Centre for Employment Studies Research - CESR

Work organisation and the 'new workplace'

An important component of CESR's research focuses on contemporary developments in the organisation and management of work. It engages critically with the debates on the transition from Fordist to post Fordist management methods and the literatures on lean production, flexible specialisation and the 'high performance workplace'.

The dominant interpretation of these debates is that workers and companies are mutually advantaged by teamwork approaches and HRM practices that encourage employee commitment to the goals of productivity and quality improvement. CESR's research explores these ideas at a theoretical level and through empirical investigation of employees' experience of organisational change and its impact on the quality of their working lives.

The fieldwork has involved detailed case studies in manufacturing, public sector and private service industry contexts. CESR researchers are now networked with colleagues in North America, continental Europe and Japan in cross-national comparative analysis of the employee outcomes of 'high performance work practices'

Professor Andy Danford

Professor Stephanie Tailby

Dr Mike Richardson