The Changing Nature of Work

The Changing Nature of Work envisions the future nature of work, its effect on workers and organizations, and the expanded knowledge that will be needed to optimize its returns. The book examines critical post-industrial transformations in work, workers, and the experience of working and assesses the implications of those changes. It investigates what is driving change at work, what is constraining it, and where work is headed as governments, societies, and work organizations respond to its revolutionary thrust.Demonstrating that most knowledge of work life is rooted in jobs, organizations, and workers of the past, Ann Howard and her contributors call for rethinking the psychology of work. In fourteen original chapters, leading authorities within and outside industrial and organizational psychology—including job design, personnel selection, training, teamwork, organizational commitment, careers, leadership, performance appraisal, political and labor economics, sociology, and information technology—question, test, revise, and expand the current body of knowledge about work behavior.The author and contributors explore the human side of the changing nature of work in both service and manufacturing settings and provide new directions for the work and workers of tomorrow.

The Changing Nature of Work envisions the future nature of work, its effect on workers and organizations, and the expanded knowledge that will be needed to optimize its returns. The book examines critical post-industrial transformations in work, workers, and the experience of working and assesses the implications of those changes. It investigates what is driving change at work, what is constraining it, and where work is headed as governments, societies, and work organizations respond to its revolutionary thrust.

ANN HOWARD is president of the Leadership Research Institute, a nonprofit organization dedicated to research on the selection and development of leaders and managers. She is also senior research consultant for Development Dimensions International (DDI), a leading human resource development and consulting firm with more than thirty offices worldwide. She is the coauthor of Diagnosis for Organizational Change (1994, with others) and Managerial Lives in Transition (1988, with D. W. Bray), which won the Academy of Management's George R. Terry Award of Excellence in 1989.