Abstract

The paper describes the dynamics engendered by commitment to quality observed by the author while conducting shop-floor ethnographic research in the Fiat-Mirafiori plants. It explores the reasons why workers adopt co-operative strategies in order to achieve quality and identifies three of them: the funt for defects as the creation of micro-events that enliven the day's work; the transfer of the offices into the workshops; and educated children caring for their ignorant parents as a metaphor for the relationship between supervisors and workers. The paper finishes with discussion of the general significance of the results of the research as regards a new conception of work viewed as a flow of events to create and to govern, arguing that the concept of event can be employed as a unifying concept with which to understand the work of both operators and supervisors.