ABSTRACT
Work organisations are crucial to the way modern industrialised societies are structured. Central to the history of modern societies was a trend whereby work tasks were increasingly carried out within bureaucratised corporations and formally structured enterprises that employed people to work under the instructions of organisational managers. Organisations are at ‘the centre of gravity of contemporary society’ (Strati 2000), and the work tasks performed by organisations are not just those of industrial production but ones involved in the administration of government and the birth, education, leisure and welfare of people throughout their lives. A high proportion of people in modern societies earn their living through
their employment by a formal work organisation and, after work, they go to shops owned and run by similar organisations, they enjoy entertainment provided by organisations and they seek help from them when they find themselves in difficulty. Thus much of the ‘structuring’ or patterning of modern lives, both within work and outside it, involves what we might call the organisational principle of work structuring.
