work ion
TRANSCRIPT
-
8/8/2019 Work ion
1/14
Work Organisation 1
NATURE OF WORK ORGANISATION
Work Organisation
January 22, 2007
-
8/8/2019 Work ion
2/14
Work Organisation 2
SECTION ONE: WORK ORGANISATION SINCE PRE-INDUSTRIAL TIMES
It is the poor mans labour and the rich mans greed that has built civilisation, cities and
economies since ancient times. Since early times, there has always been a master and servant.
While in early times, the servant was usually a slave who was bought or captured by a master,
the present times have the servant who is paid for the services rendered.
The annual labour of every nation is the fund which originally supplies it with all the
necessaries and conveniences of life which it annually consumes, and which consist always
either in the immediate produce of that labour, or in what is purchased with that produce from
other nations.(Cantillon Richard, 1730).
Definition of Work Organisation
A work organisation is defined as social and technical arrangements in which a number
of people come or are brought together in a relationship where the actions of some are directed
by the others towards achievement of certain goals (Watson Tony, 1995).
What is Work
It is the orientation to work that defines the approach of individuals and organizations
towards production and manufacturing. There are two types of satisfactions that happen when a
work is attempted intrinsic and extrinsic. Understanding and concepts of work behavior have
suggested that people work for the money or for job fulfillment. Please refer to Figure 1.
Meanings of Work (Watson Tony, 1995, p. 119).
-
8/8/2019 Work ion
3/14
Work, which gives
INTRINSIC SATISFACTIONS
Work, which gives
EXTRINSIC SATISFACTIONS
Work is an enrichingexperience
Work provides
challenges to the individual
The individual developsand fulfils self at work
Work yields no value in
itselfWork becomes a means
to an end
Human satisfaction orfulfilment is sought outside
work
Work has an
EXPRESSIVE MEANING
Work has an
INSTRUMENTAL MEANING
Work Organisation 3
Figure 1. Meaning of Work
Historical Overview of Work Organisation
Over the ages, the concept of work has changed. As the society moved from being a
hunter and gatherer to an agrarian model, the concept of master and servant emerged.
Work Organisation in Medieval Period
In the medieval period, the society was mostly pastoral and small villages dotted the
countryside. These villages were centred around surrounding farms owned by a the local Lord.
People working in the fields and the towns owned allegiance to the Lord. People had developed
expertise in specific trades such as smithy, carpentry, bricklaying and masonry and so on. Cities
and town came up with a collection of princes, noblemen and other classes of people. To serve
them, supporting labour such as bakers, butcher, brewer, etc. came up. As cities grew in sizes, so
did the demand for labor and soon the major cities had vase number of workers who worked as
tailors, tanners, cooks, porters and so on. There was no concept of organised labour and workers
-
8/8/2019 Work ion
4/14
Work Organisation 4
formed guilds or associations of their trade but these guilds had no collective bargaining power.
(Cantillon Richard, 1730. p. Part I. Chapter VI. Paragraph. 1).
Work Organisations in the 17th and 18th century
The industrial revolution brought in not only changes in technology but also in work
organisations and the labour. Earlier, the work was seasonal and there were period of
employment followed by long periods of unemployment. Agriculture output increased, lesser
children died in infancy and this produced a surplus in labour. The British Civil War in the 17th
Century while liberating the labour, made them jobless and they moved to the cities. As the cities
grew, there was an increased demand for clothes, food and places for living. The demand in the
cities brought in droves of cheap labour from the rural sides. Textiles were a big industry and
there was massive demand for labour to weave clothes. (Nardinelli Clark, 2005).
Colonies such as India became an invaluable source of cotton and other raw material and
this led to an increased liking for cotton clothing. Cotton spinning and weaving factories came up
in large numbers. This was the birth of capitalism and the gap between the employers and the
workers became wider. The introduction of machines enabled faster production and lesser
requirements of labour. This led to a labour unrest when rampaging workers broke a number of
machines since they had been rendered jobless (Howell Chris 2005).
With the introduction of the steam engine, factories were established in major cities such
as Manchester. These factories employed women and children because they could be paid lower
wages. Coal mining was very dangerous and especially trades such as fireman were suicidal.
This trade required the firemen to make a death wish before he ventured into the mine shafts
with a lighted candle on a long stick that was used to find pockets of explosive underground gas
(Hartwell. R.M., 1963).
-
8/8/2019 Work ion
5/14
Work Organisation 5
There was plenty of funding from the colonies and money was available for investment
and hence the factories grew in large number, forcing more deprivation among the workers. The
factories were poorly illuminated and ventilated, were very filthy, disease prone, unhygienic and
dangerous and workers were exploited to a great extent. Manufactured goods were sold in local
as well as in other countries across the world (Fraser, Hamish, 1974).
Owners of factories lived in a different world, insulated from the harsh world of the
workers. Karl Marx and Engels formed the basics of the communist theory and formed the
concepts of the Bourgeois or the rich and the Proletariat or the workers. Workers strikes were put
down mercilessly by the government, which introduced laws that declared strikes by workers as
illegal. The owner declared the workers were alcoholics who never saved their money. A large
factory typically occupied about 600 people. (Thompson, E.P, 1950).
Post 19th Century and the Current Work Organisations
Over the years, the factories grew in size and the factories grew and employed thousands
of people. Socially responsible owners such as Henry Ford realised the benefits of satisfied
workers and the collective bargaining of workers increased. Working and living conditions of
workers improved to a great extent.
With the increase in the technology, many new types of work organisations came up such
as tourism, automobiles, large scale shipping, aero industry, plastics, medicines and now the
information technology. All these new forms of organisations still have the master servant
relation, but now terms such as the management and knowledge worker have been introduced.
Workers and employees are regarded more as assets and looked after by the employers. Unrest
still continues though in the traditional industries such as steel making, coal mining, automobile
production, textile mills and so on.
-
8/8/2019 Work ion
6/14
WORK:
Work experience,
values, orientation,
work and non work,gender and work
OCCUPATIONS:
Occupation structures,
class and work, divisionof labour, career and
community
INDUSTRIAL
CAPITALIST
SOCITIES
STRUCTURES
AND
PROCESSES
ORGANISATIONS:
Bureaucracy, structure
and technology, jobdesign, micro politics,
organisation culture
EMPLOYMENT
RELATIONS:
Conflict andcooperation, individual
and group adjustment,
strategies of
oppposition
Work Organisation 6
SECTION TWO: THEORIES ON THE NATURE AND OPERATION OF WORK
ORGANISATION
Different theories on work organisation have been proposed by some schools of thoughts
and these seek to classify and relate factors such as work, organisations, occupations and
employee relations. As suggested by Tony Watson (Watson Tony 1995, p. 41) there exists a
strong relation and dependency between these components.
Figure 2. Components of Sociology of Work and Industry
.
Based on the research and study done by scientists such as Marx, Durkehim, Weber and
others. These are represented in Table 1.
Table 1. Six theoretical strands in the sociology of work and industry (Watson Tony
1995, p. 42).
-
8/8/2019 Work ion
7/14
Work Organisation 7
Theoretical Strand Application and Development
Managerial Psychologistic Scientific Management
Democratic HumanismDurkheim Systems Human Relations
Systems thinking in organisational analysis
Interactionist Occupations and Professions in society
Organisations as negotiated orders
Ethanomethodology
Weberian Social Action Social action perspective an organisation
Bureaucratic principles of work organisations
Orientation to work
Marxian Individual experiences and capitalist labour
processes
Structural contradictions in society and
economy
Postmodern Discourse and human subjectivity
Post-modern organisations
Managerial Psychologistic Theory
The Managerial-Psyhologistic strand believes in Psychologism in which social behaviour
is explained only in terms of the psychological behaviour of individuals. This strand has been
increasingly used in the industry and finds many applications. Two diametrically opposite lines
of thinking that is scientific management and democratic humanism are used to explain this
strand (Watson Tony 1995, p. 43 49).
-
8/8/2019 Work ion
8/14
Work Organisation 8
Scientific Management
Scientific management principles were first introduced by F.W. Taylor (1856-1915). His
pioneering work brought in practices such as work study, time and motion study, piece rate
schemes, and other work measurement concepts. As per Taylor, the manual worker is nothing
but an self seeking, non social, economic animal who would rather have a manager to do all the
thinking. Managers need to just organise the work and proffer the appropriate monetary awards
to get the desired output thus ensuring that organisational goals are met.
Taylorism uses the following approaches: scientific analysis by the management of all
tasks to ensure an efficient workshop; advanced job fragmentation by the manager to ensure that
technical division is maximised; separation of work planning and its execution; reduction of
learning time and skill requirement to a minimum and minimal material handling and machine
set up by the workers. Other approaches include using time study systems to understand the work
fragmentation, provision of incentive to increase the productivity and using a minimum
interaction model designed to reduce manager and worker interactions to a minimum. These
concepts are still widely used in areas of production in large factories across the world and
ensure mass production at minimal production costs.
Democratic Humanism
Democratic humanism believes in participative approaches to improve the organisation
efficiency. This approach suggests that: subordinates should be involved in defining the
objectives; jobs should be enriched by reducing the amount of supervision and monitoring and
that the relationships between colleagues should be more open.
Mc Gregor in 1960 suggested that this approach has been used by enlightened managers
to improve the organisational efficiency. According to him, people do not have a natural
-
8/8/2019 Work ion
9/14
-
8/8/2019 Work ion
10/14
-
8/8/2019 Work ion
11/14
Work Organisation 11
of interactions between people and their mutually developed meanings. Ethnomethodology does
away with concepts of societies and social structures but proposes that there are conceptions of
this type in the heads of people who utilise this to make a living.
Weber Social Action Theory
Max Weber who lived from 1864 to 1920 examines the activity of individuals and the
effects on society. He proposed that study be done to find ways in which people through
attribution, and inference of subjective meanings would be influenced by each other and so
oriented in their actions. His works have been interpreted by people differently and it is
suggested in turns that he opposed Marxism theories and denied the importance of class
divisions. He suggested that there are many interest groups and they both balance each other
(Watson Tony 1995, p. 63 68).
He proposed concepts such as legitimate order, paradox of consequences and rationalism.
Legitimate order is a patterning in the social life that individuals believe to exist and to which
they can conform. The paradox of consequences suggests that human actions often can produce
unanticipated consequences that may be opposite to what was desired. This can happen because
of dependencies on the actions of other individuals who may have their own interests. According
to Weber, rationalism is a trend in social change where traditional or magical criteria of action
are replaced by technical, calculative ir scientific criteria.
Marxian Theory
Marx and Engels who lived in the 18th century proposed the Marxist theory of capitalism
and this theory gave rise to communism, Soviet Russia and other Communist regimes.
-
8/8/2019 Work ion
12/14
Work Organisation 12
According to them, it is the sweat of labour that the fullness of humanity is achieved. Capitalists
were seen as power hungry and greedy people who exploited the workers to make them sell their
labour. The relation is unequal since the capitalist has means of subsistence even if there is no
production while the poor worker have to depend on work that is given to them (Watson Tony
1995, p. 69 72).
These theories came about during the throes of workers struggle in the industrial
revolution. Marx suggested that workers are made to work far more than what is required for
their needs. The capitalist extracts the surplus value for the profits. The worker does not own the
tools used to make the product nor does he own them and hence the workers never achieve their
self potential. Marx suggested the capitalistic mode of production in which the economic base
suggests the type of society. He introduced words such as bourgeoisie and proletariat.
The Postmodern Theory
This is a recent theory and has an approach that puts the consideration of human language
and how it is used at the centre of the study of all aspects of human existence. It rejects attempts
to build a systematic explanations of history and human activity and which instead concentrates
on the ways in which human beings invent their worlds through languages and cultural
innovation.
Labour Process Theory
The labour processes theory says that anything that is created by labour has its magnitude
proportional to the quantity of labour performed. The labour not only preserves but also adds to
the value in the products that are created. Skilled workers with better tools can produce better
-
8/8/2019 Work ion
13/14
-
8/8/2019 Work ion
14/14
Work Organisation 14
Howell Chris 2005. Trade Unions and the State: The Construction of Industrial Relations
Institutions in Britain, 1890-2000. Labor History Journal. p. 256. ISBN13: 978-0-691-
12106-2
Maslow AH, 1943; A Theory of Motivation, Psychological Review, Vol 50, p. 74-76
Nardinelli Clark, 2005. Industrial Revolution and the Standard of Living. Retrieved 22 January
2007.
Thompson, E.P, 1950, The Making of the English Working Class. Penguin Publication. ISBN 0-
14-013603-7
Watson Tony, 1995; Sociology Work and Industry; Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd.; Third Edition;
ISBN 0415133742.