The Factory System:     (The advantages of the factory system.)

Division of Labor emerges. Look at Adam Smith’s description of pin-making. Note how some (including Smith) see this as a good thing because it makes pins more affordable to the common people, while others (like Marx) decry it because it reduces the skills and lowers the wages of working class people. Marx’s concept of alienation comes into play here.

Note the power of the foreman in the early industrial system (p. 22). We have an article that is used in the Organizations class that addresses this same issue.

Indentured Laborers This illustrates the cruelty of the factory system. Vagabonds were arrested and forced into indentured servitude for 8 to 10 years! They would work for barely subsistence wages.

Work force composition—Note that in 1838, only 33 percent of the workers in British textile factories were men—the balance were women and children. By contrast between 1850 and 1950, women made up between 30 and 35 percent of the manufacturing work force in England and France.

Look at the text’s description of the harsh living and working conditions of industrial cities (p. 24).  How do they compare to those conditions experienced by the "working poor" in contemporary U.S. society.  (Think of those jobs at the bottom of the occupational ladder).

Industrial capitalists and the rise of Social Darwinism. Survival of the fittest philosophy fit in well with industrial capitalists who preferred Laissez-faire. The strong would naturally rise to the top of the system so the harsh factory system was promoting better class of people overall.

However, in the long run, as Hodson and Sullivan point out, industrial capitalism elevated the conditions of working class people as they could demand higher wages for their skills (through unionization) and as the manufacturing system produced affordable goods.

Trade Unions: Legalized in England in 1824—1870 child labor laws were passed in England—These changes occurred about 50 years later in the United States.

Shift from Industrial Capitalism to Monopoly Capitalism in the early 20^th century. Oligopoly of a few large companies.  How did this shift occur?

On page 26 the text describes the rise of giant corporations.
 
 
 

Trends in Organizational Theory:
 

Approaches to the study of organizations: W. Richard Scott has discussed three perspectives from which to view organizations

A. Organizations as Rational Systems (1900's) The earliest theories emphasized the rational nature of work organizations. Included under this heading would be the work of German Sociologist, Max Weber, French Industrialist Henri Fayol (who worked from the "top-down" trying to develop general principles of management that could be applied to all companies, and Frederick Taylor, the American efficiency expert who pioneered time and efficiency studies—(basically a "bottoms-up" approach. The underlying philosophy is that there is one best way to manage, and that the workers don’t really have the intelligence or the training to figure it out. As you can imagine, management by these principles where the worker is treated as a mere cog in the machine would certainly lead to alienation.

B. Organizations as Natural Systems (1920's) Next, emerging in the 1920s, was the Human Relations school of organizational studies. Scott refers to this perspective as "Organizations as Natural Systems." These theories place emphasis on work organizations as collections of people who interact. As such they are "Natural Systems." That possess not only a formal (rational) and goal-directed structure, but also internal, informal structures that that are not aligned with the rational goals of the organization. The human relations school evolved out of research conducted at the Hawthorne Plant of the Western Electric Company in the 1920s and early 1930s. Human relations attempts to understand and direct these informal norms into alignment with the goals of the organization, itself. Later on, a human resources approach emerged with a different perspective. Workers were "resources" to be incorporated into the process of planning and problem solution. Companies maximize their efficiency and production by maximizing job satisfaction.

C. Organizations as Open Systems (1980's) The open systems approach, (contingency theory) emphasize process and an organization’s adaptability to the external environment. It takes into consideration the role of individuals and groups of individuals in shaping the organization's response to changing conditions in the external environment.

Post Industrial Society: Increased productivity frees up workers from manufacturing occupations and we see a consequent rise in service and information occupations. (Hodson: Clerical, service, and professional). Don’t forget the increasingly international division of labor and the fall of the importance of local markets and economies. In Hodson’s words, "…the nature and rewards of work are not solely determined by relations with others in one’s work group or employing organization. Rather, the nature of one’s work is importantly determined by its position in the world economy." (p. 28). This is basically world systems theory. It implies 1.) increased inequality between nations—the rich become richer, poor—poorer, etc.; 2.) entire nations become specialized, e.g. some agricultural or mining-focused, others become "centers of low-wage assembly work", others are service-oriented. Hodson goes on to present a functional analysis—the entire world is linked as one system. The rise of cheap labor and manufacturing in one nation is directly related to the decline in manufacturing in another nation. (Chapter 16 is devoted to this). So—this course will not just focus on the American occupational structure, it takes on a world-systems approach—highly theoretical and of course, macro.

Interesting statistics are presented on the US as postindustrial society: 1991: 2% employed in agriculture; 30% in manufacturing; and 68% in service occupations. Contrast this with 48.6% in service occupations in 1940. By 2005 projections indicate that 81percent of the workforce will be employed in service occupations.

Worker Motivation This is an important question—Just how committed are Americans to their jobs? This is a very difficult question to answer. Responses vary tremendously and much of it has to do with the job itself. Its hard to imagine being committed to McDonalds—but for those franchise-owners who worked their way up in the food service industry, the work ethic is there. Cradle to grave no longer applies. Still work, and the desire for a meaningful occupation is strong. Discuss the notion of work from being Adam’s Curse to a way to glorify God. In our society, work has become a master status.

Important terms from the chapter:
 
 

Division of labor Social relations of production Bureaucracy Ideology Economies of scale Social stratification Guilds Feudal society Artisans Merchant capitalism

Putting-out industry Cottage industry Protestant work ethic Journeyman Enclosure movement Industrial revolution Indentured labor Assembly line Postindustrial society Service industries

 
 

The questions and exercises at the back of the chapter are all good—(The last one stretches things a bit. It requires that we answer some pretty tough questions about the future).

These are the questions that I like:

#1. What are some of the ways in which the nature of your work or the work of your parents has influenced your life?

#2. What changes in people’s lives resulted from the development of agriculture? What are the most important consequences of these changes?

#3. How was wealth extracted from those who produced goods in feudal society? How is this different from today?

#4. Merchant capitalism displaced artisanal production in the fourteenth century. What parallel displacements are occurring in today’s economy?

#5. Describe two ideologies that have been used to specify the meaning of work at different periods in history. What competing aspects of work do they highlight.

#6. What are the key characteristics of postindustrial society, and why has it come into being.