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- Title
Quality of working life (QWL): some potential applications to education.
- Authors
Koch, E. L
- Abstract
The author proposes various definitions for quality of working life, or QWL: "it is a broad, comprehensive general concept; it is a philosophy with a humanistic value framework; it is concerned with traditional items of labor negotiation (i.e., pay, benefits, safety, production, efficiency); it substitutes self-actualizing or complex man models for the narrow economic man model; it is concerned with changing the organization's culture; it is concerned with intrinsic meaning, growth, and autonomy; and it is concerned with social support." These definitions, the author finds, have both positive and negative implications for education. In terms of the negative, it may be said that education is characterized "by fuzziness of output measures in comparison with the crispness and clarity of manufactured products and profits in economic organizations. Profit and productivity are ill-fitting metaphors for analyzing schools." But much may be said in the favor of QWL in an educational setting: employee-management conflicts continually in need of resolution certainly abound in education; student alienation problems are readily comparable to those of worker disaffection; overall quality of life encompasses both school and nonschool life; and QWL provides models applicable to staff development, supervision, and work redesign.
- Publication
Urban Education, 1982, Vol 17, Issue 2, p181
- ISSN
0042-0859
- Publication type
Article