Quality of Working Life and Community Development: Some Reflections on the Jamestown Experience

Widespread diffusion of quality of working life (Q WL) innovations among organizations has long been aproblem. This article discusses the author's hypothesis that such diffusion is accelerated when Q WL is linked to a wider process of community change, and how this hypothesis was tested through his work with the area-wide labor-management committee of Jamestown, New York, which acted as a mechanism for such a linkage. The degree of diffusion of QWL innovations varied with the type of project undertaken, but-although individual projects tended to be short-lived the committee's existence helped establish a continuous Q WL trend. The author assesses the emergence of a new community work culture based on labor-management cooperation as a main factor in the growth of Jamestown 's Q WLprojects, and notes the promise ofsuch a new culture, despite limitations, for thefuture of Western industrial societies.