ABSTRACT
Some firms were pursuing job enrichment as their answer; a few were testing the corporate waters with American versions of Norwegian industrial democracy; others were moving into "worker participation"; and still others were developing hybrid systems borrowing from more than one philosophy. The more one talks with the people at American Velvet, the more it is demonstrated just how far it is from the norm in terms of employer-employee relations. From 1892, when the Wimpfheimer family moved its textile manufacturing business into Stonington, Connecticut, until the early 1940s, labor-management relations at the American Velvet Company were bad. In early 1966, Lyman D. Ketchum was given the job of operations manager for the company's Gaines Pet Food plant in Kankakee, Illinois. Before that, he had held a variety of jobs, all relating to the food and grain business. General Foods had put out a rough interim report on Topeka which indicated initial success.
