Research,the application of ideas from the literature, problem solving and critical analysis (REPORT)
MDNAQ
williams2008.pdf
foresight Emerald Article: Visions of the future of employment: a critical overview Colin Williams
Article information:
To cite this document: Colin Williams, (2008),"Visions of the future of employment: a critical overview", foresight, Vol. 10 Iss: 5 pp. 24 - 33
Permanent link to this document: http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/14636680810918487
Downloaded on: 17-01-2013
References: This document contains references to 59 other documents
To copy this document: [email protected]
This document has been downloaded 734 times since 2008. *
Users who downloaded this Article also downloaded: *
Colin Williams, (2008),"Visions of the future of employment: a critical overview", foresight, Vol. 10 Iss: 5 pp. 24 - 33 http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/14636680810918487
Colin Williams, (2008),"Visions of the future of employment: a critical overview", foresight, Vol. 10 Iss: 5 pp. 24 - 33 http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/14636680810918487
Colin Williams, (2008),"Visions of the future of employment: a critical overview", foresight, Vol. 10 Iss: 5 pp. 24 - 33 http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/14636680810918487
Access to this document was granted through an Emerald subscription provided by VICTORIA UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY
For Authors: If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service. Information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information.
About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.com With over forty years' experience, Emerald Group Publishing is a leading independent publisher of global research with impact in business, society, public policy and education. In total, Emerald publishes over 275 journals and more than 130 book series, as well as an extensive range of online products and services. Emerald is both COUNTER 3 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation.
*Related content and download information correct at time of download.
Visions of the future of employment: a critical overview
Colin Williams
Abstract
Purpose – This paper aims to provide a critical overview of the diverse visions of the future of
employment.
Design/methodology/approach – A conceptual framework is presented for understanding the
common narrative structure that underpins a multitude of contrasting visions on how employment will be
organized in the future.
Findings – This paper shows how the diverse stories about the future of employment adopt a similar
storyline, and reveals how most visions: firstly squeeze all forms of employment into one side or other of
some dualism; secondly, order the two sides into a temporal and/or normative sequence in which one
side is seen as universally replacing and/or more progressive than the other; and finally, represent this
one-dimensional linear trajectory by concocting some label to represent their vision, which usually
involves using some -ism, -ation or post-something-or-other.
Practical implications – Visions of the future of employment are shown to be grounded in some binary
hierarchy (e.g. from Fordism to post-Fordism, bureaucracy to post-bureaucracy), all of which
over-simplify lived practice. To offer a way forward that transcends these one-dimensional and linear
stories, this paper argues for a more kaleidoscopic understanding that recognizes the heterogeneous
and multiple directions of employment and opens up the future to new possibilities.
Originality/value – This paper highlights how a common storyline underpins a diverse array of
competing visions of the future of employment.
Keywords Employment, Economic development, Hierarchical organizations
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Many competing visions of the future of employment exist. Indeed, there are near enough as
many visions as there are commentators. For some, the future of employment is full of
promise and hope, for others it is full of despair. For some, far-reaching and deep-seated
changes are about to take place, for others, the future will be much like the present apart
from a few minor changes at the margins. Some visions of the future are written as
scientifically rigorous descriptions, others as prescriptions of what should be.
With such a diverse array of competing voices and writing styles, it might be thought that
somebody would have attempted to review the multitude of claims about the future of
employment. Until now, however, most reviews have confined themselves to a limited range
of viewpoints (Nolan and Wood, 2003; Ransome, 1999; Thompson and Warhurst, 1998;
White et al., 2004). In other words, they have tended to only chart particular islands. They
have not taken a fuller tour of the diverse continents of thought that prevail on the future of
employment. The intention here, therefore, is to provide those interested in the future of
employment with a rather more comprehensive tour of the diverse perspectives than so far
attempted and in doing so to make some significant advances in how the future of
employment is thought about.
PAGE 24 j foresight j VOL. 10 NO. 5 2008, pp. 24-33, Q Emerald Group Publishing Limited, ISSN 1463-6689 DOI 10.1108/14636680810918487
Colin Williams is the
Professor of Public Policy at
the University of Sheffield,
Sheffield, UK.
Received 25 April 2008 Accepted 2 June 2008
To do this, the first section will argue that although there are many different visions of the
future of employment, the vast majority employ a similar storyline grounded in what Derrida
(1967) terms hierarchical binary thought. To reveal this, the second and third sections will
then review an array of orthodox and alternative visions of the future of employment so as to
unravel how they are grounded in this narrative structure. Analyzing these visions, the fourth
section will then display how this hierarchical binary way of thinking about the future results
in one-dimensional linear tales that over-simplify what is occurring in lived practice and the
final section will discuss how this conventional hierarchical binary way of thinking might be
transcended in order to achieve a more representative understanding of the future of
employment.
Before commencing, however, it is important to state that this paper reviews only visions of
the future of employment, by which is meant remunerated work that is registered by and
declared to the state for tax and social protection purposes. For reasons of succinctness,
this paper does not review the various visions that define work more widely to include
self-provisioning (i.e., unpaid work conducted by household members for other household
members), mutual aid (i.e., unpaid work conducted for members of households other than
one’s own) and/or paid informal work (i.e., paid work not registered by or declared to the
state for tax and social protection purposes). Despite not evaluating how these broader
perspectives envisage the future of work, it is important to note that many of the arguments
developed in this paper apply just as well to these visions of the future of work more widely
defined (for reviews of these visions, see Beck, 2000; Williams, 2004, 2005, 2007; Williams
and Round, 2007).
Futures of employment: different narratives but same narrative structure
Although many competing visions exist in relation to how employment will be organized in
the future, many adopt a very similar narrative structure when constructing their stories. To
understand the commonalities in their storylines, consider for example the following visions
of the future of employment:
B industrial society is being replaced by post-industrial societies (i.e. the
‘‘post-industrialism’’ thesis);
B post-Fordist flexible work practices are increasingly replacing Fordist mass production
(i.e. the ‘‘post-Fordism’’ thesis);
B post-bureaucratic work organization is steadily replacing bureaucratic work organization
(i.e. the ‘‘post-bureaucracy’’ thesis); and
B low-trust low-commitment workplaces are being replaced by high-trust high-commitment
workplaces (i.e. the ‘‘high-commitment’’ thesis).
The common argument or storyline being adopted across all these visions is that the first
step they take in constructing their visions of the future is to squeeze the heterogeneous
types of employment into one side or the other of a dichotomy which is deemed crucial for
understanding the future (e.g. bureaucracy and post-bureaucracy; Fordism and
post-Fordism). Second, and having marshaled all of economic life into one side or the
other of this dualism, the two sides are then ordered into a temporal and normative sequence
in which one side is seen as either universally replacing and/or more progressive than the
other. Third and finally, and to represent this one-dimensional linear trajectory, a label is
concocted to represent this vision of the future, which usually involves using some ‘‘-ation’’
(e.g. McDonaldization), ‘‘-ism’’ (e.g. post-industrialism, informationalism) or
‘‘post-something-or-other’’ (e.g. post-Fordism, post-bureaucracy).
This popular narrative structure is founded upon what Derrida (1967) terms ‘‘binary
hierarchical’’ thought in that firstly, all forms of employment are shepherded into a binary
frame composed of two sides which are stable, bounded and constituted via negation and
secondly, these opposites are read in a hierarchical manner in which there is a superordinate
(e.g. post-bureaucracy, post-Fordism, knowledge economy; information society) viewed as
in the ascendancy and/or endowed with positive attributes and a subordinate or subservient
‘‘other’’ (e.g. bureaucracy, Fordism) in decline and/or attributed with negativity.
VOL. 10 NO. 5 2008 j foresightj PAGE 25
Using this hierarchical binary narrative structure to conceptualize the future of employment
is not only a popular tool employed in both most of the best-selling ‘‘pop-futurism’’ as well as
serious academic writing, but also a very powerful semantic device. Indeed, to see the
persuasiveness of such a story-telling technique, a range of visions grounded in such a
mode of thought will be now presented that are sometimes assumed to be descriptions
(even facts) regarding the future of employment, as if such a thing could exist.
Dominant visions of the future of employment
As Table I displays, all of the dominant visions regarding the future of employment are
concocted in binary hierarchical terms when representing what the future holds. First of all,
there are those visions that represent the future of employment in terms of the shift from
industrial to post-industrial society. Originating in the late 1960s in the USA, an optimistic,
hopeful and positive belief emerged in the inevitability of, and opportunities provided by,
rising levels of affluence linked to the emergence of new more efficient information and
communication technologies (Bell, 1973; Drucker, 1969; Dumazedier, 1967; Kerr et al., 1973;
Toffler, 1980). The outcome was that the ‘‘old’’ industrial society was depicted as
‘‘backward’’ and withering whilst the ‘‘new’’ post-industrial society was portrayed as
representing progress and modernity and in the ascendancy.
Many of the major themes that emerged as part and parcel of this thesis, and in particular the
post-industrial occupation with the centrality of knowledge, its production and
dissemination, are today still being discussed, albeit being reproduced in visions that
discuss the advent of what is now labeled a ‘‘knowledge’’ or ‘‘information’’ economy
(Blackler, 1995; Castells, 1996; Cooke, 2002; Huggins and Izushi, 2007; Nonaka, 1991;
Stewart, 2003). Here, therefore, a hierarchical binary way of thinking about the future is again
being adopted in which two opposites are being temporally and normatively sequenced.
Indeed, most of those envisaging the future in terms of a knowledge economy write as if this
dualism is the only one that can be used to depict the future. As Thompson and Warhurst
(1998, p. 1) assert:
There is a considerable amount of common ground among popular business and academic
commentators about what the trends in work and workplace are. That commonality starts from a
re-labeling of the big picture. We are now living in a post-industrial, information or knowledge
economy.
This encapsulates the frequent myopic disregard for other perspectives towards the future.
Such myopia, however, is not confined solely to commentators depicting the future to be the
advent of a post-industrial, information or knowledge economy.
Another common hierarchical binary employed to portray the future of employment is the
shift from Fordist to post-Fordist modes of work organization (Aglietta, 1979; Amin et al.,
2002; Hall and Jacques, 1989; Piore and Sabel, 1984). In this vision, there is a shift away
from Fordism, a period stretching from the end of the second world war until the mid-1970s,
when there was the widespread mass production of standardized goods using inflexible,
dedicated machinery, exploitation of internal scale economies, a Taylorist fragmentation and
deskilling of work, and relatively narrow and rigidly defined job descriptions, along with mass
consumption. In its place is a new post-Fordist era characterized by the application of
Table I Binary hierarchical visions of futures for employment
Nature of change Old New
Sector-based Industrial society Post-industrial Knowledge economy Information economy
Employment practices Fordism Post-Fordism Organizational Bureaucracy Post-bureaucracy
Compliance Commitment Direct control Indirect control Hard human resource management Soft human resource management
PAGE 26j foresightj VOL. 10 NO. 5 2008
production methods considered to be more flexible than those of the Fordist era. These
include more versatile programmable machines, labor that is more flexibly deployed (both in
terms of the quantity used and tasks performed), the vertical disintegration of large
corporations, greater use of inter-firm alliances (e.g. subcontracting, strategic alliances,
just-in-time production) and a closer integration of product development, marketing and
production, resulting in a small batch production tailored to specific niche markets. Again,
therefore, a binary narrative is being constructed in which one side is in the ascendancy and
the other in demise.
Yet another common binary hierarchy used to represent how employment is being
restructured is the bureaucracy/post-bureaucracy binary and how there is/should be a shift
from bureaucratic to post-bureaucratic workplaces, or what is sometimes alternatively
labeled the shift from ‘‘hard’’ to ‘‘soft’’ human resource management (Legge, 1995),
industrial relations to human resource management (Kochan and Osterman, 1998), a
‘‘low-road’’ to a ‘‘high-road’’ strategy (Appelbaum and Batt, 1994) or ‘‘modern’’ to
‘‘post-modern’’ management (Clegg, 1990), each commentator of course naming the same
phenomenon but using new labels to create the impression that something new about the
future is being offered. Addressing issues such as the dismantling of bureaucratic control
methods, engendering a commitment to quality, and the cultural climate of, or within, the
organization, the necessity for, and desirability of, a transition from bureaucratic to
post-bureaucratic management has been widely discussed (Armenakis and Bedeian, 1999;
Handy, 1995; Kalleberg, 2001; Peters, 1992). For many, this is normatively depicted as a
positive, hope-filled and beneficial trajectory for the ‘‘new’’ workplace. Indeed, a whole raft of
prescriptive ‘‘how to’’ textbooks and pop-management best-sellers that are celebratory
odes to post-bureaucracy have saturated the book market in recent decades (Peters and
Waterman, 1982; Semler, 2003; Simpson, 1999; Zohar and Marshall, 2005). For adherents to
post-bureaucracy, therefore, and whether they are seeking to nurture organizational culture,
learning organizations, commitment, heart, soul or spirit, this vision of post-bureaucracy is
ultimately seen as beneficial and as humanizing the workplace. Bureaucracy, meanwhile, is
depicted as possessing negative attributes such as inefficiency, dehumanization and
ritualism that need to be transcended (Thompson and Alvesson, 2005).
In all these dominant visions of the future of employment, in consequence, the narrative
structure is grounded in a binary hierarchical way of thinking in which some dualism is
focused upon and the two sides temporally and normatively sequenced with one side
characterized as the ‘‘old’’ and composed of negative attributes (e.g. Fordism,
bureaucracy) and the other side (e.g. post-Fordism, post-bureaucracy) configured as
‘‘new’’ and a signal of advancement, progress and modernity.
Counter-visions of the future of employment
These dominant visions of employment have not gone uncontested. Indeed, a host of
counter visions have emerged that directly oppose these descriptions and prescriptions of
the future. Until now, however, these counter visions have normally challenged these visions
simply by inverting the temporal or normative sequencing of the dominant narratives. Rather
than assert that there is a universal trajectory towards post-Fordism, post-bureaucracy or the
knowledge economy and/or that this represents the path to progress and advancement,
these counter-narratives simply propound the opposite in either descriptive or prescriptive
terms. They propose either that there is a return and/or far greater continuity with Fordism,
bureaucracy and so forth than these visions assert, or suggest prescriptively that progress
or advancement lies not in the advent of post-Fordism, post-bureaucracy, knowledge
economies or high-commitment work cultures but rather, in a process of Fordism or
bureaucracy for instance.
Take, for example, those visions that directly contest either the descriptive and/or
prescriptive narrative of post-bureaucracy. These counter visions on the whole simply invert
the description and/or prescription of post-bureaucracy by envisaging either a trend
towards a re-bureaucratization of the workplace or normatively depict ‘‘progress’’ and
‘‘advancement’’ to lie in developing a re-bureaucratization of workplaces. On the one hand,
VOL. 10 NO. 5 2008 j foresightj PAGE 27
therefore, numerous commentaries depict the shallow and uneven penetration of
post-bureaucracy and even rebirth of bureaucratic forms of work organization (du Gay,
2000, 2005; Ritzer, 1998). On the other hand, a whole host of writers negatively portray
post-bureaucracy as a sinister attempt by organizations to control workers by co-opting their
‘‘hearts and minds’’ for the purpose of profit (Boron, 2005; Gorz, 1999; Parker, 2002) by
creating ‘‘willing slaves’’ (Bunting, 2004). As McKinlay and Taylor (1996, p. 3) recognize,
critics ‘‘have inverted the euphoric rhetoric of HRM [human resource management] to
produce gloomy analyses of emerging factory regimes in which workers lose even the
awareness of their own exploitation’’. Some even highlight the fairness and justice inherent in
bureaucracy (du Gay, 2005) extolling the virtues of the previously ‘‘subservient’’ side of the
dualism. The outcome is an inversion of the temporal and normative sequencing of the
post-bureaucracy thesis in these counter visions.
It is similarly the case with those contesting the visions that celebrate the advent of the
post-industrial or knowledge economy and post-Fordism. Question marks are again raised
about the temporal and/or normative sequencing identified in these visions. On the one
hand, a whole host of commentaries question whether there is indeed a trajectory towards a
post-industrial, knowledge or post-Fordist mode of work organization by highlighting either
the persistence or even growth of industrial, non-knowledge, non-information or Fordist work
in contemporary society. Indeed, this is quite often done by calling for these binaries (e.g.
Fordism/post-Fordism) not to be seen as temporally sequenced with one old and the other
new but rather, as descriptors of difference in the present, as Gamble et al. (2004) display in
their depiction of Fordism mass production as alive and well in East Asia but post-Fordism as
prominent in the western world. On the other hand, numerous commentators question
whether it is indeed the case that the so-called post-industrial, knowledge or post-Fordist
economies should be envisaged in quite so hopeful, positive and beneficial terms as some
of the orthodox commentaries prescribe. To take, just one example, many counter the
celebratory odes of post-Fordism by arguing that it marks the end of full-employment and
the rise of under-employment as firms seek to reduce labor costs and rewrite the social
contract with labor, leading to growing job insecurity, and the demise of the welfare state
(e.g. Amin et al., 2002; Gorz, 1999; Ritzer, 1998).
Such a counter vision is exemplified by the ‘‘Brazilianization of the West’’ thesis of Beck
(2000). In semi-industrialized Brazil, the economically active population in full-time
employment are argued to constitute only a minority of the working population. The
majority are migratory workers involved in low wage, multi-activity. This, he asserts, is the
future for the west where there is an indefensible polarization between an economically
active minority, with full-time employment, earning good pay and occupational benefits, and
a majority driven to the poverty line by the absence of full-time remunerative work.
These counter visions of the future of employment are valuable, in consequence, because
they not only open up possible futures for employment beyond the knowledge economy,
post-Fordism and post-bureaucracy, futures that are often depicted as somehow natural and
inevitable, but they also contest the dominant prescription that privileges prescriptively one
side (e.g. Post-Fordism, post-bureaucracy) over the other (e.g. Fordism, bureaucracy).
What is perhaps less convincing about these counter-narratives, however, is that they simply
invert either the trajectories propounded to be underway and/or the normative judgments of
the orthodox visions of the future of employment. For example, rather than attach positive
attributes to post-Fordism, post-bureaucracy and the knowledge economy or learning
organizations, they simply do the reverse. The outcome is that whilst the orthodox narratives
over-romanticize post-bureaucracy, post-Fordism and so forth, these counter visions do the
same with the opposites, namely bureaucracy, Fordism and so on. The result is that these
counter visions simply persist with the same mode of hierarchical binary thought as the
orthodox visions by constructing a dualism which envisages or prescribes an either/or
choice and then envisaging this in a temporal manner as a one-dimensional linear
transformation from some ‘‘old’’ to ‘‘new’’ form of work organization and normatively
privileging one side over the other.
PAGE 28j foresightj VOL. 10 NO. 5 2008
Beyond binary hierarchical visions
The problem with all of these binary hierarchical visions, whether orthodox or a
counter-vision, is the simplistic manner in which they squeeze all employment into some
dualism and temporally and/or normatively sequence the resultant two sides so as to portray
some one-dimensional linear trajectory of what is/should be the future of work. Over the past
decade or so, such problems with these binary hierarchical visions have gradually started to
be recognized.
On the one hand, there has begun to emerge in relation to some, albeit not all, these visions a
comprehension that these opposites are not so stable, bounded and constituted via
negation as often conveyed. The outcome has been a blurring of the boundaries between
the two sides and often heated discussions about whether new ‘‘hybrid’’ forms of
employment are emerging that synthesize elements of both sides of the dualism. Take, for
example, the literature on post-bureaucratic forms of work organization. Rather than
temporally and/or normatively sequence post-bureaucracy (or even bureaucracy) as in the
ascendancy or as a positive trend, some commentators have begun to transcend the linear
narrative that treats bureaucracy and post-bureaucracy as discrete and separate
organizational forms and to recognize how these are inter-penetrating each other and
resulting in hybrids. Indeed, these ‘‘hybrid’’ work organizations are captured in the
emergence of new vocabularies such as ‘‘customer-oriented bureaucracies’’ (Frenkel et al.,
1995), ‘‘social Taylorism’’ (Webster and Robbins, 1993) and ‘‘soft bureaucracy’’ in which
decentralized responsibilities are combined with centralized decision-making (Courpasson,
2000). For such commentators, therefore, the direction of employment either is or should be
towards not post-bureaucratic or even bureaucratic forms of work organization but rather,
‘‘hybridization’’ (Hudson, 2005; Thompson and Alvesson, 2005).
Whether this portrayal of the emergence of new hybrids is valid, however, is open to debate.
It might well be that the ideal-types of bureaucracy and post-bureaucracy were never
entirely descriptive of the lived practice in organizations. The outcome is that what are now
being called ‘‘hybrids’’ of bureaucracy and post-bureaucracy may well have existed all the
time but not been captured by this over-simplistic dichotomy that squeezed all work into one
side or the other. Similar arguments apply to all other visions of the future of work that
are/might identify that the direction of change is/should be in the direction of hybridization.
Any hybrids identified might well have existed before but not been identified due to the
desire to cram all activity into one side or the other of the dualism. For this reason, caution is
urged regarding visions of the future grounded in calls to recognize some form of
hybridization.
On the other hand, it has also begun to be recognized that binary hierarchical portrayals of
the future of employment are on the whole one-dimensional linear tales that over-simplify
what is occurring in lived practice. In consequence, there have been commentaries that
show the heterogeneous trends in different places, sectors and populations. Take, for
example, those visions that assert that there is/should be a universal process of
post-bureaucracy or post-Fordism. Those charting the advent of post-Fordism have begun
to recognize that the Fordism/post-Fordism binary is more a descriptor of spatial differences
that a portrayal of a temporal sequence (e.g. Gamble et al., 2004). When charting the advent
of post-bureaucracy, it is similarly the case that within some particular nations, sectors and
occupations, it is possible to identify a shift towards post-bureaucratic management
practices, such as in some western nations, the advertising industry and the higher echelons
of management. Within other nations, sectors and occupations, however, such a trend is
notable by its absence (Bacon et al., 1998; Milkman, 1998; Taylor and Bain, 1998). Nor is it
the case that bureaucracy is everywhere a negative phenomenon and post-bureaucracy
always a positive phenomenon (Thompson and Warhurst, 1998; Thompson and Alvesson,
2005). This is replicated across the other visions for employment. In some nations, sectors,
occupations and places, post-Fordist practices can be identified as taking hold. In others,
however, there is the continuing dominance, even resurgence, of Fordist and Taylorist
practices, as witnessed in the McDonaldization thesis (Ritzer, 1998). Therefore, once one
evaluates critically each of the one-dimensional linear visions of the future of work that
VOL. 10 NO. 5 2008 j foresightj PAGE 29
commentators assert are occurring (e.g. from Fordism to post-Fordism), it becomes
apparent that divergent trajectories are being pursued in different populations and that it is
difficult to construe one side as always a positive trend and the other side as always
negative.
Until now, however, although the universal linear aspect of some of these visions has been
questioned, the one-dimensional nature of these visions has not. Most visions of the future of
employment, that is, focus upon only one characteristic/set of characteristics, such as
post-industrialism, information society, the knowledge economy, post-Fordism or
post-bureaucracy. They do not consider other characteristics/sets of characteristics and
how understanding the changes in these other characteristics are also important if the future
of employment is to be understood.
Conclusions
This paper has revealed that although there are many visions of the future of employment,
the storyline they adopt is often the same. Most visions cram all work into one side or another
of some dualism asserted to be central to understanding the future of work and then
temporally or normatively sequence the two sides, viewing one as in the ascendancy and/or
the path to progress and the other as declining and/or a sign of backwardness. This is the
case across all of the dominant visions of the future of employment that depict the
knowledge economy, post-Fordism, post-bureaucracy and so forth as the direction of
change and/or path to progress. Until now, those seeking to contest these dominant
narratives have simply inverted the temporal and/or normative sequencing, as displayed in
those perspectives that have sought to propound how bureaucracy and Fordism is/should
be the direction of change.
To move beyond such binary hierarchical thinking about the future of employment, some
have challenged the notion that all work can be squeezed into one side or another of such
dualisms and instead pinpointed the emergence of ‘‘hybridisation’’. The problem, however,
is that these so-called hybrids have probably always existed but gone unnoticed due to the
way in which all forms of employment have been squeezed into one side or other of these
dualisms.
Perhaps a more promising development is the recognition that these one-dimensional linear
stories fail to capture and reflect the diverse and heterogeneous directions in which
employment organization is moving in the contemporary world. In some places, activities
and populations, there might be a shift towards post-industrialism, the information society,
knowledge economy, post-Fordism or post-bureaucracy, but in others a process of
industrialism, Fordism, bureaucracy and so forth. Furthermore, although in some places,
activities and populations these might be normatively read as positive trends, in others they
might well represent a negative phenomenon. Adopting this type of perspective towards the
future of employment requires a move beyond relying on one binary to capture the trends in
employment. Until now, as shown, it has too often been the case that commentators simply
deploy one dualism to represent the trajectories of employment. None of the individual
perspectives towards the future of employment considered above, however, wholly capture
and reflect these heterogeneous trajectories in which employment is moving.
If this more nuanced kaleidoscopic depiction of the future of employment is adopted, it might
be assumed that this intimates that there is far greater continuity with the past than normally
intimated (Nolan and Wood, 2003; Noon and Blyton, 2002; Ransome, 1999; Thompson and
McHugh, 2002; Thompson and Warhurst, 1998; White et al., 2004). After all, the above
arguments that post-Fordist and post-bureaucratic practices are far from universal seem to
support recognition of the continuity between the present-day and the past. However,
although there might be relatively more continuity with the past than futurologists explicate in
their binary hierarchical visions, this does not deny the notion of change. Indeed, quite the
opposite is the case. Similar to many others, it recognizes how both continuity and change
are occurring (Legge, 1995; Blyton and Turnbull, 1994; Jacques, 1998; Ransome, 2005).
The changes asserted to be taking place, however, are not configured in some
one-dimensional linear manner as being towards some singular -ism, -ation or
PAGE 30j foresightj VOL. 10 NO. 5 2008
post-something-or-other. Instead, multiple changes are viewed as occurring that vary across
space, sectors, occupations and populations. The outcome is that rather than a process of
convergence, a divergence of trajectories is unraveled and a picture painted of the future
that is much more variable, diverse and open than usually considered in the above
one-dimensional portraits. In consequence, rather than reproduce what Thompson and
McHugh (2002, p. 169) call ‘‘The basic pattern . . . of stereotypical polarization, limited
evidence and neglect of diversity, [which] tends to be produced in each new generation of
macro arguments’’, in this more kaleidoscopic view, there are no universal linear logics but
instead, many fragments moving in different directions in various parts of the picture.
In sum, this paper has painted a picture of the future of employment that is not so closed as
usually purported in binary hierarchical visions and more in our hands than often assumed.
However, it would be erroneous to end by claiming that the future is what we wish to make it.
Not only are some narratives of the future supported by powerful vested interests, but for
most people today, the future is anything but in their hands. For the majority of the
population, the options available to them are very limited. Although some affluent people in
western nations, for example, might be able to sometimes choose the type of work that they
engage in, for the vast majority, this is not the case. Although diverse trends and voluminous
possibilities for the direction of change exist on a global level, this is not the case for all
individuals and populations in their everyday lives. Some are confined to Fordist
employment practices; others to low-trust working environments under sweatshop-like
conditions. The task ahead, therefore, is surely to work towards ensuring that people have
greater choice about the nature of the employment in which they engage. If this paper in
displaying that the future of employment is not cast in stone, and that it is wholly possible to
imagine all manner of alternative futures, helps to foster greater debate about how to open
up the future more for those who currently have little choice, then it will have fulfilled its
objective.
References
Aglietta, M. (1979), A Theory of Capitalist Regulation: the US Experience, Verso, London.
Amin, A., Cameron, A. and Hudson, R. (2002), Placing the Social Economy, Routledge, London.
Appelbaum, E. and Batt, R. (1994), The New American Workplace: Transforming Work Systems in the
United States, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY.
Armenakis, A.A. and Bedeian, A.G. (1999), ‘‘Organizational change: a review of theory and research in
the 1990s’’, Journal of Management, Vol. 25, pp. 291-335.
Bacon, N., Ackers, P., Storey, J. and Coates, D. (1998), ‘‘It’s a small world: managing human resources in
small businesses’’, in Mabey, C., Salaman, G. and Storey, J. (Eds), Strategic Human Resource
Management: A Reader, Sage, London.
Beck, U. (2000), The Brave New World of Work, Polity, Cambridge.
Bell, D. (1973), The Coming of Post-Industrial Society, Basic Books, New York, NY.
Blackler, F. (1995), ‘‘Knowledge, knowledge work and organizations: an overview and interpretation’’,
Organization Studies, Vol. 16, pp. 1021-46.
Blyton, P. and Turnbull, P. (1994), The Dynamics of Employee Relations, Macmillan, London.
Boron, A.A. (2005), Empire and Imperialism: A Critical Reading of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri,
Zed, London.
Bunting, M. (2004), Willing Slaves: How the Overwork Culture is Ruling Our Lives, Harper Collins,
London.
Castells, M. (1996), The Rise of the Network Society, Blackwell, Oxford.
Clegg, S. (1990), Modern Organizations: Organization Studies in the Postmodern World, Sage, London.
Cooke, P. (2002), Knowledge Economies: Clusters, Learning and Cooperative Advantage, Routledge,
London.
VOL. 10 NO. 5 2008 j foresightj PAGE 31
Courpasson, D. (2000), ‘‘Managerial strategies of domination: power in soft bureaucracies’’,
Organization Studies, Vol. 21, pp. 141-61.
Derrida, J. (1967), Of Grammatology, John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD.
Drucker, P. (1969), The Age of Discontinuity, Heinemann, London.
du Gay, P. (2000), In Praise of Bureaucracy, Sage, London.
du Gay, P. (2005), ‘‘The values of bureaucracy: an introduction’’, in Du Gay, P. (Ed.), The Values of
Bureaucracy, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Dumazedier, J. (1967), Toward a Society of Leisure, Collier-Macmillan, London.
Frenkel, S., Korczynski, M., Donohue, L. and Shire, K. (1995), ‘‘Re-constituting work’’, Work,
Employment and Society, Vol. 9, pp. 773-96.
Gamble, J., Morris, J. and Wilkinson, B. (2004), ‘‘Mass production is alive and well: the future of work
organization in East Asia’’, International Journal of Human Resource Management, Vol. 15 No. 2,
pp. 397-409.
Gorz, A. (1999), Reclaiming Work: Beyond the Wage-Based Society, Polity, Cambridge.
Hall, S. and Jacques, M. (1989), New Times: The Changing Face of Politics in the 1990s, Lawrence and
Wishart, London.
Handy, C. (1995), The Empty Raincoat: Making Sense of the Future, Arrow, London.
Hudson, R. (2005), Economic Geographies: Circuits, Flows and Spaces, Sage, London.
Huggins, R. and Izushi, H. (2007), Competing for Knowledge, Routledge, London.
Jacques, R. (1998), ‘‘Managing for the next century – or the last?’’, in Mabey, C., Salaman, G. and
Storey, J. (Eds), Strategic Human Resource Management: A Reader, Sage, London.
Kalleberg, A. (2001), ‘‘Organizing flexibility: the flexible firm in a new century’’, British Journal of
Industrial Relations, Vol. 39, pp. 479-504.
Kerr, C., Dunlop, J., Harbison, F. and Meyers, C. (1973), Industrialism and Industrial Man, Penguin,
Harmondsworth.
Kochan, T. and Osterman, P. (1998), ‘‘The mutual gains enterprise’’, in Mabey, C., Salaman, G. and
Storey, J. (Eds), Strategic Human Resource Management: A Reader, Sage, London.
Legge, K. (1995), Human Resource Management: Rhetorics and Realities, Macmillan, Basingstoke.
McKinlay, A. and Taylor, P. (1996), ‘‘Power, surveillance and resistance’’, in Ackers, P., Smith, C. and
Smith, P. (Eds), The New Workplace and Trade Unionism, Routledge, London.
Milkman, R. (1998), ‘‘The new American workplace: high road or low road?’’, in Thompson, P. and
Warhurst, C. (Eds), Workplaces of the Future, Palgrave, Basingstoke.
Nolan, P. and Wood, S. (2003), ‘‘Mapping the future of work’’, British Journal of Industrial Relations,
Vol. 41, pp. 165-74.
Nonaka, I. (1991), ‘‘The knowledge-creating company’’, Harvard Business Review, Vol. 69,
November-December, pp. 96-104.
Noon, M. and Blyton, P. (2002), The Realities of Work, Palgrave, Basingstoke.
Parker, M. (2002), Against Management, Polity, Cambridge.
Peters, T. (1992), Liberation Management, Macmillan, London.
Peters, T. and Waterman, R. (1982), In Search of Excellence, Warner Communications, New York, NY.
Piore, M. and Sabel, C. (1984), The Second Industrial Divide: Possibilities for Prosperity, Basic Books,
New York, NY.
Ransome, P. (1999), Sociology and the Future of Work: Contemporary Discourses and Debates,
Ashgate, Aldershot.
Ransome, P. (2005), Work, Consumption and Culture: Affluence and Social Change in the Twenty-First
Century, Sage, London.
PAGE 32j foresightj VOL. 10 NO. 5 2008
Ritzer, G. (1998), The McDonaldization Thesis: Explorations and Extensions, Sage, London.
Semler, R. (2003), The Seven-Day Weekend: A Better Way to Work in the 21st Century, Arrow Books,
London.
Simpson, L. (1999), Working from the Heart: A Practical Guide to Loving What You Do For a Living,
Vermillion, London.
Stewart, T.A. (2003), The Wealth of Knowledge: Intellectual Capital and the Twenty-First Century
Organization, Nicholas Brealey, London.
Taylor, P. and Bain, P. (1998), ‘‘An assembly line in the head: the call centre labour process’’, Industrial
Relations Journal, Vol. 30, pp. 101-7.
Thompson, P. and Alvesson, M. (2005), ‘‘Bureacracy at work: misunderstandings and mixed blessings’’,
in du Gay, P. (Ed.), The Values of Bureaucracy, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Thompson, P. and McHugh, P. (2002), Work Organisations: A Critical Introduction, 3rd ed., Palgrave
Macmillan, Basingstoke.
Thompson, P. and Warhurst, C. (1998), ‘‘Introduction’’, in Thompson, P. and Warhurst, C. (Eds),
Workplaces of the Future, Basingstoke, Macmillan.
Toffler, A. (1980), Future Shock, Random House, New York, NY.
Webster, F. and Robbins, K. (1993), ‘‘‘I’ll be watching you’: comment on Sewell and Wilkinson’’,
Sociology, Vol. 27, pp. 243-52.
White, M., Hill, S., Mills, C. and Smeaton, D. (2004), Managing to Change? British Workplaces and the
Future of Work, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke.
Williams, C.C. (2004), ‘‘Beyond commodification: re-reading the future of work’’, foresight, Vol. 6 No. 6,
pp. 329-37.
Williams, C.C. (2005), ‘‘Market delusions: rethinking the trajectories of post-socialist societies’’,
foresight, Vol. 7 No. 3, pp. 48-60.
Williams, C.C. (2007), Re-thinking the Future of Work: Directions and Visions, Palgrave-Macmillan,
Basingstoke.
Williams, C.C. and Round, J. (2007), ‘‘Beyond formalisation: rethinking the future of work’’, foresight,
Vol. 9 No. 3, pp. 20-41.
Zohar, D. and Marshall, I. (2005), Spiritual Capital: Wealth We Can Live By, Bloomsbury, London.
Corresponding author
Colin Williams can be contacted at: [email protected]
VOL. 10 NO. 5 2008 j foresightj PAGE 33
To purchase reprints of this article please e-mail: [email protected]
Or visit our web site for further details: www.emeraldinsight.com/reprints
