QWL stands for quality of work life. General Motors defines QWL as
. . a process for improving the utilization of human resources, developing all members of the organization an awareness and understanding of the concerns and needs of others together with a willingness to be more responsive to those concerns and needs, and improving the long term effectiveness and success of the organi zation.
That definition of QWL is quite a mouthful, but what exactly does it mean? What the QWL program at General Motors is, in reality, is a major departure from the traditional functioning of the organization. Under QWL, the organizational environment in a General Motors plant ceases to be a battle ground where labor and management continually confront one another, and becomes, instead, an arena in which labor and management cooperate in (1) the development of organizational goals, (2) the development and implementation of production practices and procedures, (3) the identification of problems confronting the organization, (4) the development of solutions to those problems, (5) the attaining of organizational objec tives, and (6) the sharing of the rewards attendant to the accomplishment of those objectives.
Importantly, QWL is not a pateralistic program imposed on employees by General Motors management. While it is true that the demonstrated success of the program has led General Motors to direct the development and implementation of QWL programs at
1 2all company plants, the ways in which such programs are devel oped and strutured is left to the discretion of labor and man agement at each separate plant. At the corporate level, only overall objectives for a QWL program are specified. In a QWL program at a General Motors plant, labor and management become partners, as opposed to enemies forced into minimal and tempor ary degrees of cooperation.
Gaining acceptance of the QWL concept at General Motors was a difficult and time ...