Vertical Disintegration and New Forms of Work Organization: a Review of Empirical Evidence

Abstract

An important trend in recent years is for companies to buy in specialist non-core services which provide openings for the decentralization of work to a host of supplier firms. This takes a number of forms including homeworking, freelance work, and, more commonly, subcontracting. However, what is particularly surprizing in the literature is the absence of any coherent or systematic set of empirical research to indicate the extent or nature of different patterns of productive decentralization. The British Institute of Management (BIM, 1985) made a similar observation about the nature of buyer-supplier relations, in noting that,

Apart from futurology and some interesting studies of the interplay between the formal, black, and household economy, little research has been done to reveal ongoing trends in this field, and hardly any on the immediate practical implications for those involved.