicklung neuer Formen von Arbeitsorganisation deutlich zu machen und die sozioökonomischen Faktoren herauszustellen, die diese Entwicklung bedingten. Aus vier wichtigen Gründen sind Alternativen zu tayloristischen Arbeitsformen von Interesse; es sind dies: die Arbeitszufriedenheit, Demokratie am Arbeitsplatz, Produktivität und Arbeitsbedingungen. (IAB2)

The 'deconstruction' of the so-called Swedish model -a form of corporatism at the societal level has been very much discussed. New forms of work organization in combination with a rapid development of company level schemes for bonuses, profit-sharing, convertibles and employee share ownership may hit the core of the model, the solidaristic wage policy. In order to maintain the Swedish model, more or less modified, the unions probably have to improve their knowledge of work organization development, support their local bodies and make negotiations on new forms of work organization possible. To be able to prevent increasingly arbitrary wage differences the unions have to develop job classification systems, local job evaluation systems and overall wage statistics. If the unions do not succeed in this policy, the Swedish model will convert into a Japanese form of industrial relations, i.e. managerial corporatism.

This article critically examines the introduction of new forms of work organization and employee involvement in two American electronics companies operating in the Republic of Ireland. The success of these initiatives was found to be intimately related to three factors: management commitment, workers' response and operational pressures. It was found that a number of different forms of labour regulation existed side-by-side within the same organization. This paper tries to account for the persistence of these 'older' forms of labour regulation. In addition, it is argued that workers remain suspicious of, and removed from, management.