The Changing Nature of Work Implications for Occupational Analysis (1999) / Chapter Skim
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1 Introduction
1 Introduction
Pages 13-29
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From page 13... ...
These analysts see changes in the nature of work as more gradual and evolutionary, and that society is experiencing incremental and in many ways expected adaptations to shifts in demography, technology, markets, organizational structures, and employment practices (Farber, 1995~.
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From page 14... ...
These analysts see changes in the nature of work as more gradual and evolutionary, and that society is experiencing incremental and in many ways expected adaptations to shifts in demography, technology, markets, organizational structures, and employment practices (Farber, 1995~.
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From page 15... ...
We suggest that by better understanding the full array of forces affecting work and further developing the occupational analysis tools to take account of these changes, decision makers may be better equipped to shape work, occupations, and organizations for generations to come. Indeed, a better understanding of how the forces driving change interact with labor market policies and institutions and with organizational and individual decisions can give decision makers greater control over the future of work and its consequences for individuals, organizations, and society.
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From page 16... ...
Indeed, one of the reasons there is so much debate today over how work is changing is that some are persuaded that the world is in the midst of another era of transformation in the technological infrastructure similar to those that triggered the first industrial revolution in the late 1700s and the early 1800s and the second industrial revolution at the end of the 19th century. For example, by the beginning of the 20th century, interchangeable parts, electric power, the electric motor, dedicated machine tools, the internal combustion engine, the telephone, and a number of new office technologies (including the
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From page 17... ...
These demographic trends are well documented; not only do they increase the heterogeneity of the working population, but they also create pressures for expanding existing lines of work and for creating new ones to address the needs of a labor force that were previously handled outside the paid economy, through the family and the community. GIobalizing product markets creates greater and more uncertain competitive pressures, larger labor markets, and the tendency to
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From page 18... ...
That is, the dominant image of work embedded in most of these laws and regulations carried over from that era the unemployment compensation system, the National Labor Relations Act, the Fair Labor Standards Act, etc. is that of either a blue-collar production worker or white-collar managerial employee working for a large firm in a long-term employment relationship with a spouse at home attending to personal and family affairs.
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From page 19... ...
Department of Labor expanded from 43 in 1960 to 134 by 1974 and has continued to grow since then (Dunlop, 1976~. Moreover, the growth in legislation and regulations has outpaced the ability of agencies and courts to resolve complaints of violations filed under these statutes, with long backlogs of cases reported at agencies such as the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Wage and Hour Division, and the unit responsible for administering the Family and Medical Leave Act, among others (Commission on the Future of Worker Management Relations, 1994~.
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From page 20... ...
For example, organizations may address personnel and job design issues after making decisions about competitive strategies or basic missions, choice of technology, and the deployment of other resources. The goal of this report is to provide decision makers with a framework for thinking about how their strategies and decisions affect and reflect work structures and why organizational processes need to be designed to take these interrelationships into account.
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From page 21... ...
, but in some cases researchers have reached conflicting conclusions after studying similar occupations using similar methods (Kuhn, 1989~. Similarly, researchers who have studied changing organizational practices differ over whether the use of teams and advanced technologies universally increases (Mankin et al., 1996; Cotton, 1993; Cohen and Bailey, 1997)
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From page 22... ...
Hence, anthropological studies of work are even rarer than sociological studies. Finally, despite the fact that industrial psychologists and ergonomists routinely study the details of work, their research often concerns specific skills and abilities at the individual level of analysis and focuses on purposive measurement for such applications as the design of workplaces, employee selection systems, training programs, and appraisal and compensation systems, rather than on attempts to characterize shifts in the nature of work more broadly.
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From page 23... ...
Department of Labor (Spenner, 1979, 1983; Steinberg, 1990, 1992) makes far more elaborate and accurate distinctions among bluecollar than among white-collar occupations (National Research Council, 1980)
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From page 24... ...
For example, Steinberg (1992) has shown that current systems for classifying occupations, such as the Dictionary of Occupational Titles and the Hay System, not only use managerial work as a baseline for assessing the complexity of other jobs, but they also tend to rate occupations traditionally filled by men (e.g., zookeeper)
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From page 25... ...
However, unlike either anthropologists or ergonomists, they are relatively unconcerned with the unique aspects of machines or tasks and instead seek to identify and measure individual abilities and task requirements using constructs that generalize across situations. More than those in any other discipline, industrial and organizational psychologists have developed extensive and rigorous methodologies for analyzing jobs for purposes of specifying the skill, knowledge, and ability requirements associated with selection, performance management, and training program development.
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From page 26... ...
When sociologists speak of the occupational structure, they tend to refer to the division of labor in society; when industrial psychologists and industrial relations researchers speak of occupational structures, they frequently refer to internal labor markets or to the patterns that link jobs across organizations and thus create occupational, regional, or industry wage structures and labor markets. The various disciplines differ in their approach to work in several other substantive ways as well.
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From page 27... ...
We have exercised caution about concluding that a given change represents a fundamental transformation in work structures, and we urge readers to do the same. In our view, fundamental transformation requires widespread breaks from past patterns on multiple, interrelated fronts.
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From page 28... ...
. CHARGE TO THE COMMITTEE The Army Research Institute asked the National Research Council to form a committee to examine issues related to the changing nature of work and the adequacy of occupational analysis systems to classify them.
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From page 29... ...
Organizational decision makers, job design specialists, and the tools they use also shape work structures and occupations. We need to better understand how organizational contexts and employment relations influence the technical processes of job design and occupational analysis.
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