William A. Faunce

Automation and the Division of Labor

Specialization of function has been a cardinal principle of business organization since the beginning of the industrialization process. From Adam Smiths famous example of job specialization in the manufacture of pins to Frederick Taylor and Scientific Management, the idea that increasing job simplification meant increasing efficiency of operation has been among the principles applied to the organization of production. The division of labor resulting from industrial machine technology and large scale organization has been so continuous that it appeared to be an irreversible direction of change in contemporary societies.

Automation and the Automobile Worker

have been congressional hearings, hundreds of conferences, and thousands of newspaper and magazine articles dealing with the possible consequences of automation for American society. This concern has not yet, however, manifested itself in a comprehensive program of research designed to discover what the effects of automation may actually be. To the extent that social scientists have become concerned with the problem at all, their attention has been focussed primarily upon the possibility of technological displacement of workers and its attendant problems. The question of individual and organizational adjustments to the changes in production techniques has received much less attention. This paper is not concerned with the problems of workers who have lost their jobs as a result of automation but with the adjustment problems of what is currently a much larger group of workers: those who are still working but who have recently experienced the changes in their jobs resulting from the introduction of automated machinery. We will consider, first, the nature of the changes in the job of the individual worker in the automated plant and then the effect of these changes upon work satisfaction and attitudes toward industrial work.

The Relation of Status to Self Esteem: Chain Saw Sociology at the Cutting Edge

Abstract Explanation of the relation of status to self esteem is impeded by the crude and simple concepts most often used in analyzing this relationship. If concepts are the tools of the sociological trade, it is those equivalent to the chain saw that we most often use, and, as a consequence, the complex and subtle relationships that need to be observed in order to explain the effects of social status upon self esteem are obscured. There is also little evidence of any progressive specification of meaning of concepts related to status and self esteem. In this paper, examples of chain saw sociology are discussed and proposals are made for conceptual refinements that might prove helpful in explaining how our self assessments are linked to our social status.

Social Stratification and Attitude Toward Change in Job Content

Although we live in an era of rapid industrial change, little is understood of the phenomenology of change in job content. This paper reports a study in which attitudes toward work-related change were found to vary with social class background, social class identification, and position in the status structure of the work organization.

On the Meaning of Occupational Status: Implications for Stratification Theory and Research*

Abstract There is a controversy regarding the meaning of occupational status centering around the issue of whether status differences continue to entail deference entitlement. This article suggests that deferential behavior is still linked to occupational status differences but, as a result of the complexity of occupational systems in industrial societies, there have been changes in the settings in which displays of deference occur and in the manner in which deference is expressed A source of confusion in the debate on the meaning of occupational status is the failure to distinguish between differences in status and differences in the occupational characteristics on a basis of which status is accorded This distinction and its implications for class and power hierarchies are discussed The article concludes with an argument for the necessity of situating the process of status differentiation in “status assignment systems”.

Automation and the Employee

Einar Hardin, Ph.D., is Associate Professor, Department of Economics, and Acting Associate Director of Research and Planning, Labor and Industrial Relations Center, Michigan State University. He was Research Associate in the Industrial Institute for Economic and Social Research, Stockholm, 1950-1953, and in the Labor and Industrial Relations Center since 1956. Eugene H. Jacobson, Ph.D., is Professor of Psychology and Assistant Dean for International Studies, College of Science and Arts, Michigan State University. He was Assistant Program Director, Human Relations Program, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, 1946-1955; Chief, Division of Applied Social Sciences, UNESCO, 1957-1959; and Research Associate, Labor and Industrial Relations Center, Michigan State University, 1956-1957 and 1959-1960. ABSTRACT: Field research suggests that the impact of office automation upon job satisfaction varies depending on whether