they have a problem. They will spend a lot more time on questions about capital investment than on human resource management. It's only within recent years that the vice president for industrial relations has gotten a hearing, and that's been in crisis situations.

But this was not a popular position at the conference, nor one that was left unchallenged. Furthermore, it may be illustrative of the trap of eitheror conceptualization. It came under attack from several directions. Mr. Whitsett, for example, citing his example of the insurance claims processors, insisted that the results of job redesign and enrichment in that case had resulted in both improved performance and greater worker satisfaction "by any measure you want to name." Mr. Ketchum said, in taking the same position, "My fundamental premise is that you've got to optimize a lot of things to get overall success of the business not just being nice to people, not just job redesign. There's no necessary conflict between doing right by people and success. . . . But if you don't do these things [design for higher participation and more rewarding work content] alienation will put you out of business."

Louis E. Davis also disputed Mr. Fine's assertion and the implication of what Mr. Rosow was saying, but for different reasons. His view was that the either-or question is not a useful one because it skips over the complex relationship between the physical technology and the social system in a work organization. His position began to be expressed in this exchange:

Mr. Fine: The tendency of big technology is to homogenize tasks. This reduces the amount of training needed, and makes supervision and quality control easier. That's what led to work simplification. Mr. Davis: That's not a result of technology. That's a result of managerial choice. You can have a different organization structure and life style with the same technology. . . . [The way the equipment and the workflow is designed] makes assumptions about people and how they will interact. In most process industries these decisions are not made by management. Management doesn't realize it has choices. "People versus profit" was attacked on other grounds by Robert Kanter, a professor of labor education and a former UAW staff member and before that a factory worker. Stating the issue this way, he said, carries "the implication that workers have no interest in the efficiency or success of the business." Mr. Maccoby also attacked what he viewed as cynicism about management's attitude:

Managers are human, and take a great deal of pride in making people on the lowest level feel better. I've seen jobs changed and enriched without the economic pressure to do so.

He saw the issue not as people versus profit, but as a tendency to effect change through expressing noble intentions rather than carrying through the detailed preparation, planning, and followup needed to achieve real improvement in work practices and job content - a point also emphasized by Mr. Ford.

Often these efforts are poorly planned, though they are idealistic and announced with a lot of fanfare. If you can't offer more than pious hopes, and the effort fails, the natural reaction is, "They're only interested in productivity." We don't yet know what we should do about how to bring these things off successfully, especially in situations where a lot is at stake.

Other Approaches: Training and New Careers

In addition to job redesign and organizational development to enhance the content and meaning of work experience, other approaches are needed and have been tried. Not all jobs can be enriched, some of the conferees felt. These unimprovable jobs are often the only ones open to prospective employees who come to the company door with minimal skills and experience "the disadvantaged." Allen R. Janger reported on a new study of these workers and their experience in industry just completed by The Conference Board. The study was to describe company practices and experience in employing such workers. Some 2,300 companies were surveyed, and special studies were made of a smaller number of firms. Definitions of "the disadvantaged" have varied with changes in guidelines for federal programs in this field, but a worker falling into this category would likely have some combination of the following characteristics: minimal education, minimal job skills or experience, membership in a racial minority, residence in a ghetto area.

The basic problem of people with all such handicaps in whatever combination is to find employment in companies that can provide security in terms of steady work and fringe benefits. Other barriers faced by such workers may include difficulties in getting to work because of poor transportation, physical or mental handicaps, and needs for some specialized formal training before being able to function on the job. "This is a group that often cannot adapt to existing company intake procedures," Mr. Janger added. "Companies will have to modify their intake, training, processing, and upgrading procedures." This, he went on to say, affects the climate of the total firm; "the organization is ultimately of one piece."

Thus special efforts to accommodate the organization to more employment opportunity for the previously unemployable is another factor leading to greater attention to the subject of job content and the quality of on-the-job experience. Since some jobs cannot be redesigned effectively,

either because of inflexible requirements based on the nature of the operation or because of the low adaptability (without special training) of the people likely to be in the jobs, one approach is to provide enough training and other special services to make a change to a more desirable job possible. This point was made by Mr. Fishman and Mr. Whitsett, among others.

Mr. Whitsett: Since the disadvantaged are often placed in the most undesirable jobs, there's the problem of making these jobs palatable. These jobs are often the ones that are candidates for automation. Sometimes the inducement is offered to go to the company school, and then be able to move to a more desirable job.

Mr. Fishman: There are many jobs you can't make interesting. They're just dull, stupid jobs. So let's try to do it in a way that lets the guy keep his dignity. And there's no reason why a guy has to stay on a job 20 years. You can't seem to get companies to understand that they should build in mobility.

Supplementary training of this kind is the focus of one program initiated by the Steelworkers and described at the conference by Bruce Alexander. It began with a paragraph in the 1965 industrywide steel contract providing that the companies would cooperate with the union in manpower development and training. Under existing manpower training and development programs, federal funds were made available.

The need for this effort was created by the realization that, for thousands of workers, low educational levels were blocking anything beyond minimal promotion opportunities. Such essential skills as being able to use a micrometer or read a blueprint were beyond these people at the bottom of the pile. Schools were set up in the plants, available only outside of working hours but with everything provided. The program guaranteed to raise its students, if they followed the program conscientiously, a total of four grade levels in 125 hours of instruction. Mr. Alexander summarized the results as follows:

We found that people's progress made a difference in their homelife and in the community, as well as on the job. Some 17,000 completed the first round, and 18,500 will have gone through the second round. This is in places like Chicago, Baltimore, and Birmingham, and therefore with a high percentage of black applicants. Our next cut will be to work with the employee who doesn't even have enough literacy to successfully apply for the job.

Second Careers and Midcareer Development

One additional approach to work fulfillment also bridges industry and the community: programs and services to enable people to move into new