Cooperation and Resistance in Work Innovation Networks

Abstract

This study deals with the process of introducing total quality programmes in two metallurgical industry firms in which managers, unions representatives and workers actively participated through a network in which alliances were made by translating the interests of each party. The emergence of this network is put into context by considering workers' gains and losses. Based on the actor-network theory of innovation, the article describes the intentional creation and diffusion of innovation through cooperation and the resistance that took shape among certain groups of workers in each plant. The workers opposed to the network must have a high degree of autonomy in relation to the joint strategy of regulating the innovation process so that they can impose their conditions for integration into the network There is a strong association between the role of the trade union in the innovation process and the achievement of cooperation at the shopfloor level, but resistance gives way to another intermediary figure - the work group - which resists enrolling in the collective project.