Quota Restriction and Goldbricking in a Machine Shop

When the production behavior of industrial workers is examined by participant observation, it is seen that loafing on the job may not be the simple line of inactivity that some students of the subject have thought it. Close scrutiny of the particulars of "soldiering" in one piecework machine shop revealed that group adherence to a "bogey" was but one of several kinds of output restriction in the repertoire of machine operatives and that the work group was restricting production day in and day out.