Concepts and Transformation - Volume 2, Issue 1, 1997

Small and medium sized enterprises are an important feature of the Swedish industrial infrastructure. The formation of collaborative networks is seen as an important means for dealing with a shortage of financial, technical and other resources. This article deals with the start up and development of two networks involving managers of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) and researchers from the Centre for Working Life Research and Development of Halmstad University. The striking features of the various phases of the development of the networks, as well as of those of the role of the researchers, are presented and discussed. Some important recent developments, such as connections between networks and community-based relationships, are also revealed.

Workers' participation can contribute to industrial democracy in Germany -this was one of the conceptual cornerstones of the state-financed German humanization program in its early phase (1976-1980). Experiences from that period are discussed in the light of the concept of reflective modernization and under current conditions of mass unemployment and economic crisis: What are the perspectives of participation in this socio-economic context? What might social science research contribute?

Discussions between women and men about men and women form the focus of this article, These discussions took place in the context of an inter-organizational action research project. The position of women in organizations and the subordination of women in general is seen as a relational phenomenon. The relationship between women and men is considered paradigmatic and therefore constitutes the critical unit of analysis as well as the strategic unit of action in this study. The participating organizations had no difficulty in initiating collaboration between women and men and to get them to engage in a joint action to develop a program aimed at improving gender relationships. However, ambiguity emerges as the basic characteristic of gender relationships in view of the fundamental otherness of the other. Dialogue between men and women is not only shaped by the relationship between women and men, but is also forming and transforming it. Dialogue is both means and end, it is the subject as well as the context. Therefore, the criteria for an ethics of mediation, necessary for managing the inevitable ambiguity in the relationship between women and men through mutual respect for their differences, have to come from within the dialogue.

There is a crisis of work in contemporary technological society. Afunctional definition of work feeds, and is fed by, an economico-technological ideology that valorizes the cult of productivity and of "total work". This in turn reflects a utilitarian conception of the human being, whose worth is now measured in terms of his or her contribution to total "output". Gandhi was one of the sharpest critics of this notion of man and society; he sees it as materialistic, soulless and fundamentally violent. In its place he proposes a moral conception of work that reflects his spiritual view of the human person. E.F. Schumacher takes Gandhi's ideas further in terms of an organization of economic life that promotes simplicity, beauty, social responsibility and ecological sustainability. The phenomenon of globalization heightens the stark contrast between the world-views of Gandhi and Schumacher on the one hand, and that of global capitalism on the other.

The labor market has a crucial distribution function in Western welfare societies and is therefore a major source of social conflict. Our main argument is that a two-tier society develops as a consequence of the development of the labor market. Because labor costs increase relative to those of capital, selection devices in the labor market change. Level of education and health become more important, whereas the significance of gender decreases. The social consequences of these selection processes are analyzed as a process of spatial and mental segregation between participants and non-participants in the labor market. The social security system is an especially important new locus of social conflict. We conclude that the neo-liberal solution of reducing social security benefits will have the perverse effect of calling into existence an underclass, which threatens the property rights of the participants.