Sociology, work and organisation, Watson 7th edition
2. Analysing work and organisation: scientific management, human
relations and negotiated orders
Sociology initially developed to provide a critical understanding of industrial capitalist societies.
Six strands of thought in the sociology of work and industry
o Managerial-psychologistic
o Durkheim-human-relations-systems
o Interactionist-negotiated-order
o Weber-social-action-institutional
o Marxian-labour-process
o Poststructuralist and postmodern
Managerial-psychologistic strand
o Focus on human nature
o Psychologism: a tendency to explain social behaviour solely in terms of the psychological
characteristics of individuals
o Application and development:
Scientific management (Taylorism)
- Taylorism encouraged a view of the industrial worker as an economic
animal who could be encouraged to act as a self-seeking hired hand and
who would allow managers to do their job-related thinking for them.
- Scientific management involves:
The scientific analysis by management of all the tasks which need
to be done in order to make the workshop as efficient as possible
The design of the jobs by managers to achieve the maximum
technical division of labour through advanced job fragmentation
The separation of the planning of work from its executions
The reduction of skill requirements and job-learning times to a
minimum
The minimising of materials-handling by operators and the
separation of indirect or preparatory tasks from direct or
productive ones
The use of such devices as time-study and monitoring systems to
co-ordinate these fragmented elements and the work of the
deskilled workers
The use of incentive payment systems both to stabilise and
intensify worker effort
The conduct of manager-worker relationships at “arms-length” –
following a ‘minimum interaction model’
- Braverman (1974) claimed that scientific management and its associated
deskilling, because of its association with the logic of capital accumulation,
will continue to dominate the capitalist working world.
- Soldiering: the natural instinct and tendency from men to take it easy.
Workers keep an eye on each other so that no one will work too hard.
Otherwise, the employees get higher expectations.
- Systemic soldiering: when soldiering is combined with people economic
interests and the failure of managers to design, allocate and reward work
on a scientific basis, it leads to employees to get together and rationally
conspire to hold production down. They do this to maximize their reward
without tempting the incompetent management to come back and tighten
the rate.
- By satisfying individuals self-interest, they will get full co-operation.
Psychological humanism
, - Psychological humanists argue for achieving organisational efficiency not
through the exclusion of workers from task-related decision making, but by
encouraging their participation in it with.
- Can be seen as both the opposite and the mirror of scientific management
- Theory X and theory Y
McGregor; theory X: human beings as naturally disliking work and
therefor as avoiding as they can. People prefer to avoid
responsibility and like to be giving direction. Limited ambitions and
security is priority. Could lead to what managers want to avoid:
passive acceptance of situation could be encouraged, which could
lead to lack of initiative and creativity on their part.
Theory Y: people prefer to exercise self-control and self-discipline
at work. Could occur if employees were allowed to contribute
creatively to organisational problems in a way in which they could
meet their need for self-actualisation.
- Self-actualisation: to become self-actualised is ‘to become more and more
what one is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming’.
Consists of:
Psychological needs (food/drink/sex)
Safety needs (avoid danger)
Love needs (family, friends)
Esteem needs (status)
Self-actualisation (realise one’s ultimate potential)
- Herzberg (1966)’s theory of ‘Motivation-Hygiene’ or two-factor theory or
work motivation:
Contextual/hygiene factors: factors like salary, status, security,
working conditions can lead to dissatisfaction if ‘wrong’, but which
do not lead to satisfaction if ‘right’.
Content/motivation factors: factors like achievement,
advancement, recognition, growth, responsibility have to be
present, in addition, before satisfaction can be produced and
people motivate to perform well.
- Jobs should be enlarged and managerial control reduced. Workers
themselves should set targets, plan work and choose working methods.
reversal of design principles in scientific management.
- People act differently in different circumstances, so it will be complex to fit
in theory X and theory Y.
The Durkheim-human-relations strand
o Focus on human individuals and the needs they all share
o The emphasis is on the social system
o More focused on the relationships between people instead of the individuals themselves
o According to Durkheim, even suicide has to be understood in terms of the extent of individual
bonding rather than referring to an individual’s mental state.
o ‘The purpose of society is to maintain stability and cohesion through successful regulation
and integration of the pre-social self into the prevailing norms and values of a society’
o Healthy individualism can exist as long as that society provided regulation, directing principles
or norms. Without this, we have the pathology of anomie
Anomie: a form of social breakdown in which the norms which would otherwise
prevail in a given situation cease to operate
Durkheim was worried about the anomie in which organic integration of society
would be threatened by unrestricted individual aspirations and hence a lack of any
kind of social discipline, principle or guiding norms.
o Example: two departments; Department A & B. Both have similar work, age, people etc. In
Department A is little staff turnover, few disputes requiring the union representatives, low
, level of sickness absence. In Department B there were regular disputes and some of these
leading to short strikes.
o Why? Department A had stronger bonding between colleagues. Most of them were friends or
married even. In department B they were complete strangers to eachother.
o Human relations could lead to a minimum or maximal benefit of organizing.
Human relations and the Hawthorne studies
o Elton Mayo put the industrial work group and the employing enterprise, with the industrial
managers having responsibility for ensuring that group affiliations and social sentiments were
fostered in a creative way
He was anxious to develop an effective and scientifically informed managerial elite
If managements could ensure that employees social needs where met at work by
giving them the satisfaction of working together, by making them feel important in
the organization and by showing an interest in their personal problems, both social
breakdowns and industrial conflict could be headed off.
‘Managerial skills and good communication were the antidotes to the potential
pathologies of an urban industrial civilization’.
o Hawthorne investigated in effects of workshop illumination: close interest shown in the
workers by investigators, the effective pattern of communication which developed and the
emerging high social cohesion within the group brought together the needs of the group for
rewarding interaction and co-operation with the output needs of the management. close
interest, communication and cohesion is everything that’s needed for interaction and co-
operation with the output needs of the management
o It also showed that many of the problems of management-worker relationships could be put
down to the failure to recognise the emotions and the ‘sentiments’ of the employees
o Influence on Pareto:
Suggestion that workers behaviour can be attributed to their ‘sentiments’ rather
than to their reason. Apparently rational behaviour, like Taylor ‘systematic
soldiering’, could be better understood as deriving from irrational fears, status
anxiety and the instinctive need of the individual to be loyal to his or her immediate
social group. The problems DID NOT arise from economic and rationally perceived
conflicts of interest and where therefore not open to solution through scientific
management.
An emphasis on the notion of system, this conveniently according with the holistic
tendencies of Durkheim. Organic analogy with its stress on integration and the
necessary interdependence of the parts and the whole. Only by integration of
individual into management plant community, systematic integration could be
maintained and the potential pathologies of industrial society avoided.
o Mayo and his fellow human relations constructed a message which played down the
possibility of an active role for workers, especially a collective role and which stressed the
role of managers as experts in control.
o Durkheim focused on the degree of interplay which goes on between individual initiative and
social constraint in human societies.
The interactionist-negotiated-order strand
o Roots in the sociology department of Chicago University
o Polar opposite of Durkheim: he thought it was about structures existing outside individual
o Symbolic interactionism: the study of social interaction which focuses on how people develop
their concept of self through processes of communication in which symbols such as words,
gestures and dress allow people to understand the expectations of others.
o Simply by taking the role of other, we learn what to expect of them
o Subjective career: the way an individual understands or makes sense of the way they have
moved through various social positions or stages in the course of their life, or part of their
life.
o Individual and society are inseparable units -> mutually interdependent
o Moral order: an ordering of expectations and moral imperatives which tend to routinise
interaction
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