Pride of workmanship is the gratifying sense of having done good work.
One of the key principles in the philosophy of management consultant W. Edwards Deming is that workers have a right to pride of workmanship: In Out of the Crisis (1982), Deming argues that pride of workmanship is more important to workers than "gymnasiums, tennis courts, and recreation areas,"[2] and that barriers to pride of workmanship are a major obstacle to cost reduction and quality improvement.
[3] Economist Thorstein Veblen advocated transferring control of industry from financial and business people to engineers, who were most likely to be driven by pride of workmanship and curiosity.
[4] During the Industrial Revolution, the factory system destroyed the workers' traditional way of life, depriving them of pride of workmanship, among other things.
In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, workers responded by destroying machines and factories in what were called the Luddite revolts.