How did the nature of work change during the 20th century? Essay

The industrial revolution trans resileed the character of work. It snarled a breakthrough in the use of inanimate energy and power, peopleive enthronization in industries such as iron, coal, and textiles and a transport revolution. Industrialization changed the symmetry of work. In pre-industrial society those who argon employed experience a banknote between their employers time and their own time. And the employer must use the time of his labour, and fit it is not wasted, time is at once coin it is not passed but spent. indite in the 19th speed of light, Marx predicted that the intermediate strata would be depressed into the proletariat. However during the last menti iodined 20th century, a matter of sociologists had suggested that the opposite was happening. They claimed that a movement of embourgeoisement was occurring whereby increasing numbers of manual proles were entering the midriff class. During the 1950s there was a general append in prosperity in advanced in dustrial societies and, in accompaniment, amongst a festering number of manual proles whose earnings fell within the professional range. These highly paid affluent workerss were seen to be increasingly typical of manual workers.This phylogenesis, coup conduct with studys, which suggested that poverty was rapidly disappearing, led to the belief that the shape of stratification system was being transformed. From the triangle or pyramid shape of the 19th century (with a large and relatively impoverished working class at the bottom and a pocketable wealthy group at the top), it was argued that the stratification system was changing to a diamond or pentagon shape with an increasing proportion of the population travel into the meat range. In this middle mass society, the mass of the population was middle rather than working class.The U.S work activity has changed radically For example. In the 1950s, rough 20% of the workforce was professional, 20% skilled and 60% unskilled. B y the 1970 the corresponding figures were close 20% for professional, slight than 20% for unskilled and over 60% for skilled. This reflects a change both in the skills required for new and emergent plays and the rising skill demands for existing jobs.The theory utilise to explain this presumed development was a version of economic determinism. It was argued that the demands of modern technology an advanced industrial economy determined the shape of the stratification system. E.g. American sociologist Clark Kerr claimed that advanced industrialism bespeaks an increasingly highly educated, trained and skilled workforce which in turn leads to a higher pay and status occupations. In particular skilled technicians ar rapidly replacing unskilled utensil minders. Jessie Bernard argued that blue-collar affluence is related to the needs of an industrial economy for a mass market. In order to expand, industry requires a large market for its products. sens consumption has been made p ossible because large sectors of modern industry live with relatively low labour costs and high productivity.Bernard claimed that there is a rapidly emergence middle market, which reflects the increased purchasing power of affluent manual workers. Home ownership and consumer and consumer durables such as washing machines, refrigerators, televisions and motorcars ar no longer the preserve of pink-collar workers. With reference to the class system, Bernard says The proletariat has not absorb the middle class but rather the other way round, in the sense that the class structure here described reflects modern technology. It vindicates the redness thesis that kind organisation is determined by technological forces. (G honest-to-goodnessthorpe and Lockwood 1969, p.9.) agitate in the nature of work has also been driven by the changes in organization structures and the design of management a lot referenced as the trade from fordism to post-fordism. Fordism is named after Henry For d, the American car manufacturer who pioneered mass production, which involved fairly rigid, highly structured and hierarchical forms of management. Michael J. Piore is amongst those who believe that capitalist countries ache entered a post-fordism era.He claims that much work is now organised gibe to the principals of flexible distinction, management now involves more team-based work settings, with more governance, greater decentralization and less hierarchical or top-down management. As a result of this shift in organization and management, job design has changed form being narrow, repetitive, simplified, standardized in the old system to being broad, doing legion(predicate) tasks and having multiple responsibilities in the new system. Employees ar now required to be multi/cross skilled, whereas specialized skills were required in the old system.These shifts are not likely to slow or lesson in the spry future and the current economy suggests that these are the more rapid gr owing industries and job exploitation in these types of industries will outpace the rate of growth in other industries where the skills demands may be less.Workers in companies which are changing along these lines need to be more more often than not trained as their work becomes increasingly varied. Because of their long training and the vastness of their skills to their companies, they enjoy more job security, and management makes greater attempts to enlist their cooperation. nigh firms gestate adopted another Japanese technique, feature circles. In quality circles groups of workers and managers meet to trainher periodically to discuss how the production or executing of the company can be improved.Other initiatives may include workers representatives sitting on company boards, and profit-sharing schemes, which enable workers to benefit from any success the company enjoys.Flexible specialization then, increases the skills needed by the workforce, and unlike industries where s cientific management techniques are used workers may cooperate with management in organizing the labour process. By, implication, job blessedness increases and industrial conflict decreases.The theory of flexible specialization also implies a move by from the concentration of capital in giant corporations and an increase in the number of small businesses.The British economist John Atkinson has unquestionable similar views in his theory of the flexible firm. Atkinson believes that a variety of factors have encouraged managers to make their firms more flexible. Economic recession in the 1970s and 1980s, and the consequent decrease in trades union power, technological changes and a reduction in the working week, has all made flexibleness more loveable and easier to achieve. accord to Atkinson flexibility takes two main forms. One of which is functional flexibility, this refers to the efficiency of managers to redeploy workers between different tasks. Functional flexibility requir es the example of multi-skilled employees who are capable of working in different areas within a firm. such(prenominal) flexible workers form the core of a companys workforce. They are employed full-time and have considerable job security. The core is commonly made up of managers, designers, technical sales staff, quality control staff, technicians and craftsmen.The routine form of flexibility is numerical flexibility, which is provided by peripheral groups. Numerical flexibility refers to the ability of firms to reduce or increase the size of their labour force. The starting peripheral group have full-time jobs but enjoy less job security than core workers. These workers might be clerical, supervisory, component fabrication and testing, and they are easier to recruit than core workers because their skills are common to employment in many different firms. The second peripheral group of workers are even more flexible. They are not full-time permanent employees. They may work par t-time, on short-term contracts, chthonian temporary contracts or chthonian government-training schemes. Atkinson believes that flexible firms are devising increasing use of external sources of labour. more than work is subcontracted and the self-employed and agency temporaries are used.A change in the attitudes towards work has also changed as a result of industrialization. The historian Thompson argues that large-scale, machine powered industry necessitated the introduction of new working patterns and with them new attitudes. According to Thompson pre-industrial work was regulated by task orientation the new necessities of the job determined when and how hard people worked. However in post-industrialization the patterns of work are based round time rather than tasks. Thompson says time is now currency it is not passed but spent. Workers who were used to a considerable amount of control over their work patterns experienced the new working daylight in the manufactory, with it s emphasis on punctuality, as oppressive.They resented having to work to the clock. The early factory owners had considerable problems trying to persuade people to take jobs in factories. When they had recruited workers they often regarded their reluctant employees as work-shy and lazy. They therefore sought to change their attitudes and get them to accept new working patterns. According to David Lee and Howard Newby workers brought up under the assumptions of task orientation, were subject to massive indoctrination on the folly of cachexia time by their employers, a moral critique of idleness which originate in from the puritan work ethic.One of the major changes in the nature of work is that the modern concept of the housewife was created in the 20th century. In earlier times, although there were clearly differentiated gender roles, there was dwarfish doubt that men and women were both involved in production. No one would have described the wife in a household of European peasan ts, or American pioneers, as primarily a consumer. In mid-nineteenth century America, households still carried out a vast range of productive activities growing and preparing food, sewing and mending cloths, and reusing fabric scraps in quilts, rugs, and homemade upholstery, making and repairing furniture, tools, and other household goods, even making candles and sop from household wastes.The working out of consumer goods industries toward the end of the 19th century began to change all this, providing affordable construct substitutes for many things that had formerly been made at home. This industrial change allowed, and by chance required, the rise of a consumer society. In the new regime, the work of the housewife shifted away from material production, toward consumption of marketed goods combined with carrying for, or nurturing, other family members. The change was a contradictory one, at once liberating women form exhausting toil, and commercialising daily action to an ever -expanding extent.Over the past century the way in which we go about getting work done has changed dramatically and this has created and facilitated fundamentally different social arrangements in the workplace. Indeed the application of new technologies has created new workplaces and challenged our thinking about where certain kinds of work can and should be done. Technological advances have resulted in the sharp divisions between professionals, skilled workers and unskilled workers being altered dramatically in the latter stages of this century. Whereas a century ago there were far more unskilled workers than skilled ones, in todays human race this has completely reversed and there are know far more skilled workers than unskilled.Bibliography(1) The sociology of work Keith Grint(2) The personal consequences of work in the new capitalism Richard Sennett(3) The future of work Charles Handy(4) Briton in Europe Tony Spybey(5) Www.islandpress.org/ecocompass/changingnatow/changing