This paper examines how particular structural pressures external to the firm can combine with the internal micro-dynamics of workplace relations and conflict to create a mode of labour regulation which corresponds to a ‘Japanese style’ teamworking rather than alternative, more autonomous models. It draws on both quantitative and qualitative case study research data of the introduction of job reforms at a brownfield autocomponents factory in South Wales. The paper investigates three key facets of the reform process. First, how the external factors of industrial restructuring and the forging of new customer—supplier relations between firms shape managerial priorities and organisational outcomes. Second, how the microdynamics of workplace relations, in particular, the different interests and actions of managerial, white collar and shopfloor employees, have a direct bearing on the final composition of teamworking. Third, in response to the lack of attention given to the views of those who are most affected by job reforms, the paper provides a systematic analysis of the disempowering impact of teamworking on shopfloor workers' labour processes.

Any management discourse, such as Total Quality Management (TQM), has power effects that can transform individuals into subjects who secure some sense of their own identity through participating either as managers or employees in the practices it embraces. The central argument of this paper, however, is that despite these power effects, TQM is not nearly as effective or rational in controlling employees as its gurus exhort or its critics fear. These arguments are explored empirically through a case study of a major UK retail bank. In particular we illustrate how power and identity relations can intervene to undermine feedback to employees and prevent the upward flow of information to management necessary to ensure that TQM operates effectively. These dynamics are seen to reflect the cost conscious and short-term profit demands endemic within British industry. Just as these ‘bottom line’ considerations have limited the effectiveness of management innovations in the past, they have also created problems for the TQM programme in our case study here. No doubt this will continue to be the case with future management innovations not least because organisational life is always ‘messy’, given its political character. In the form of both career competition and opportunities for resistance to the totalising demands of TQM this paper provides further evidence of the political obstacles to effective innovation.

This paper sets out to investigate whether the recent wave of organisational restructuring has contributed to the further decline of the internally promoted manager or produced a new model of managerial employment in large organisations. Our research, which is based on in-depth case studies of eight major British-based employers, finds no evidence of the kind of transformational change associated with the introduction of a new model. Instead, we find that the traditional model of managerial employment has been eroded rather than replaced. The most notable changes include less job security – especially for those older than fifty – more emphasis on ‘managing your own career’, fewer opportunities for upward promotion, and an increased emphasis on lateral career moves. We conclude by arguing that this restructuring adds further impetus to the decline of the internally promoted middle manager.

The election of 1994 radically changed the environment within which management chose its labour control policies. Prior to the change of government in 1994 plant practices were shaped by the fact of substantial protection against foreign competition, widespread illiteracy, and a set of laws and policies that offered few protections for individual workers or organised labour. Since the change in government the political and legal environment has substantially changed. In this paper we report on management practices before and after the political changes in South Africa in a set of plants in a part of the country where many of the current difficulties of the South African economy exist in a fairly extreme form.

This paper sets out to examine the reliability of data on men's and women's past experiences of unemployment spells which has been gained by asking individuals to recall these spells and the dates of their occurrence. Surveys seek individuals' history data either to gain information about the initial conditions of respondents, or to examine these histories in their own right. It is much less expensive to collect data about individuals' histories by asking them to recall their experiences than it is to collect the same data from a panel survey over many years. However, important questions arise concerning the reliability and validity of data collected by the recall method. Reviews of the tests carried out on recall data show that there are some important lessons to learn, particularly when individuals are being asked to recall experiences short in duration and low in importance (Dex 1995). Validity is difficult to assess. This paper seeks to extend the body of knowledge about the reliability of recall data on individuals' unemployment histories by providing empirical data on two large-scale surveys which collected similar data on unemployment histories from large numbers of British adults in the early 1990s; Wave 2 (1992) of the British Household Panel Study (BHPS) and the 1994 Family and Working Lives Survey (FWLS).

Although research in both Britain and the US shows that, in general, wives do by far the largest proportion of domestic work, even where they are employed full time (Berk, 1985; Coverman 1983; Geerken and Gove 1983; Gershuny et al. 1986; Pleck 1985; Robinson 1980; Warde and Hetherington 1993), research also suggests that only a minority see this situation as unfair (Barnett and Baruch 1987; Benin and Agostinelli 1988; DeMaris and Longmore 1996; Hill and Scanzoni 1982; Layte 1996; Lennon and Rosenfield 1994; Pleck 1985; Rosen 1987; Yogev 1981). How do we explain the paradox of contributions being known to be unequal but not seen as inequitable? Two theoretical explanations have been put forward. The first from a 'resource bargaining', or social exchange perspective (Blood and Wolfe 1960; Heer 1963; Hiller 1981; Safilios-Rothschild 1970; Thibaut and Kelley 1959) views the division of domestic labour as part of an exchange relationship where power derived from 'resources' dictates outcomes and one's sense of equity. The second using what has come to be termed 'symbolic exchange' (Berk 1980, 1985; Coltrane 1989; West and Zimmerman 1987) views partners' gender ideologies as more important in defining the perceived equity of outcomes. Whereas social exchange theory views the process through which domestic work is divided in terms of gender-neutral economic or quasi-economic exchange (Brines 1993: 303), symbolic exchange theory views the division of domestic work as a form of cultural as well as economic production that has a definite gendered logic.

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Pasi Falk and Colin Campbell (eds), The Shopping Experience, London: Sage, £45.00, paper £15.99, ix+212 pp.

Jukka Gronow, The Sociology of Taste, London: Routledge, 1997, £45.00, paper £12.99, xiv+199 pp.

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Ruth Milkman, Farewell to the Factory: Auto Workers in the Late Twentieth Century, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997, £35.00, paper £12.95, xiii+234 pp.

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Diemut Elisabet Bubeck, Care, Gender, and Justice, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995, £30.00, viii+281 pp.

Jean Gardiner, Gender, Care and Economics, London: Macmillan, 1997, £42.50, paper £15.99, xiv+273 pp.