THE WORKER COLLECTIVITY TODAY - REPLICATION AND THEORETICAL DEVELOPMENT

Lysgaard's theory of the worker collectivity is still an influential classic in Scandinavian working-life research. The study was carried out in a pulp and paper mill in the late 1950s and we have returned to the plant to find out what has happened to the worker collectivity. Through observations at the workplace and interviews with workers, engineers and managers, as well as having access to data from the 1950s and 1980s, we are able to map the development of technology, work organization and the collectivity. On this basis, we suggest two changes to Lysgaard's theory. One is to conceptually split what Lysgaard called the technical/economic system into two relatively autonomous systems the technical and the economic, respectively. The other is to analyse the way in which the collectivity has infiltrated the technical, but not the economic system.