The Time Famine: Toward a Sociology of Work Time.
The paper gives a description of a qualitative study of the way people utilize their time in the workplace. It also describes why people use their time the way they do and it also considers whether the way in which people use time is optimal for their work groups and for them. The outcome of the field study of the work practices of software engineering team showed that the members were perpetrated by the group’s collective use of time. The study revealed that the workers had a feeling that the time for doing their activities was short. The engineers faced difficulties in having their personal work accomplished due to constant interruption by other people. The disruptive way of interrupting was facilitated by a system of reward and the disaster mentality that was based on the personal heroics. It was realized that altering the ways in which engineers utilize their time enhanced the collective productivity of the firm. The research points out towards the sociology of work time and towards a means of integrating the individual employee patterns of work. The article explores the practical and theoretical implications of sociology of work time in the work environment.
Male and Female: Job versus Gender Models in the Sociology of Work
The paper written by Roslyn L. Feldberg of Boston University studies the problems that arise from the application of sex-segregated models of analysis. It postulates that, for a long time, work has been viewed as the focal point that connects people in the society of the industry to one another. Even though, people tend to consider the issues at work as universal the most studies have been done along sex-differentiated boundaries. In this perspective, females are less often studied as workers and if a study does not incorporate women, the work analysis tends to be distorted. The paper argues that the problem emanates from models of analysis that are sex segregated, majorly the separate job models for men and women. Again, the paper claims that the models make many researchers pose several questions that are based on the sex of the workers. The paper has examined two case studies to illustrate the different ways in which the models on gender have led to the distortion of the interpretation and investigation. At the end of the paper, suggestions have been put across on how to reconceptualise work to incorporate forms of paid and unpaid work and for including gender stratification in the work analysis.
The Sociology of Work and Occupations
This article by Andrew Abbott on sociology of work and occupation reviews the studies that have been conducted recently in the occupations and work places. Most of the work that he reviews are done at individual basis and encompasses the study on the qualities, characteristic of the individual workers and a bit of the levels of experience at work. It indicates that the analysis on the structure is less common and a substantial literature usually examines specific occupations. It divides literature into two portions the first focuses on inequality and gender while the second concentrates on industrial labour relations and the worker's unions. This work indicates that if Marxism is exempted, the occupations of work and the work subfields will not have the synthetic theory that ought to enable the process of synthesis of results that are obtained empirically. The paper also considers the dual role of politicization and the role of pushing for empirical investigation of fresh areas.
Works Cited
Abbott, A. "The Sociology of Work and Occupations." Annual Review of Sociology (1993). Retrieved from http://asq.sagepub.com/content/44/1/57.short
Feldberg, Roslyn L., and Evelyn N. Glenn. "Male and Female: Job versus Gender Models in the Sociology of Work." Social Problems (1979). Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/800039
Perlow, Leslie A. "The Time Famine: Toward a Sociology of Work Time." Administrative Science Quarterly (1999). Retrieved from http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.so.19.080193.001155
