ABSTRACT
A central argument of this book is that, within the ‘work culture of new capitalism’, white-collar work and workers have become progressively degraded and commodied by managerialism and that this exemplies the Marxian contention that capital progressively dominates and deskills labour and subsumes knowledge artefacts for prot. Braverman predicted that deskilling would be achieved through latter-day Taylorism, the essential elements of which, according to Braverman (1974: 119) are the: ‘systematic pre-planning and pre-calculation of all elements of the labour process which now no longer exists as a process in the imagination of the worker but only as a process in the imagination of a special management sta ’. HRM theory and practice, it could be argued, represent the site par excellence where this process occurs.
