New organizational forms are characterized by fragmentation or decentralization within large organizations, increasing autonomy and self-regulation of these smaller units, and responsiveness to markets and to technological advances. They also have cultures of involvement, cooperation, participation, trust, risk-taking, and expression. Other characteristics are the turning of services into businesses, a greater focus on core activities, and contracting out. Sources of these new forms include external changes such as the increasingly global natures of markets and internal conditions such as the effects of new technologies on the social organization of work and the labor process. One result of this decentralizing approach in the chemical industry in the United Kingdom in the late 1980's was the removal of any central unit with responsibility for monitoring safety. Many decentralized units did not collect data on compliance, safety became a product merchandised by an internal unit and subject to the same requirements of cost- efficiency as others, reduced numbers of employees responsible for safety, more work being contracted out, and weaker unions. Nevertheless, it is difficult to predict which organizational forms will become dominant, and their numerous contradictions may enable employees to attain decisionmaking power. Note