There are reasons to believe that the world economy is once again in the throes of a phase change. There are also reasons to believe that this phase change, like the preceding ones, will involve a paradigmatic shift in the organization of people around their work. If this is so, then our perceptions of what has happened in the past decade or more in the world of work may need to be modified; likewise our perceptions of where those changes are leading us

Fred Emery (1982) "Socio-Technical Foundations for a New Social Order?" in Human Relations, Vol 35: p. 1095-1122.