work exam #2

Training

"Ten Fire Orders" and "Eighteen Situations that Shout "Watch Out!" - key guidelines for training, taken very seriously and defined as a firefighter's safety net.

Independent professional contractor

(highly skilled professionals like computer programmers and engineers) - often work in home office, or site of good employer - enjoy autonomy - earn high incomes

Cultural similarity to self

* Evaluators used their selves as a proxy to firm personality * 4/5 used the airplane test * Fit often assessed through "icebreaking chit-chat" during the first few minutes of the interview

Firms with "Personalities"

* Firm personality defined by extracurricular interests and self-presentation styles—"sporty;" "fratty;" "egghead;" "white shoe, country club"; "gruff and scrappy"

Kang's Critique:

* Hochschild's emotional labor concept points to a kind of care done mostly by white, middle-class women largely for white middle- and upper-class men. - What about women serving women in their jobs? - What about differences in race and class? - What about body work?

Discussion: A Definition for Body Art

* Identity not based within a professional world, but an art world, which acts as its own resource. - Art World identification impedes professionalization; but supports local networks and resources - reputations built on art created

Crosstown Nails: Routinized Body Labor

* McDonaldization: "fast, cheap, basic manicures and pedicures, no frills" * many customers seek service to enhance how they look for work * similar expectations regardless of race here.

Background for the study:

* Since early 1980s, 2,000 korean-owned nail salons throughout NYC metro, 70 per cent of the total. Employing about 10,000 women * Kang studies three nail-salons: - Uptown nails: white upper-middle class women - Downtown nails: predominantly African-American and Carribean middle and working-class women - Crosstown nails: racially mixed lower-middle and middle class. * Nail salon work is gendered along four dimensions: 1. female service providers and customers 2. constructs beauty according to feminine norms 3. occurs in feminized, semi-private places 4. involves a gendered performance of emotional labor

Independent Contractors and Body Artists

* Work as independent contractors, own business licenses, rent space in a shop. * make own hours, obtain own supplies, clean stations, pay a percentage to shop. Work long hours. * identify as artists, stress creativity and customization

Downtown Nails: Expressive Body Labor

* analogy to an assembly-line, less pampering, less elaborate sanitizing machines and solutions * less of the traditional style of emotional labor, focus more on communicating a sense of respect and fairness. * focus more on the nails themselves: customers desire unique and high quality nails * less first-name basis relations between worker and customer; customers more interested in skills and artistry

Kang's Findings The contours of body labor

* body labor = "exchange of body-related services for a wage and performance of physical and emotional labor in this exchange." 1. physical labor: "attending to bodily appearance and pleasure of customer" 2. emotional labor: "managing feelings to display certain feeling states and to create and respond to customers' feelings regarding the servicing of their bodies" 3. variations in body labor performance by race and class.

Challenge and Change

* expansion of body art; more profitable, moving out of the fringes * increased competition * lack of social closure across shops; fear of bad eggs

Rely on Informal Control Strategies

* strong internal solidarity, persists from the days of deviant subculture * use familial themes to run shops. * apprenticeship used and needed to enter occupation; social closure * shop owner sets standards

Uptown Nails: High-service body labor

* style of care similar to Hochschild's flight attendants - conforms to feeling rules of white middle-class women - attention given, not only to nails and appearance, but customers physical and emotional comfort * "Korean manicurists literally rub up against their customers," including massaging hands and feet, warm towels, soothing lotions, etc. Service involves pleasurable sensory experience * Workers fluent English language, reflecting greater communication expectation. * Focus is to transform experience into a rewarding physical and emotional experience, a feeling of being special * customers demanding, disapprove of use of Korean language

The Professionalism Ideal Type

- "body of knowledge or skill based on abstract concepts or theory and requiring the exercise of considerable discretion" - "occupationally-controlled division of labor" - "occupationally regulated labor market requiring training credentials for entry and career mobility" - occupationally controlled training program which produces these credentials" higher learning institution is Segregated from the market provides opportunities for developing new knowledge Therefore, professionalism à monopoly, credentialism, elitism Is this good for society?

European Au Paris

- 32,000 au pairs coming to US annually, from 8 US-licensed au pair-foreign-exchange agencies. Get an au pair for annual fee ($3,500-$4,000). - Au pairs get a weekly stipend, room/board, tuition reimbursement, after putting up a $500 deposit). Visa restricted to 12 months. Get a certificate at the end of their year. - Why? For fun, but most to enhance their employment credentials back home if they plan to go into work involving children. - Visas identify au pairs as "visitors" participating in "cultural exchange" - Ethnicity seems to have shifted from Western European to Eastern European, South American, and Asian - differences in perspectives: Au pairs as cultural-exchange students seeking a "host family" and employers who seek low-cost childcare. - Au pairs saw work as temporary, and did not see their stipends as low-pay.

When home and work merge

- Blurring of home/work boundary in the last few decades, as 15 % of employed workers do work at home. - computer and internet technology has pushed the workplace into the home - Homes increasingly used as full-time workplaces - Use homes to increase skill, conduct personal job searches, engage in continual learning

Multiple time zones of post-industrial families

- Children's activities: * "stressed, hurried, and overscheduled" * Working-class kids often take jobs as teenagers after school, weekends * middle and upper-middle class kids: become entrepreneurs `themselves * kids detach from households, pursuing activities having little connection to their families

Class, Culture and Childrearing Beliefs

- Class divisions lead to misunderstandings and conflict over child-rearing practices. * middle- and upper-middle class parents engage in "concerted cultivation" + enroll their children in multiple activities to develop them fully + discipline through reasoning and negotiation rather than direct commands. * working class parents = "accomplishment of natural growth." + unstructured play over organized activities + "hanging out" over "play dates" + reliance on parental care over specialist care - mothers favored "concerted cultivation"; nannies favored "accomplishment of natural growth." * nannies argued that free play encouraged self-reliance and confidence. * nannies saw parents as too lenient, expected children to follow directions without question. "whiny, spoiled, disrespectful children

3. Affective processes: Searching for a spark

- Commonalities sparked affect which then influenced assessment and lack of commonalities hurt

2. "Looking Glass" Merit

- Cultural similarities between interviewer and candidate facilitated greater comprehension and valuation of candidates' qualifications. - Similarities facilitated more positive perceptions of candidate abilities, this was active and intentional. Ex. "high grades" accentuated if interviewer had high grades; discounted if interviewer had lower grades.

Organizational Processes involved in Cultural Matching 1. "Fitting in" as a Formal Criterion

- Cultural similarity is a formal evaluative criterion for candidate screening and selection. - More than ½ of employer interviewers stated that fitting in was the most important criterion.' - The notion of "fit" here referred more to play styles than to work styles. - Why? Big time commitments, coworkers often become primary social network. - jobs involve high turnover: most new hires leave within 4 years; a significant proportion leave after 2 years. - Firms sought surface-level diversity in applicant pools; "deep-level homogeneity in new hires." - Firms saw "a tightknit workplace of like-minded people as a selling point to attract new applicants."

Processing Death

- Deaths reviewed by multi-agency teams - protocols identify multiple causes of death, but emphasis is upon individual error and the downplaying of others, such as management causes, equipment causes, environmental causes. - trimming and erasing occurs as report is streamlined and passed down to firefighters. - trimming attribute deaths to the "incompetence of the dead." - conclusion: firefighting is dangerous only for the "idiotic and irresponsible." Without this belief, the firefighters' universe makes little sense.

"The experts know what makes five-year-olds laugh"

- Father attempted a "Take-back", and plan and stage 5-yr old daughter's party instead of using a party planner and failed miserably - underscored the belief within his class that experts know best and that we should "leave it to them" - care less and rely on experts

Crowley, Martha, Daniel Tope, Lindsey Joyce Chamberlain, and Randy Hodson. [2010] "Neo-Taylorism at Work: Occupational Change in the Post-Fordist Era." (originally in Social Problems) Workplace Transformation has been occurring since mid-1970s

- Fordist= principles used in mass-production until mid-1970s, then broke down as mass-markets broke down. Fordism =close supervision, task segmentation, automation, bureaucratic constraint led to deskilling and alienation for blue-collar workers; better employment for white-collar professionals and managers - emphasis after mid-1970s, was on profit-making through increasing flexibility which enhanced worker insecurity * System referred to as "Post-Fordist"; sometimes "Neo- Fordist" * system uses employee involvement, and work teams * system uses outsourcing, layoffs, temps - Debate over what the new developments mean for workers

"Not if he thinks of me as a box of cereal"

- Grace and the "love coach": dating as work, branding, ROI, 1-10 ratings. -Suitors dumped her and then attempted to reestablish the relationship - They went "too far" with the market analogy, erased sings of "the slow paced, abiding, openhearted spirit of the gift."

Pierre Bourdieu's Concept of "Habitus"

- Habitas = mannerisms acquired in childhood and become embedded in our habits of thinking, acting, and feeling, gestures, postures * such mannerisms quite difficult to change * such mannerisms reflect location in class-stratified society Williams and Connell claim that upscale retail employers seek to hire workers with the "right aesthetic qualities", looking for workers embodying social class privileges. - This search is intensified with workplace restructuring strategies employing temporary, contingent workers - employers want "ready-made workers;" workers are cast as responsible for their own fates - seek workers who use their brand, know its cultural meaning, and match the lifestyle associated with it.

Emotional Labor in Body Service Work: Race, Gender, and Class Intersections

- Hochschild's definition of emotional labor that has become generalized: "requires one to induce or suppress feeling in order to sustain the outward countenance that produces the proper state of mind in others" * feeling: "sense of being cared for in a convivial and safe place"

Immigrants

- Immigrants had a wide range of educational backgrounds and reasons for coming * legal immigrants with command of English language and experience made as much or more than American-born nannies. * sent money home to relatives in country of origin * majority preferred a different kind of work * undocumented immigrant nannies had narrow options: overworked and underpaid, exploited by employers + changes in immigration laws made "sponsorship" for US citizenship very improbable + many work for extended family members because of limited options

How are individuals working in hazardous occupations socialized by their host organizations to perceive safety, danger, and death?

- In this specific case, how are firefighters socialized to risk by the Forest Service, and what can that teach us about how high-risk organizations motivate workers to undertake life-threatening tasks?

Rd. 11. Macdonald, Cameron Lynne. 2010. "Nannies on the Market." Prelude: Margarita, Lura, and Astrid Three nannies:

- Margarita: immigrant nanny: * downwardly mobile, accepted deep pay cuts and went from live-in to live-out * took pride in helping family and in raising their children * used employers' children as "emotional substitutes * maintaining a place in her home country of Ecuador was important to her identity, while planning to return home, it wasn't always possible. - Lura, American nanny from the mid-west * took job initially as a temporary job with plans to enter other careers * became permanent with marriage and her own kids - Astrid, European Au Pair * live-in and experienced isolation

Family Norms and Market Forms Domestic Work and Labor Law

- Nannies had no conception of their legal rights regarding "on-the-job" injuries and sexual harassment. * nannies were exempted from most labor laws, defined as "domestic workers." *nannies denied the right to collective bargaining.

Crowley et al. argument:

- New developments reflect a revitalization of scientific management. - The new changes bring in characteristics of Taylorism neglected in Fordism. * Management and professional jobs experiencing a work intensification like in manual manufacturing jobs.

Smith, Vicki. 2011. "Shift Work in Multiple Time Zones: Some Implications of Contingent and Nonstandard Employment for Family Life." Introductory Facts

- Only 30% of Americans have one permanent, 40-hour, five-day-a-week job. - Alternative work arrangements experienced by 14 million Americans: independent contractors, on-call, temporary help agency, contract company workers. * All lack secure employment or predictable hours. - 5 % of the workforce holds more than one job - 2/5 of all Americans work evening, graveyard, or weekend shifts - 32 million work less than 35 hours per week.

What is risk to a firefighter?

- The rules were impossible to implement, but the firefighters valued the mandates and believed in them. Rules were internalized. - The rules led firefighters to place their faith in their individual abilities alone. * belief that knowledge embedded in the rules will keep them safe and help steer them properly * belief that knowledge of the rules takes the danger out * illusio of self-determinacy - Aggression and courage redefined as negative qualities - must respect fire, and this takes danger out so that confidence becomes unnecessary. Cool-headed, smart

The situation in India:

- Traditional employment involved the standard contract, single-firm cradle-to-grave employment: 70% in formal employment; 30% private sector. - Since 1990s, public sector is cutting back and reducing employment; private sector is growing * Private employers using flexible strategies: temps, insecure contracts, but no widespread opposition * Many desire private sector jobs: increased salaries, benefits, creativity, and higher status than government employment * management does not need to use "iron hand" methods of controlling employees; employees are motivated and self-manage * employee strategy: proactively carve a niche for yourself by establishing a strong work identity and personal network contacts

Mothering Ideologies among childcare workers: Intensive Mothering as a work ethic

- achieve self-esteem through image as a skilled and caring mother figure. - mothering ideologies shape nannies work ethic: intensive mothering * reject "book learning" * reject institutional day-care for an at-home mother * believed in "molding the child in their care" * believed that "needs of the children come first"

Diversity and Inequality

- argues that cultural fit is a different dimension of inequality, although it correlates with race, gender, and class dimensions

The mommy mall

- balance between mother instinct and over-relying on expert help. - experts do it better, but raise standards unnecessarily high, commodifying childraising

Free Choice Estrangement: Surrogate Breeder

- breeders detached from baby, their own womb, and clients. - Usually become surrogates after tragedy and severe financial difficulties. - Stigma associated with role, confused with adultery, prostitution. - Surrogates living together in center helped one another to manage detachment. Lived there for nine months. - Pattern: * avoid the internalization of shame by moving out of the village and detaching from prior ties, kept pregnancy a secret, avoided in-laws * developed, with couching, a distinct sense of "me"—giving gifts to clients and their own family, and "not me"—the womb and the baby. * engaged in emotional labor to avoid a sense of grief or loss.

Market-based vs Family-based exchange

- conflict: employee versus fictive kin; working for money versus working for love. - Work expectations for nannies working in employers' homes are "family exchange norms." - Many younger nannies want to be considered as "family"; most older nannies refused to live in.

Unitended consequences

- emphasis on individual responsibility can lead to "miscommunication, poor teamwork, a devaluation of leadership, and breakdowns in the chain of command.

RD. 16. Williams, Christine L. and Catherine Connell. "Looking Good and Sounding Right": Aesthetic Labor and Social Inequality in the Retail Industry." 2010. Work and Occupations Theoretical Background Aesthetic labor

- employers' control over workers' emotions, appearance, and style. - embodying the company image or service - "commodification of the workers' corporeality," not just their feelings

Social Consequences of Aesthetic Labor

- employment emphasizes the enjoyment of shopping rather than work - middle-class workers in upscale retail don't consider this a viable career, don't conceive of upgrading - upscale retail workers do not consider themselves as real workers - hiring aesthetic labor enhances job segregation based on race, class, gender

Nanny occupation in America

- generally one of America's "least socially and economically valued occupations," - workers are dependent and vulnerable. - fewer opportunities, and from lower social class than employers - must negotiate employment issues as "fictive kin" - have different perspective and values regarding duties

Mom-as Low-wage temporary workers

- holds temp job to adjust employment demands to demands of childrearing - enters and exists the labor market frequently - Often relies on partner's full-time earnings

Professional/Managerial Trajectory

- job insecurity, outsourcing, and project-based teamsà increased performance pressure, data confirmed * intense workpace and burnout, data confirmed * detachment rather than commitment, data confirmed, lowered commitment to management goals * increased chaos, data confirmed * lack of accountability, data confirmed

New Workplace features discussed in the work transformation literature:

- new team-based work arrangements reintroduces normative control: * reintroduces worker selection, elaborate hiring schemes * molding workers into normative cultures * character becomes important with project-based teams * worker input desired or demanded - worker selection an enhanced feature of managerial and professional employment * outsourcing and the shift to contract-based professional work

Working class temp in assembly, warehouse, clerical:

- numbers have exploded in last 30 years - low wages; strict hours set by employers; close supervision - Census Bureau refer to them as underemployed - options limited, accept position because they have no choice

Making Luck

- personal accountability and individual responsibility - catastrophes and deaths defined as faults of individual

Who works as a nanny and why

- popular stereotype: all nannies are immigrants from the same ethnic group - "stratified reproduction" tasks related to reproduction employ inequalities based on class, race, ethnicity, gender, place in global economy, immigration status * Macdonald found much more variety: American-born nannies, European au pairs, documented and undocumented immigrants * Employers matched nannies on the basis of how they perceived their needs for children, distinguishing between housekeeper and nanny. Housekeeper: hired cheap; nanny: childcare for family - Most important factor affecting economic benefits for nannies was not race or ethnicity, but immigration status

Manual Trajectory

- some support for increased self-direction and autonomy in the literature, but no increases found in the data, also no sense of chaos found in data; no increase in organizational commitment found - decreased organized opposition support in literature, and decrease found in the data analyzed, but perceived conflict with management did not decline, found lateral conflict increased - work intensification, surveillance, stress, all confirmed in data

Echoes on the american market frontier

- those using the surrogate also detached from a relationship with her. - desired to keep the surrogacy a secret and forget

Key feature of new work culture:

- virtual teams and/or multi-site team collaboration on a single product. * since demands change from project to project, workers with multiple skills are highly valued in this work setting *skill obsolescence is high, workers must constantly upgrade skills, especially in IT * Because many skills in IT are not product specific, skills are transferrable across workplaces and firms - no standardized work hours, workers often work 10-12 hour days * fear that not being perceived as someone willing to work long hours will disadvantage them *being seen as someone with an exceptional work ethic will benefit them - employees not controlled by traditional bureaucratic hierarchies * self-managed workers: buzzwords are: autonomy, responsibility, empowerment * those who do not measure up are not renewed to a contract: inequality between those "taking ownership" and those who do not * unemployment defined by workers in individual terms, a personal failure - new IT enables globalization: standardized technologies transferrable across the globe

Which norms should give wage rates?

- which logic: market or family norms, should guide wage rates? - gift giving common among mothers as a way of reinforcing the family norms logic. - mothers paid less when their work contributed less than 50 % of the household income; more when it contributed over 50%. - Nannies felt undervalued, some embittered by class differences.

Contributions of Study

- worker selection, overlooked in literature, a key feature of the new workplace - new workplace is placing pressure on managerial and professional work, so that it is becoming similar in some respects to manual blue-collar work

American-Born Nannies

- young women with few employment options, defining work as temporary position before college or marriage - secured work through agencies - stereotype valued: Mid-West Farm Girl, associated with strong family values - Experienced nannies avoided agencies and did their own job searches. - struggle to gain friends and their own home family's acceptance -best treated, ½ had some health insurance, ½ had taxes withheld, worked an average of 49 hours per week, had higher wages - goal was becoming full-time, stay-at-home moms, but generally unattainable * alternative: nanny, to bringing up their own children in their home, to establishing their own in-home daycare centers.

Scientific Management (Taylorism):

1. Management amasses working knowledge originally held by workers. 2. Jobs are structured to reduce work techniques to narrow tasks dictated by written procedures 3. Management scientifically selects workers, train them, and ensure they use established methods 4. Separate the decision-making components of work tasks, including planning and coordination, from workers - Crowley et al. claim the Fordism neglects # 3 worker selection, and failed to harness worker differences to production outcomes. * Ford treats workers as interchangeable parts

Formal strategies of Control

1. Standardization of Training * Apprenticeship structure works against standardization; most did not support standardization. * Did have journals, conventions where new techniques were spread 2. Professional Organizations * membership low; weak commitment. 3. Statutory Regulation * concern with limits to autonomy

Finding Habitus

1. vetting creative talent - require interviewees to perform creative tasks during interview, intended to reveal insight into the applicant's "personality, style, and imagination." - Once hired, workers are not given opportunities for creativity, usually follow regimented sales scripts. - authors claim tests screen for traits of "habitus" 2. hiring customers off the floor - selects for people who are knowledgeable and passionate about brand and merchandize - many approached in this way claimed to be "flattered" 3. offering discounts instead of higher wages - selects those principally motivated to be associated with the brand 4. Prolonged interviews and manipulating schedules - long drawn out application process, eliminating those who need jobs right away - work is actually part-time, but must be available at any time These hiring practices - eliminate applications who are seeking jobs for conventional reasons—i.e., for pay and benefits - select those driven by brand association - select those who express class privilege

Arabandi, Bhavani. Reading 8. "Globalization, Flexibility and New Workplace Culture in the United States and India." Originally published in 2011 in Sociology Compass. Flexibility: The New Workplace Culture

Claims before the 1990s, firms used flexible work practices at their discretion, but since 1990s—more global competition + poor economic climate—they have been force to adopt them to survive.

Finding:

Cultural Matching occurred during interviewing, and was the most common mechanism used to assess applicants. Interviewers focused on extracurricular/leisure pursuits, experiences, and self-presentation styles.

Unit of Analysis:

Elite professional service firms: firms matching people to highly paid and prestigious jobs

Rd 15. Rivera, Lauren A. "Hiring as Cultural Matching: The Case of Elite Professional Service Firms" 2012 ASR Hypothesis:

Employers choose employees on the basis of cultural similarities: shared tastes, experience, leisure pursuits, and self-presentation styles. *Hiring = more than just a process matching skills to jobs, but a process of cultural matching

Arabandi's concluding argument:

Flexibility responses similar in both USA and India - Firms: workforce cuts, outsourcing, using flexibility measures: teams, temps, etc. - Workers: "reinvent themselves by: * working harder and longer * take on more responsibility * individualize their failures

Debunking temporary employment stereotype Popular stereotype:

Freedom to choose hours; choice, change and opportunity

Theories of Risk Taking

Goffman, in Interaction Ritual (1967, p. 257) links risk-taking danger to masculinity: "Men must be prepared to put up their lives to save their faces." * aggressiveness, toughness, Desmond claims that organizations shape workers' conceptions of danger and risk-taking. - U.S. Forest Service provides skill set for work, but also a "mode of thinking" about firefighter fatalities.

Findings: Professionalizing Control within Body Art

Incorporating new forms of regulation, without abandoning old forms

Characteristics of Flexibility and the New Workplace Culture

The "standard employee contract" prior to the 1990s: * full-time work * single-employer relationship throughout one's work career * internal labor market advancement, career ladders and progression to better jobs within the firm Since 1990s, fewer and fewer standard contracts, movement * less security for permanent workers * widespread and permanent use of temporary, contingent employees

"world of the market":

efficient monetary exchange for goods and services, capacity for emotional attachment

Types of Flexibility: numerical flexibility

firms maintain a small number of core workers/managers as permanent employees, with increasing use of contingent, part-time, temporary workers. * reduces vertical hierarchies as well. * more horizontal management practices.

Rd. 14. Maroto, Michelle Lee. "Professionalizing Body Art: A Marginalized Occupational Group's Use of Informal and Formal Strategies of Control." 2011. Work and Occupation Focus:

how a marginalized occupational group maintains control in the face of increasing size and competition: - exert jurisdiction over a set of occupational practices; - regulate people and the activities they engage in; -maintain autonomy as a group

Functional flexibility

involves investments in worker skills, decentralized decision-making, and improved employee morale and performance * team production techniques * quality circles * participation incentives

Debate about flexibility: Braverman's deskilling argument

new practices are deskilling and disempowering workers * Real motive behind changes: increasing management control at the expense of workers; stripping workers of a capacity for resistance.

Piore and Sabel's argument for flexible specialization

new practices have potential to empower workers and restore a craft-based work practice * new flexible technology involving computers demands more skills, autonomy over tasks, ability to change from job to job, broader range of skills than old mechanized technology

Body Art in the United States

practices sometimes defined as deviant; sometimes accepted Associated with deviant subculture from 1960s: - blocked integration into other service professions - encouraged tight networks and collegial control and closure - work as art, "art worlds"

Hochschild's concern:

relationship between detachment and estrangement. - Detachment can be positive. What we should feel, and how much we should care varies from situation to situation. - When commodification becomes commonplace, is detachment estrangement, or alienation?

Conflicting Ideals "the spirit of the gift":

which is a communal ideal * should be the realm where we are deeply involved and care, affirmation of bonds and attachment

Freidson, (2003) Professionalism: The Third Logic Three Ideal types

· Market, Work Organized in Response to Consumer Demand · Bureaucracy, Work Organized by Centralized Hierarchy and Organization · Professional, Work Organized by workers with Esoteric Knowledge and Skill - Establishes professional monopoly over market - Worker granted freedom of judgment and discretion in work performance Professionalism = a set of institutions which permit the members of an occupation to make a living while controlling their own work.

Hochschild, Arlie. 2011. "Emotional Life on the Market Frontier." Annual Review of Sociology Estrangements: Extraordinary and Everyday Commodification:

—"everything for sale"—increases with pushing of a free market ideology, deregulation, privatization, reduced government services.