ABSTRACT
This paper takes as its theme the high degree of power wielded by management in the Yugoslav enterprise and deals with the way in which that power is established and sustained. The progressive strengthening of the workers’ councils over the past decade, particularly over questions critical for class relations appeared to hold out to the working-class strong hopes for extensive control over their work situation, so blurring the social rift between office and works employees characteristic of capitalist society, which stems from the experience on the shop floor of ‘the impersonal and standardized relationships of the factory bureaucracy’ (Lockwood 1958: 71). In practice, there is a structural discrepancy between the system of institutionalized authority and the factual distribution of social power. 1
