K transformaci jednoho českého strojírenského koncernu. Změna kontinuitou – kontinuita změnou

This article presents first results from a case study in a traditional Czech mechanical engineering group. This autochtonous company makes an attempt at achieving reorganization without any transfer of knowledge, technology and capital from foreign partners. The transformation of the institutional frames of economic actions led to an atomization of the concern into many autonomous subsidiaries and a diffusion of power, in the end to a dispersion of the internal networks and an endangering of its synergetic potentials. Therefore the concern started the actual restructuring in order to revitalize the networks by embedding them in a new formal organization and thus to set up conditions for its strategy of expansions and globalization. A parallel to the change in organizational structures, a shift from a charismatic to a more rational form of leadership is to be observed. In this context an attempt to change the corporate culture and the industrial relations was inaugurated by the management, paradigmatically analyzed by the substitution of the socialist piece-rate system as a medium of the workers power by hourly wage as an instrument of managerial monitoring. The impact of the organizational restructuring on the workers life on shop-floor level will be shown by the fusion of two companies and its employees and a standardization of the working culture.