Automation and the worker: a study of social change in power plants

What happens to the workers-their atti tudes toward management, each other, and their work-when management decides to introduce automation into their plant? Answers to these questions, of vital im portance to industrial America today, are found in this factual examination of the impact and implications of technological change on work systems.
The investigators, Floyd C. Mann and L. Richard Hoffman, both experienced re searchers in the field of industrial social psychology, provide the kind of solid data that business managers and personnel ad ministrators require. The discussion of the problems involved in conducting research within a functioning organization will be of particular value to researchers.
This report is based on a comparison of two power plants within the same company -one containing the most recently devel oped, highly automated equipment, the other a modern, though less automated, plant. The researchers indicate how changes in the organizational pattern, the content of the jobs, and the shift-work schedules in the new plant affected the workers' rela tions with each other and with their super visors, their feelings about the kind of work they did, and their attitudes toward shift work.