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Dimensions of WORK Dimensions of WORK Richatd H. Hall SAGE PUBLICATIONS Beverly Hills London New Delhi Copyright © 1986 by Sage Publications, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. For information address: SAGE Publications, Inc. 275 South Beverly Drive Beverly Hills, California 90212 SAGE Publications India Pvt. Ltd. SAGE Publications Ltd M-32 Market 28 Banner Street Greater Kailash I London EC1Y 8QE New Delhi 110 048 India England Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hall, Richard H., 1934- Dimensions of work. Includes index. 1. Work. I. Title. HD4904.H32 1985 306'.36 85-11925 ISBN 0-8039-2397-X Third Printing ftfie.2i70 Contents Preface 7 1. The Nature of Work 9 2. Forms of Work 39 3. The Individual Dimension 91 4. The Horizontal Dimension 129 5. The Vertical Dimension 153 6. The Gender Dimension 191 7. The Age Dimension 233 8. The Racial and Ethnic Dimension 251 9. The Organizational Dimension 271 10. The Power Dimension 297 11. The Institutional Dimension 315 Name Index 337 Subject Index 347 About the Author 351 •I I Preface The analysis of work has always been at the core of sociology. The giants of our intellectual past—Weber, Marx, Durkheim—made work a pivotal point in their analyses. So it is in the present: Work remains central to our understanding of social order and social dynamics. The present volume represents an attempt both to bring the research- based literature on work together and to extend this literature. The need for such an attempt has become evident to me over the past five years I have served as editor of Work and Occupations: An International Sociological Journal—also published by Sage Publications. My editori al responsibilities have led me to the conclusion that there is a clear need for the literature on work to be brought together, integrated, and interpreted—these are the purposes of this particular piece of work. Several colleagues—Glenna Spitze, Russ Ward, and especially Mari an Kostecki—provided useful suggestions for several of the chapters, but the product remains my own output. My editors at Sage Publications have been supportive throughout this project. My colleagues in the Department of Sociology have also been very supportive. Joan Cipperly has been invaluable as an editorial assistant. Finally, I would like to thank my family for understanding the sometimes delicate work-family relationship. —Richard H. Hall Albany, New York 7 THE NA TURE OF WORK What is work? The purpose of this first chapter is to consider what work is and what it is not. As will be seen shortly, work is often a part of many things we do not consider in our casual, contemporary, everyday concep tualizations of work. Let me begin by considering a topic that most people would find almost the antithesis of work: skiing—downhill or alpine skiing, to be exact. To skiers and nonskiers alike, skiing would appear to be a form of recreation, whether thought of in terms of danger, hedonism, cold, aprks ski partying, or whatever. I love to ski and in fact think of it as the second best thing in the world, but at times I also think of skiing as work. Here the analysis gets a little more complicated. I am a member of the National Ski Patrol System, Incorporated, of the United States. Ski patrollers are the people who help injured skiers and try to prevent injuries. When I am ski patrolling, I am not paid, although there are paid ski patrollers, particularly at the larger ski areas. At the same time, when—and this is really quite infrequent—I help to bring an accident victim down the mountain on an icy day, it feels like work. I am obliged to be “on duty” certain days and evenings of the week. I also wear a uniform, to set me apart from “civilians” not on the ski patrol. Although the work is volunteer in nature, there is even some slight financial remuneration, as I receive a lift ticket for the next ski season for every time I patrol in this ski season. This ticket can be used by anyone whom I invite to ski. There are other aspects of this activity that resemble the more typical examples of work that come to mind. One of the most obvious is that there is a rather complex division of labor at even the relatively small mountain where I work. There is a ski area management team, fellow workers who are ski instructors (interestingly, at most ski areas, there is some rivalry between instructors and patrollers), lift attendants, snow makers, groomers, cafeteria help, bartenders, ski shop sales personnel, and other workers. There are aspects of patrolling that are completely enjoyable, but there are other aspects that are less enjoyable and that I try to avoid. There are days when I just don’t feel like going to the mountain, and other days when I am eager to get there. There are 10 DIMENSIONS OF WORK coworkers who are delightful and others who are bores. There are extrinsic and intrinsic satisfactions and dissatisfactions. Being a ski patroller also provides me with a certain status and prestige among skiers (this status and prestige has little or no meaning outside of skiing—a point that is essentially the reverse of the relations among work, status, and prestige in more regular forms of work). As in “regular” work, ski patrolling contains some anomalies that are part of the culture of the work. We are constantly reminded that we are to act “professionally” when carrying out our duties, but no one has really defined “professionally” for us. The hierarchy of authority is sometimes vague and confusing, because there are some patrollers who have more skills than others who hold positions as officers. There are also those who move up through the ranks very quickly and who are on some sort of fast track to the top. Is this achieved through ability or some form of favoritism? This type of analysis could be extended, but the point should be clear. There are many kinds of activities that do not appear to be work when first considered, but that really contain elements found in more typical work situations. The most obvious and common example of work that is often not thought of as work—and that is not counted as work in many official government and scholarly research documents—is housework. As will be demonstrated later, housework has all the essential elements of most other work, except that it is usually not rewarded directly by financial payment. This is despite the fact, of course, that housework has important and high economic value. Thus far, I have purposely avoided defining work. My purpose has been to indicate what some of the dimensions of work are, without going into a great deal of detail. The purpose of this entire book is to examine the dimensions of work. I will try to demonstrate that the dimensions are overlapping, intersecting, and interdependent. For example, the dimen sions of age, gender, and race and ethnicity are clear components of any worker or work setting. So too are the horizontal and vertical dimen sions of work that will be specified in detail at a later point. The point is not to build a deductive theory of the nature of work, as Blau (1977) has attempted in regard to the social structure. The intent here is to describe and analyze the dimensions of work in different ways and with different emphases from those that have been employed in the past. The first step is to define the nature of work. This is easier said than done, however, because the idea of work is intertwined with a set of other concepts, such as occupation and employment. In the next sec tion, I will attempt to develop definitions that can be used throughout this book. In discussing and developing definitions, the multifaceted and complex nature of work will become clear.
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