Summary
Summary The Social Organization of Work, ISBN: 9781133715238 industrial sociology (SOCL2624)
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- University Of The Freestate (UFS)
This is a summary of the three first chapters in the module Industrial Sociology
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UNIT 1- THE EVOLUTION OF WORKDefining the concept work:
Work is the creation of material goods and services which may be
directly consumed by the worker or sold to someone else.
Work also includes paid labour, self-employed labour and unpaid
labour (includes production of goods and services at home).
Overview of social organisation of work:
The social organisation of work is the entire set of relations
between management, workers, co-workers and customers.
The division of labour:
There is an increase in the division of labour over time.
In primitive societies everyone engaged in the full range of work
activities. In later feudal societies there were some people specialised
in a single product type. In modern industrial societies work has
become so specialised that each trade is broken down into
innumerable specialties.
Specialisation creates new lines of work requiring new skills but also
reduces the range of skills needed.
Technology:
Technological developments have multiplied productivity.
Starting with hand tools advancing to the use of steam and electric
powered tools and then the use of robotics.
More recently computer technologies have revolutionised work and
started a second industrial revolution entailing robotics and
telecommunications.
Inequality:
Social relations of production = Relationships that exist between
employee and employer, between co-workers, between trading
partners and between suppliers and consumers.
Social relationships at work can be cooperative and egalitarian, (most
skills are held in common, and people decide jointly how to proceed
with a given task), or hierarchical, competitive and unequal (some
skills are more important than others)
, Bureaucracy:
A bureaucracy is a hierarchical system with clearly designated offices
and responsibilities and a clearly defined chain of responsibility
leading to the top position.
Women, Minorities and Immigrants:
In older times men have left homes to work in factories more often
than women but this is changing fast.
Minority ethnic populations have traditionally been segregated into
lower paying occupations and trades, but new legislation protects
minorities and addresses these inequalities.
The accelerated movement of people around the world has increased
immigrant populations and workers in many nations as well as the
challenges of assimilating these workers and their families.
The professions:
The hierarchy of authority in the workplace is complicated by the
growing significance of highly educated professional workers.
These workers claim special rights and privileges based on their
specialised knowledge gained through long study.
Meaning and dignity in work:
People’s ways of thinking about what role their work plays in their
lives has also changed over time.
People use to think their work and daily lives were one and not
separate from each other. They even thought of it as a burden in
some societies. Nowadays work is seen as a route of upward social
mobility.
These different meanings of work become part of social ideologies-
systems of ideas that justify the economic and political arrangements
of a society as desirable and appropriate.
Workers desire autonomy and respect in order to experience dignity
in their work.
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