autonomous maintenance craftsman and the production worker as a
more restricted and less responsible worker. This effect lays the basis for
functional, human resources and career differentiation ‘higher up’ in
the pyramid of the enterprise, between line and staff personnel, job
categories and careers. Hence:
3 The greater the human resources and career differences between managers and
technical experts, the greater the differences between line management and
specialist functions. This ‘lateral’ differentiation is very strong in the
United Kingdom, intermediate in France and smallest in Germany. As a
result, managerial authority is most isolated from technical responsibil-
ity in the UK, whereas the two are most intimately linked in Germany.
The British manager is more of a pure, or general, manager, whereas the
German manager is more of a technical (or commercial, or administrative)
leader. Leadership implies joint involvement in similar tasks, whereas
management means a separation of operative and managerial tasks.
Differences between societies, as summarized in the three hypotheses above,
are re-created even in the midst of technical and economic change. Post-1977,
all three countries introduced computer numerically controlled (CNC)
machine-tools in factories on an increasing scale. This made it easier to com-
bine automation with productive flexibility, and to let shop-floor workers share
in work planning and programming tasks, more than under previous forms of
automated metal-cutting. Yet the precise impact of such new machines
depended less on the potential of the technology itself and more on the con-
tinuation of previously existing characteristics of the various dimensions.
German companies accordingly exploited the potential for ‘shop-floor pro-
gramming’ of machine tools more purposefully than British companies (Sorge
and Warner, 1986), and French companies continued earlier patterns of hier-
archically more differentiated human resource generation, work organization
and internal labor markets (Maurice et al., 1986). This illustrates the non-
identical reproduction of actor/systems constellations put forward. There were
changes, to be sure. French companies adopted a policy of recruiting and train-
ing a higher caliber of metal worker, but they were taken on in addition to
workers with less training, so that the received hierarchical differentiation
patterns were preserved. Similarly, although British companies invested more
in skilling direct production workers, the investment mainly targeted more
restricted ‘company skills’ rather than the broader apprenticeship skills linked
to maintenance craftsman status.
Institutionalism and technological innovationThe relevance of such institutions in the midst of dynamic change has also
been shown. A case in point is the differential evolution of the French and the
126 International Human Resource Management