The Meaning of Work: Organisation and the Design of Jobs

This is the second volume about the two topics that have preoccupied the author for more than forty years. It is companion to the earlier book about the practice of social science in organizations, which was published under the title Working across the Gap (Karnac, 2005). Chronologically her interest in work, what it means and how it is organized came first, and how this came about will be part of the story. The two topics are both separate and joint. While the work on organization is not always concerned with job design and the organization of work, the converse does not apply: issues of work organization cannot be separated out from other issues of organization; working with them gets one into the methodological questions of using the social sciences; and many engagements with organizations in any case have more than one focus.