Abstract
The re-design of work and work organization in Sweden by the Karmar and Uddevalla plants has been recognized throughout the world. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the meaning of Swedish efforts at developing new production concepts and background of the efforts' trajectories. These challenges were started by Swedish labour and management, LO and SAF, respectively, from the 1960s to the 1980s. The paper emphasizes that the purpose of these challenges was not only to strive for employee participation in the company, but also to re-design work away from Taylor and Ford production systems. The paper considers the theoretical contents of the cases, and the relationship between them from a socio-technical point of view. The paper proposes a tentative hypothesis that the Uddevalla plant, which became the most radical case of plant innovation away from Taylorism and Fordism through the introduction of the Reflecting Production System (RPS), shows a development similar to Japanese ways through the transformation of the engineer's work position from production engineer to manufacturing engineer. Through this transformation of the engineer's tasks, the plant broke away from traditional control theory, so that the Uddevalla plant could open the path for a new technical and work control theory for RPS.
