It is interesting to note that although the discussion of job enrichment,
job enlargement, and the like began in connection with factory work, most
actual applications have taken place in offices….Industrial installations
represent heavy investments in fixed equipment, and industrial processes
as they now exist are the product of a long development aimed at reducing
labor costs to their minimum. In office and service processes, by
contrast, the recently swollen mass of employment has not as yet been subjected
to the same extremes of rationalization and mechanization as in the factories,
although this is under way. For these reason, management decisions
to reorganize work processes are made more readily and voluntarily in the
office and are made in the factory only in situations that offer little
choice (25).