Beth A. Rubin

HOME-TO-JOB AND JOB-TO-HOME SPILLOVER: The Impact of Company Policies and Workplace Culture

We draw on gender theory and neo-institutional theory to examine the impact of workplace characteristics and family demands on negative job-to-home and home-to-job spillover. Our multivariate analyses of the 1997 National Study of the Changing Workforce data indicate that family-supportive workplace cultures reduce negative spillover in both directions, whereas the availability of company policies, such as dependent care benefits and flextime, do not. Our results also show that family demands increase spillover more for women than for men. Our findings suggest that the atmosphere of the workplace is more important than the availability of company policies in reducing negative spillover.

The Web of Group Affiliations Revisited: Social Life, Postmodernism, and Sociology

We address current debates about the future of society and the future of sociology. From Simmels distinction between social forms in premodern and modern society, we resurrect his original geometric analogy and recast it in current network terms. In this light, we consider various substantive and methodological claims of postmodernists and suggest that their contribution lies in capturing the spirit of rapid social change and the ambiguity that characterizes the present era. The basic problem with the postmodern critique, we argue, lies in its embrace of these characteristics as the new social form - mistaking transition for type. In response, we sketch out a third social form, a spoke structure, with accompanying tensions and freedoms that Simmel recognized as inevitable. Finally, we examine how approaches to two social problems - serious mental illnesses and homelessness-reflect and shape the contours of an era s network formation. In particular, we discuss how the emergent spoke structure presents challenges to current methodological approaches

Class Struggle American Style: Unions, Strikes and Wages

A major characteristic of class relations in the United States has been the absence of a self consciously defined and politically cohesive working class. The major form of working-class organization has been trade union organization. Unions were institutionalized during the immediate post-war period with the establishment of a post-war labor capital accord, a major function of which was the institutionalization and narrowing of class conflict along narrow economic dimensions. This paper shows that it is the institutionalized presence of the labor movement that empowers worker militancy and allows workers to strike successfully for higher compensation. Using multivariate time-series regression analysis this paper shows that in times (post-World War II) and industrial sectors in which unions are well established, strikes lead to an increased rate of compensation growth. In the post-war period, in the industrial sectors in which unions are not well institutionalized, strikes are an ineffective weapon in economic class struggles and unionization appears to be economically beneficial.

“Provided Only that their Voice was Strong” Insurgency and Organization of American Labor from NRA to Taft-Hartley

Students of the labor movement have been fascinated with the years between 1933 and 1946 for the impact they had on the experiences of workers in subsequent years, and because they redefined the possibilities for concerted working class action. In this article we present quantitative historical analyses to address the following issues: (1) In what ways did the various modes of worker action stimulate mass unionization efforts? (2) Under what conditions was strike activity enhanced or dissipated by existing levels of organization? and (3) How do rare events—such as sitdown strikes—sustain more normal expressions of working class action?

American Labor Law: Its Impact on Working-Class Militancy, 1901–1980

The creation of legal parameters to structure social relations is a basic feature of modern capitalist society. Law plays a major role in shaping the institutional setting within which conflicts arise, develop, and reach their resolution. Likewise, legislative solutions to pressing social conflicts create new possibilities and strategies for social change. The struggles between capitalists and the working class that have historically marked capitalist economic development constitute a central arena for the legislative restructuring of social relations. Yet, few have systematically studied the role of law in shaping the development of capital-labor relations (for some important exceptions, see Steinberg, 1982; Tomlins, 1985). In this paper, we explore the legal structuring of American working-class militancy in the twentieth century, a prominent dimension of capital-labor relations, but one for which the legislative underpinnings remain unclear.

Is homelessness a housing problem

Abstract Homeless people have been found to exhibit high levels of personal disability (mental illness, substance abuse), extreme degrees of social estrangement, and deep poverty. Each of these conditions poses unique housing problems, which are discussed here. In the 1980s, the number of poor people has increased and the supply of low‐income housing has dwindled; these trends provide the background against which the homelessness problem has unfolded. Homelessness is indeed a housing problem, first and foremost, but the characteristics of the homeless are such as to make their housing problems atypical.

Operationalizing Management Citizenship Behavior and Testing Its Impact on Employee Commitment, Satisfaction, and Mental Health

How can employers create conditions that foster satisfied, psychologically healthy, and committed employees? To answer that, the authors build on Hodson’s concept of management citizenship behavior (MCB). The authors incorporate managers’ ethical and family-supportive behaviors as essential components of MCB. The authors operationalize these constructs using data from the National Survey of the Changing Workforce. The study results demonstrate strong positive effects of MCB on employees’ commitment, job satisfaction, and mental health and support the inclusion of the additional components. This research contributes to the literature on worker attitudes and behaviors has clear implications for managers concerned with these enhancing the workplace.

GENERATIONAL DIFFERENCES IN THE EFFECTS OF INSECURITY, RESTRUCTURED WORKPLACE TEMPORALITIES, AND TECHNOLOGY ON ORGANIZATIONAL LOYALTY

We test hypotheses regarding generational differences in the effects on organizational loyalty of workplace insecurity, restructured workplace temporalities, and technological access to the workplace. We argue that large-scale social changes have eroded the social employment contract and impacted these features of the workplace. Further, these new working conditions will have a greater impact on the organizational loyalty and commitment of older cohorts of workers whose expectations were formed under the previous social contract than on more recent cohorts. With the exception of insecurity, our results generally support our hypotheses. They also have some intriguing implications that the conditions that dampen the loyalty of older cohorts enhance that of younger. Likewise, they raise important questions about what factors affect the loyalty of younger generations of workers and what role the increasing reliance on technology for work outside of “normal” working hours might play in fostering loyal employees.

Inequality in the Working Class: The Unanticipated Consequences of Union Organization and Strikes

This paper explores one possible explanation for the uniquely apolitical character of the U.S. labor movement compared to the labor movements of other Western capitalist democracies. Employing a neo-Marxist class perspective, the author examines the relationship of union density (union members as a percentage of the nonagricultural work force) and of strike frequency to the distribution of earned income in the United States from 1949 to 1976. Time-series regression analysis of the quintile distribution of earned income and the Gini index of the inequality of earned income shows that union density has had mixed effects on inequality, with higher union density tending to redistribute income from middle-income workers to both the least prosperous and most prosperous workers, whereas higher strike frequency has tended to reduce income inequality generally. The author suggests that union organization may be a source of divisiveness within the working class in the postwar era.

Time in the New Economy: The Impact of the Interaction of Individual and Structural Temporalities on Job Satisfaction

The 24/7 economy creates new organizational temporalities including a temporal structure called layered-task time (LTT), characterized by greater simultaneity, fragmentation, contamination, and constraint. This paper develops a measure of LTT, and examines the relationship between its components and job satisfaction as moderated by an individuals polychronicity, or propensity for multitasking. A total of 306 employees from various jobs, organizations, and industries were surveyed. The LTT measures provide promising initial evidence of reliability and content validity. We also find that those who are more polychronic are more satisfied in environments characterized by a need for multitasking and using dissimilar skills, as well as organizational temporal constraint and unpredictable shifts in temporal boundaries. Finally, we discuss implications for research on temporal structures in the workplace.