This book has argued that in the past decade there have been changes in the workplace as momentous as those that occurred at the turn of the last century. Guided by the postulates of scientific management and personnel management, early-twentieth-century industrialists repudiated the labor relations systems of the artisan era and constructed a new labor relations system in its place. They erected a system of industrial practices comprised of job ladders, internal promotion schemes, seniority, welfare benefits, and inducements for long-term employment – a system known as an internal labor market – that has dominated major U.S. firms throughout the twentieth century.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the internal labor market job structures themselves have begun to dissipate. Employers, faced with increased competition in the product market and technological change in production methods, are seeking more efficient and effective ways to organize the workplace. Out of these efforts, a new constellation of job structures is emerging, structures that are increasingly defining the new digital-era workplace. They include an explicit rejection of job security and a replacement with promises of training and opportunities for human capital development, a flattening of hierarchy, opportunities for lateral movement within and between firms, market-based pay with steep performance incentives, opportunities to network, an emphasis on quality and customer satisfaction at all levels, and plant-specific dispute resolution mechanisms to foster and preserve a perception of procedural fairness.

The new labor system offers both freedom and vulnerability to the working population. For some, it signifies an escape from the rigid hierarchies of the past, hierarchies that were often racially or gender biased in their operation.