ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the issue of generalizing about the future of the mass production worker from nationally specific solutions. It examines characteristics of a societal configuration from an historical perspective, continues at the empirical micro-level of company case studies, and returns to macro level of historical and theoretical interpretation. The emergence and shaping of the mass production worker as a type was constituted through a historical, societal configuration which came to the fore in Europe after the Second World War and at whose centre lies the 'Tayloristic-Fordistic syndrome'. The chapter describes the initial situation as well as the most important elements of the company's rationalization strategy. If we sum up the current developments of how the mass production worker is utilized in company structures across all the countries in the study, the following results emerge: the mass is being removed from the mass production worker; the traditional, inner homogeneity is getting lost.
