ABSTRACT
The widespread introduction of the art of printing books left many a medieval scribe out of work: bibles and other texts were now printed rather than copied. More than anything else, people value high productivity and efficiency, leading to more cheap stuff for people to buy and spoil themselves with. However, this comes at a price as to how labour is organized, directly affecting the quality of people's working lives. Indeed, although initially devised for simple manual jobs, these principles are to an increasing degree used to transform other occupations as well. The introduction of self-managing teams, flatter organizations, et cetera, does not necessarily lead to higher levels of control for individual workers, especially not if such reorganizations are accompanied with narrowly-defined production targets and the introduction of regulations and protocols to attend to. Psychology has been instrumental in shaping modern working life.
