ABSTRACT
During recent years, a chorus of voices has risen in support of a new era in labor-management relations. Drawing on the Japanese experience, which has become a virtual icon of the contemporary management culture, advocates representing all segments of the labor economy have called for greater employer-employee cooperation (Brock, 1987; Hatch, 1987; Kochan, 1987; Thomann and Strickland, 1992). Despite our long traditions of adversarial labor relations in union environments and authoritarian or paternalistic management approaches in union-free settings, many commentors assert that one solution to the crisis in government is to emphasize the mutuality of interests between management and labor. The process is already well underway, as shown by the numerous experiments with such innovations as Total Quality Management (TQM), Quality Circles (QC), Labor-Management Committees (LMCs), and quality-of-worklife (QWL), and organizational development (OD) schemes.
