George Washington University

Sociology of Work and Occupations GWU Spring 2014 Page 1

SOCIOLOGY OF WORK AND OCCUPATIONS
Soc 6252.10 Spring 2014
Sociology Dept. Conference Room, Phillips Hall #410
Tuesday, 6:10 8:00 p.m.

Daniel Marschall, Professorial Lecturer in Sociology
Mobile:
Email: marschal at gwu.edu or marschad66 at gmail.com
Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/Socwork
Office Hours: Monday 5:00 6:00
or by appointment
Sociology Dept. Room 409L

Course Description
Welcome to this new GWU graduate course, the Sociology of Work and Occupations. Work is a
central dimension of our daily lives. What we do for work, and the meaning(s) that we find in
our occupations and professions, not only affects our quality of life and our social status in
society, but also structures our social contact with others and has a profound impact on how we
construct our personal identities and our sense of self-worth. The individuals and groups with
whom we work often form important segments of the communities in which we consider
ourselves to be members. Studying the topics of work, the labor process, occupations, and
professions is a prime route for understanding the texture and culture of contemporary life the
way in which our individual lives unfold in the context of social interaction and changing
societal institutions and norms. Learning about the sociology of work will help you navigate
your career in a precarious economy that features continuous change in the skills required to
secure a place in the Americas middle class.

Overview and Goals

Work practices and the ways jobs are performed in workplaces have undergone fundamental
change since the 1970s. Millions of manufacturing jobs have disappeared. Though service jobs
have multiplied, they often pay low wages and place workers in precarious, dead end working
conditions. Temporary and part-time employment seems to have become the new normal,
while stable, full-time jobs are more difficult to acquire. The spread of automation and digital
communication technology (the Internet, social media, etc.) is reshaping the nature of jobs and
organizational structures. Employers operate in a harshly competitive global environment; they
respond by resisting the desires of workers to organize and act collectively to improve their lives
and career prospects. At the same time, commentators extoll the virtues of entrepreneurship and
technologists look to the maker movement as a third industrial revolution. All of these trends
are having a dramatic impact on the labor market as millions of members of the Millennial
Generation leave secondary and post-secondary schools to enter the working world.

The primary goal of this course is to provide you and other graduate students with the knowledge
and conceptual tools to comprehend how occupations and professions are evolving in a society
shaped by a globalized labor market all to help you determine how your career and,
presumably, your quest for fulfilling work and a decent job may be accomplished as the social
relations of work remain fluid and social institutions undergo continuous change.
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Sociology of Work and Occupations GWU Spring 2014 Page 2

Though Americans ordinarily think of work as an individual exercise of their unique talents and
abilities, the labor that actually transpires in myriad places of work is a collective effort,
organized by social relationships and structured by social institutions. This course will examine
topics such as:
the changing meaning of work for the Millennial Generation
how the idea of immaterial labor sheds light on the nature of service work
the rise of precarious work amid the collapse of the post-World War II social contract
how digital communication technology is changing work practices
the ethical challenges facing professional workers
the role of occupational communities in promoting job satisfaction
how gender and racial inequality in the workplace is expressed by the rhetoric of diversity
how work structured as projects characterizes the contemporary workplace
what public policies are necessary to meet the education and skill training needs of workers
how unions are allying with community groups to craft new models of worker representation
how the future of work is being transformed by robotics, an end of work ideology, and the
(realistic?) ethic of entrepreneurialism.

The course takes an interdisciplinary approach, drawing readings from sociology, anthropology
of work, public policy, womens studies, social psychology, organization studies, industrial
relations, career development, working class history, futurism, and analysis of current events.

There is a substantial amount of reading in the course, approximately the equivalent of four
academic journal articles per week. Each student will have a set of composition books and be
required to formulate, for each reading, a question or brief comment that may serve as the basis
for class discussion. The quality of these questions, oral participation in class, and engagement in
online discussions will be counted as part of the final grade. Time spent together in class will
focus on discussion and exchanges between students, guided by the analysis in the readings and
our assessment of the authors interpretation of issues.

The course will not have a traditional mid-term exam or final paper. Rather, students will be
required to write three, short yellow papers on topics that relate directly to introspection about
their career choices and honing practical skills (e.g. interviewing). See pages 8-9 for writing
assignment descriptions.

Student Learning Objectives
At the end of the course, students should be able to:

(1) explain how the nature of work and the social context surrounding occupations has changed
since the 1970s; (2) reflect upon how their own jobs and career prospects have been affected by
these social and economic forces; (3) describe the current forms of work and how managerial
control operates in the contemporary service workplace; (4) understand aspects of qualitative
research methodology such as interviewing and ethnography; (5) develop their critique of what
public policies are necessary to promote good jobs; and (6) assess alternative perspectives and
trends on the future of work and evaluate which of those are most likely to dominate.
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Sociology of Work and Occupations GWU Spring 2014 Page 3

Course Requirements (percent of grade)
Course Assignment Proportion of Final Grade
Reading questions and class discussion 40 percent
Three yellow papers 20 percent each


Course Readings
The following books contain required reading for the course. They are available at the bookstore.
Vallas, Steven Peter. 2012. Work: A Critique. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Edwards, Richard. 1979. Contested Terrain: The Transformation of the Workplace in the
Twentieth Century. New York: Basic Books.
Kalleberg, Arne L. 2011. Good Jobs, Bad Jobs. The Rise of Polarized and Precarious
Employment in the United States, 1970s to 2000s. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
Abbott, Andrew. 1988. The System of Professions: An Essay on the Division of Expert Labor.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Marschall, Daniel. 2012. The Company We Keep: Occupational Community in the High-Tech
Network Society. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Other readings will be provided to students.

Course Schedule: Soc 6252.10 Spring 2014


Date Class Readings and Activities
Week
1

Introduction to the Course
=> Instructor and student introductions
=> Distribute course syllabus and discuss
=> Class writing activity in composition book. In what job or type of work have you
experienced the highest level of job satisfaction? What was it about the work that you
found fulfilling?
=> Assignment: Go to the Career Vision Job Satisfaction Survey at:
http://wbs.careervision.org/PerspectiveJobSatisfationSurvey.aspx
Take this quiz, print out the results, and bring them to the second class.
Exercise: How accurate are these results? To what extent do they reflect your
experience at your current or previous jobs?

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Sociology of Work and Occupations GWU Spring 2014 Page 4
Date Class Readings and Activities
Week
2

Job Satisfaction
Class Exercise: Discuss results of job satisfaction quiz.
-- Kalleberg. Job Satisfaction. In Good Jobs, Bad Jobs, pp. 164-176. (Text)
Review chart: Ten Characteristics of Jobs that Affect Job Satisfaction. (Handout on
page 10 of Syllabus)
=> Assignment: Yellow Paper #1. Review the results of your quiz and write a paper
about your experience with job satisfaction. Due end of Week 3 class.
Change and Diversity in the Meaning(s) of Work
-- Gamst, Frederick C. 1995. Considerations of Work. In Meanings of Work, ed.
Frederick C. Gamst, 1-45. Albany: State University of New York Press.
-- Catherine Loughlin and Julian Barling. 2001. Young workers values, attitudes, and
behaviours. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology 74: 543-558.
-- Laura Wray-Lake, et al. 2009. Exploring the Changing Meaning of Work for
American High School Seniors from 1976 to 2005. Pennsylvania State University
working paper.
-- Rothberg, Deborah. Generation Y for Dummies. eWeek, 24 August 2006.

Week
3

Theoretical Perspectives on Work and Labor Processes
-- Paul Hirsch, et al. 1987. Dirty Hands versus Clean Models. Theory and Society
16: 317-336.
-- Everett Hughes. 1958. Work and the Self.
-- Vallas. Introduction and Capitalism, Taylorism, and the Problem of Labor
Control. In Work, pp. 1-59. (Text)
-- Excerpts from Estranged Labor.
-- Kai Erikson. On Work and Alienation. American Sociological Review 51, no. 1: 1-8.
=> Hand in Yellow Paper #1 in class

Week
4


Managerial Control in Historical and Theoretical Perspective
-- Edwards. Contested Terrain, Chapters 1-8, pp. 3-162. (Text)
-- Cappelli, Peter and JR Keller. 2013. Classifying Work in the New Economy.
Academy of Management Review 38, no. 4: 575-596.
Exercise: Think about your own work history in terms of Cappelli and Kellers
categories.
-- Lazzarato, Maurizio. 1996. Immaterial Labour. In Radical Thought in Italy: A
Potential Politics, eds. Paulo Virno and Michael Hardt, 133-147. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press.
Resource document: Telework, excerpt from collective bargaining agreement.

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Sociology of Work and Occupations GWU Spring 2014 Page 5
Date Class Readings and Activities
Week
5

Employment Relations and Precarious Work
-- Vallas. From Fordism to Flexibility? In Work, pp. 60-85. (Text)
-- Kalleberg. Chapter 1, 2 and 5. In Good Jobs, Bad Jobs, pp. 1-39, 82-104. (Text)
-- Foti, Alex. 2004. Precarity and N/European Identity. Greenpepper.

Week
6

Technology and the Transformation of Work
-- McLaughlin, Janice and Andrew Webster. 1998. Rationalising Knowledge: IT
Systems, Professional Identities and Power. The Sociological Review 46, no. 4: 781-
802.
-- Alic, J. A. 2004. Technology and Labor in the New US Economy. Technology in
Society 26: 327-341.
-- Nygren, Katarina Giritli. 2012. Narrative of ICT and Organizational Change in
Public Administration. Gender, Work and Organization 19, no. 6: 615-630.
-- Zammuto, Raymond F., et al. 2007. Information Technology and the Changing
Fabric of Organization. Organization Science 18, no. 5: 749-762.
[Note: these readings are subject to change.]
=> Assignment: Yellow Paper #2. Interview a long-tenured employee in a
workplace about how technology has changed its social relations. Due at end of
Week 8 class.

Week
7

Professions and Occupational Control
-- Wilensky, H.L. 1964. The professionalization of everyone. American Journal of
Sociology 70, no. 2: 137-158.
-- Abbott, Andrew. 1988. The System of Professions, Introduction and Parts I and II,
pp. 1-211. (Text)
Controversy in Pharmacist Profession:
-- Code of Ethics for Pharmacists.
-- Rienzi, Mark L. 2012. Forcing Healthcare Professional to Dispense Emergency
Contraception is Discriminatory, U.S. News and World Report, 15 October.
-- Borchelt, Gretchen. 2012. Pharmacists Cant Be Allowed to Deny Women
Emergency Contraception, U.S. News and World Report, 16 October.

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Sociology of Work and Occupations GWU Spring 2014 Page 6
Date Class Readings and Activities
Week
8

Research on Work in Occupational Communities
-- Lipset, Seymour Martin. 1964. The Biography of a Research Project: Union
Democracy. In Sociologists at Work, ed. Philip E. Hammond, 96-120. New York:
Basic Books.
-- Marschall. Prologue and Network Society and Occupational Community. In The
Company We Keep, pp. 1-36. (Text)
Gender and socialization in the occupational community of police officers
-- Van Maanen, John. 1973. Observations on the Making of Policemen. Human
Organization 32, 4: 407-417.
-- McElhinny, Bonnie S. 1998. I dont smile much anymore: Affect, Gender, and the
Discourse of Pittsburgh Police Officers. In Language and Gender: A Reader, ed.
Jennifer Coates, 309-327. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers.
=> Hand in Yellow Paper #2 in class

Break No classes
Week
9

Work and Projects in the Information Economy
-- Abbott. The Information Professions. In The System of Professions, pp. 215-246.
(Text)
-- Marschall. Chapters 2-5 and Epilogue. In The Company We Keep, pp. 37-154.
(Text)
-- Jones, Candace. 1996. Careers in Project Networks: The Case of the Film Industry.
In Boundaryless Careers, eds. Michael B. Arthur and Denise M. Rousseau, 58-75.
New York: Oxford University Press.
Exercise: Think about how projects have structured your own work experience and
affected how you relate to your (past or current) co-workers.

Week
10

Gender and Racial Inequality in the Workplace
-- Kalleberg. New Workers, New Differences. In Good Jobs, Bad Jobs, pp. 40-58.
(Text)
-- Vallas. Ascriptive Inequalities at Work I: Gender and Ascriptive Inequalities II:
Race, Ethnicity, and Diversity at Work, in Work, pp. 87-132. (Text)
-- Robinson, Gail and Kathleen Dechant. 1997. Building a business case for diversity.
The Academy of Management Executive 11, no. 3: 21-31. (On Bb)
-- Owens, Reginald. 1997. Diversity: A bottomline issue. Workforce 76.
-- Wrench, John. 2005. Diversity management can be bad for you. Race & Class 46,
no. 3: 73-84.

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Sociology of Work and Occupations GWU Spring 2014 Page 7
Date Class Readings and Activities
Week
11

Globalization and the Changing Nature of Work
-- Vallas. The Globalization of Work and Conclusion, in Work, pp. 133-169.
(Text)
-- Gereffi, Gary and Michelle Christian. 2009. The Impacts of Wal-Mart: The Rise and
Consequences of the Worlds Dominant Retailer. Annual Review of Sociology 35: 573-
591.
-- Rosen, Ellen Israel. 2005. Life Inside Americas Largest Dysfunctional Family:
Working for Wal-Mart. New Labor Forum 14, no. 1: 31-39.
-- Lichtenstein, Nelson and Erin Johansson. 2011. Creating Hourly Careers: A New
Vision for Walmart and the Country. Washington, DC: American Rights at Work.
=> Assignment: Yellow Paper #3. Write an essay on globalization, public policy,
and the quality of work at Wal-Mart. Due at end of Week 13 class.

Week
12

Public Policy: Is the Economy Suffering from a Skills Gap?
-- Kalleberg. Confronting Polarization and Precarity and Implementing the New
Social Contract. In Good Jobs, Bad Jobs, pp. 179-215. (Text)
-- Deloitte. 2011. Boiling Point? The Skills Gap in U.S. Manufacturing. Washington,
DC: The Manufacturing Institute.
-- Manpower Group. 3013. Talent Shortage Survey: Research Results, pp. 1-12.
-- Levine, Marc V. 2013. The Skills Gap and Unemployment in Wisconsin: Separating
Fact from Fiction. Milwaukee, WI: University of WisconsinMilwaukee Center for
Economic Development.

Week
13

Labor Unions and the Future of Worker Representation
-- Madland, David, Karla Walter and Nick Bunker. 2011. Unions Make the Middle
Class. Washington, DC: Center for American Progress.
-- Cobble, Dorothy Sue and Michael Merrill. 2009. The Promise of Service Worker
Unionism. In Service Work: Critical Perspectives, eds. Marek Korczynski and
Cameron Lynne Macdonald, 153-174. New York: Routledge.
-- Avendano, Ana and Jonathan Hiatt. 2012. Worker Self-Organization in the New
Economy: The AFL-CIOs Experience in Movement Building with Community-
Labour Partnerships. Labour, Capital and Society 45, no. 1: 67-95.
-- Moberg, David. 2013. The New AFL-CIO. In These Times, 8 October.
Guest speaker: Ana Avendano on unions and future models of worker representation
=> Hand in Yellow Paper #3 in class

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Sociology of Work and Occupations GWU Spring 2014 Page 8
Date Class Readings and Activities
Week
14

Pondering the Futures of Work (and Leisure)
-- Man vs. Machine 2011. Watch this short segment from PBS News Hour:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business/jan-june12/man_vs_machine_05-24.html
-- Koller, Frank. 2012. Should we Fear the End of Work? Brief report from Cornell
ILR School 2013 Roundtable on Employment and Technology.
-- Morgan, Jacob. 2013. Five Trends Shaping the Future of Work. Forbes, 20 June.
-- Frey, Thomas. 2012. Two Billion Jobs to Disappear by 2030. Journal of
Environmental Health 74, no. 10: 36-38.
-- Mettler, Ann and Anthony D. Williams. 2011. The Rise of the Micro-Multinational:
How Freelancers and Technology-Savvy Start-Ups Are Driving Growth, Jobs and
Innovation. Brussels: The Lisbon Council.
-- Swanson, D. JoAnne. 2004. On the Leisure Track.
This short essay is published by CLAWS: Creating Livable Alternatives to Wage
Slavery, http://www.whywork.org/



Writing Assignments

Yellow Paper #1: Job satisfaction

Review the content of your Career Vision Job Satisfaction Report as discussed in Week 2
class. Think about our class discussion and the points made in the Kalleberg article. Consider the
ten characteristics that affect the level of job satisfaction you have experienced in particular jobs
or other work that you have done, for example, in voluntary or school-related activities or in
performing certain tasks in one or more jobs. Write a 5-10 page paper on job satisfaction and
your experience with satisfactory work. To what extent do you think that you have experienced
job satisfaction as it has been examined by social scientists? What did you find fulfilling about
the job or the tasks that comprised the job? To what extent were the ten characteristics relevant
to your experience? To what extent was the social context in which you worked, and the
relationships that you developed with co-workers, important to your experience of achieving
personal job satisfaction?

Format for all writing assignments: use 8 ! X 11 size paper, double spaced with margins of 1
inch on all sides. Use footnotes for citations. Print out a copy for Professor Marschall and send
an electronic copy to marschal at gwu.edu. You may post a copy on our class Facebook page,
although this is not a requirement.

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Sociology of Work and Occupations GWU Spring 2014 Page 9

Yellow Paper #2: How technology has changed in a workplace

Think about our class discussion on technology and the transformation of work. Write a 5-10 page paper
on how technology especially communication technology has changed in a particular workplace from
the perspective of an employee who has worked there for a substantial period of time. Follow this
process.
(1) Identify a workplace with which you are familiar, or have access to, because you have worked there or
have a friend, family, fellow student, or other connections. It is preferable for the workplace to be in the
DC area. The workplace may be a company, organization, non-profit group, college department or other
location approved by the instructor.
(2) Select an individual from that workplace who has worked there for a substantial period of time,
preferably 10-20 years. That person may be from any strata of the organization, from hourly workers (e.g.
janitors, housekeepers, security guards) to professional staff (e.g. physicians, technicians) and managers.
(3) Arrange to interview that person for 30-90 minutes. Prepare an interview guide with questions.
Procure equipment to tape the interview. Conduct the interview, explaining that the results will only be
used for the paper you are writing in class; it will not be distributed outside of our classroom. It is
preferable to conduct the interview in person, though a phone or Skype interview is allowable upon
approval of instructor.
(4) Transcribe the most salient parts of the interview. Plan to include that transcript in the final paper.
(5) Use that transcript and your knowledge about the workplace and occupation to write a 5-10 paper that
highlights how technology has changed in that workplace and how it has affected the job of the
interviewee. What sort of impact has the technology had on the social relations among employees? I
encourage you to do additional research on the industry, workplace or occupation in question.
(6) Submit both a hard copy and an MS Word electronic copy of the paper, including the interview guide
and the transcript. Deadline for paper: in class after the break.

Yellow Paper #3: Globalization, public policy and the quality of work at Walmart *

Write a 5-10 page paper on Walmart, globalization and the public policy. What positive effects has the
rise of Walmart had on the efficiency of the American economy? What negative impacts has Walmart had
on American society, its institutions and the quality of jobs? In what ways does Walmart reflect the forces
of globalization and its impact on the nature of work worldwide? What public policies should be
implemented in the US and/or the international realm to cause Walmart to become a good actor in the
lives of working people globally? Cite the Vallas chapter and the three articles read in the class session,
Globalization and the Changing Nature of Work. Identify and cite at least two other articles, reports
or websites that shed light on the questions above.

* Students may select a different topic based upon class readings and discussions; instructor approval of
topic is required.



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George Washington University
Sociology of Work and Occupations GWU Spring 2014 Page 10
Ten Characteristics of Jobs that Affect Job Satisfaction
1


Characteristic Description and terms associated with it
Opportunity for personal
control

Extent of employee discretion over performance of work tasks; amount
of latitude over decisions and participation in decision-making; sense of
autonomy and absence of close supervision.
Opportunity for skill use

Extent to which employee skills are utilized in work performance,
especially the use of abilities that are valued by the employee; level of
skills required for the job.
The impact of externally
generated goals

Broad category that includes demands of the job, the level of qualitative
or quantitative workload, and the demands as related to the resources
provided. Beyond moderate levels, increases in this characteristic tend to
be associated with lower well-being. This characteristic is also related to
role expectations and role conflict.
Variety

Variation in the content of a job and its location. Non-repetitive work
may be expected to increase job satisfaction. Variation includes both the
use of skills and the performance of tasks.
Environmental clarity

Extent to which an employees has access to information about the
consequences of certain behaviors and feedback about whether tasks are
completed satisfactorily; a sense of job security and less ambiguity about
the future would tend to enhance this feature.
Availability of money

An adequate amount of pay and financial resources to live a decent life
style and provide for a family.
Physical security

The absence of danger on the job; good working conditions that include
ergonomically adequate equipment and tools, safe levels of temperature,
and the absence of stress-inducing noise.
Supportive supervision

Support by supervisor and generally supportive management personnel;
presence of effective leadership in the organization.
Opportunity for
interpersonal contact

Quantity of interactions with others in the workplace; quality of
interactions in terms of developing good relationships with co-workers;
presence of good communication practices and systems; level of social
support shared with co-workers.
Valued social position
(prestige)

Sociological category relating to the wider evaluation of a jobs status in
society and the prestige of an occupation. This includes the more
localized evaluation of a jobs standing inside the organization and how
important the job is considered by authority figures. It also includes the
personal assessment of the significance of tasks being performed, the
meaningfulness of the job, and self-respect derived from the overall
performance of the job.


!
#$%&'($ )*+,- Peter Warr, Well-being and the workplace, in Well-being: The foundations of hedonic
psychology, eds. Daniel Kahneman, Ed Diener and Norbert Schwarz (New York: Russell Sage
Foundation, 1999), 392-412.