Read more
This book presents the first published account in English of Sverre Lysgaard's theory of the 'worker collectivity' - a theory of an informal protective organisation among subordinate employees, which so far has been unknown outside Scandinavia.
Lysgaard's theory espouses that workers collectively form a buffer against management to protect themselves from the technical/economic power, which controls their working lives. The authors have returned to the same Norwegian factory Lysgaard studied in the 1950s to carry out ethnographic fieldwork in the 1980s and 2010s, and investigate the changing nature of the production, labour processes and management strategies. Through analysis that extends over 50 years of factory life, this research documents shifting power relations between workers and employers during times of changing institutional structures, globalisation, and worker solidarity. A revised version of the theory is also presented as an answer to some of the uncovered deficiencies in the original framework. The book will be of interest to students and scholars of the sociology of work, labour studies, business management and organisation studies.
List of contents
1. Introduction: Theoretical Contexts of the Theory of the Worker Collectivity.- Part 1. Factory Life and the Worker Collectivity 2. Lysgaard's Theory of the Worker Collectivity.- 3. Lysgaard in Anglo-Saxony: A Comparison of Theories.- 4. The Life and Times of the Worker Collectivity Over Sixty Years.- Part 2. Developments of the Theory of the Worker Collectivity 5. The Human System, the Person and Human Nature. - 6. Infiltrating the Technical/Economic System.- 7. The Economic System: Transmitting Inexorability.- 8. A Lysgaardian Theory of the Worker Collectivity.
About the author
Jonas Axelsson is
Lecturer in the Department of Working Life Science, Karlstad University Sweden.
Jan Ch. Karlsson is Professor Emeritus at Østfold University College, Norway.
Egil J. Skorstad is Professor Emeritus at Østfold University College, Norway.
Summary
This book presents the first published account in English of Sverre Lysgaard's theory of the ‘worker collectivity’ – a theory of an informal protective organisation among subordinate employees, which so far has been unknown outside Scandinavia.
Lysgaard’s theory espouses that workers collectively form a buffer against management to protect themselves from the technical/economic power, which controls their working lives. The authors have returned to the same Norwegian factory Lysgaard studied in the 1950s to carry out ethnographic fieldwork in the 1980s and 2010s, and investigate the changing nature of the production, labour processes and management strategies. Through analysis that extends over 50 years of factory life, this research documents shifting power relations between workers and employers during times of changing institutional structures, globalisation, and worker solidarity. A revised version of the theory is also presented as an answer to some of the uncovered deficiencies in the original framework. The book will be of interest to students and scholars of the sociology of work, labour studies, business management and organisation studies.
