PRODUCT CHARACTERISTICS, HUMAN CAPITAL, AND LABOR MARKET SEGMENTS:

This article contends that one key to understanding different forms of work organization lies in the nature of the products being created. Product characteristics are proposed to be critical determinants of the type of human capital, either general or firm specific. Following from prior theory, labor market barriers develop based on type of human capital. These barriers then have a direct bearing on employee rewards. The nature of the product distinction is captured with a comparison of two product-types (goods and services) conceived as theoretically distinct. General skills are hypothesized to be more important in the service-producing sector, while firm-specific skills are hypothesized to be more important in the goods-producing sector. Empirical analyses using the 1991 General Social Survey compare workers in the service-producing and goods-producing sectors to illustrate differences in the salience of firm-specific and general skills. Two hypotheses are supported. Firm-specific skills have a stronger effect on earnings in manufacturing industries than in service industries. Also, skills acquired from on-the-job training, when compared with other skills, are more weakly related to service employee rewards. These distinctions between sectors suggest insights into structures unique to the service employment workplace.     

International Patterns of Interpersonal Tactile Communication: A Field Study

An awareness of how touch is employed in communicative interactions among peoples of different nations can be a critical requisite to effective inter-cultural communication. This study examined cross-sex, interpersonal, public touch to determine whether (1) the number of body areas touched varied between members of different societies; (2) the type of relationship between dyadic partners influenced tactile behavior; and (3) the amount of total body areas touched for each society correlated with latitude of origin. Variation in interpersonal touch as a function of nationality was confirmed. Results also confirmed that touch between dyads from an international sample was affected by type of relationship. Correspondence in the occurrence of tactile behavior among dyads from similar latitudes of origin was not confirmed. Findings call into question the designation of Northern European and U.S. cultures as non-contact.     

Are elderly drivers a road hazard?: Problem definition and political impact

Elderly drivers are increasing in number and some statistics show they are more likely to be involved in fatal accidents than all other age groups but those under 25. States have attempted to address the problem in various ways, but very few have required mandatory retesting at license renewal for those beyond a particular age. Why have so few states chosen to act? The key is how the issue is framed for the public and decision makers. Several phases of problem definition are explored to explain the political dynamics of the older driver issue: incidence, causality, severity, crisis labeling, problem population characteristics, and linkage of values to the issue and solutions. Based upon this analysis, it is not surprising that elder interest groups have been successful in containing policy initiatives designed to restrict elderly driving.     

The Renewed Search for Social Trusteeship: Cohen and Fitch on Social Justice and the City

It has become a commonplace to argue that in the face of a discredited Marxism, socialism must find an alternative basis for a renewed project. This article investigates two of these claims by Gerald Cohen and Bob Fitch. It does so with particular reference to the attempt by these authors to re-invoke, both wittingly and unwittingly, David Ricardo, John Stuart Mill, Henry George, and Auguste Comte among others as the source of a renewed left project. It takes as its special concern the way in which the supposed need to revivify industry in the late twentieth century parallels the often voiced need to revivify agriculture in the late nineteenth century as a means of staving off underdevelopment.     

Do Status Differences among Workers Make a Difference during Economic Crises? The Case of Depression Hamilton*

Utilisant les données du recensement de 1931 ainsi que d'entrevues avec des retraités d'Hamilton, en Ontario, qui recevaient un salaire durant la Grande Dépression, l'auteur examine les affirmations selon lesquelles les crises économiques sapent ou renforcent, ou n'affectent pas nécessairement la hiérarchie traditionnelle. Cela parce que, respectivement, elles substituent des ouvriers moins qualifiés, à meilleur marché aux autres ouvriers, elles privilégient les travailleurs hautement qualifiés ou elles affectent différemment les industries et occupations parmi lesquelles les ouvriers de différentes conditions sociales sont ségrégués. Le plus notable est qu'aucun résultat n'était marqué ni consistant en ce qui concerne les situations professionnelles, lâge, le sexe et l'ethnie sur tout type de privation. Cependant, certains types de privation montraient certaines différences de rangs. Donc, lorsque la profession était contrôlée dans les données du recensement, le modéle le plus commun était que les femmes travaillaient plus que les hommes, seulement lorsqu'en fait elles gagnaient moins. Cela suggère la «substitution» du travail à bon marché des femmes à celui des hommes et, en conséquence, l'ébranlement des privilèges de ces derniers. Par contre, selon les données tirées des entrevues, plus on était jeune et plus on attendait pour obtenir un travail rémunéréà temps plein, plus il était difficile d'en trouver, et plus le salaire était bas. Cela suggère que des privilèges associés avec lâge étaient renforcés durant la Dépression. Néanmoins, il y avait aussi ségrégation industrielle et occupationnelle, selon lâge, l'ethnie et le sexe, ce qui peut expliquer en partie pourquoi la plupart des différences de rangs sociaux n'étaient ni sapées ni renforcées. L'auteur a aussi trouvé peu de différences de rangs sociaux dans les réactions des ouvriers à la crise et, par conséquent, peu d'évidences quant au processus d'homogénéisation/radicalisation de la gauche associé avec l'hypothèse de la première affirmation ou à la diffé-renciation/conservatisme des ouvriers hautement qualifiés et à la radicalisation des ouvriers moins qualifiés associés avec l'affir-mation de l'hypothèse de renforcissement. Using data from the 1931 Census and interviews with Hamilton, Ontario retirees who worked for pay during the Great Depression, the author examines claims that economic crises undermine, strengthen, or need not affect traditional status hierarchies; because, respectively, they substitute “cheaper” low-status workers for others; privilege high-status workers; or differentially affect industries and occupations where workers of different status are segregated. The most remarkable result was that there were no such strong and consistent results for any of occupational status, age, gender and ethnicity on all types of deprivation. However, there was evidence for some status differences on some types of deprivation. Thus, when occupation was controlled in the census data, the most common pattern was for women to work more than men only when they in fact earned less. This suggests the “substitution” of the cheaper labour of women for that of men, and therefore the undermining of the privileges of men. On the other hand, in the interview data, the younger one was and the later one attempted to obtain full-time, paid work, the more difficulty one had finding it, and the lower one's wages were. This suggests that some age privileges were strengthened during the Depression. Nevertheless, there was also much industrial and occupational segregation, by age and ethnicity as well as gender, and this may partly explain why most status differences were neither undermined nor strengthened. The author also found few status differences in workers' responses to the crisis, and therefore little evidence for either the homogenization/left-radicalization process associated with the undermining hypothesis or the differentiation/conservatizing of high-status workers and radicalization of low-status workers associated with the strengthening claim.     

Emotional Simultaneity and the Construction of Victim Unity

One of the concerns in recent work on the sociology of emotions is the link between emotions and social bonding. A version of this issue has also been discussed in research on disasters, with the focus being on how the crisis leads to the cohesion essential to recovery and rebuilding. This paper provides an analysis of a fire and its aftermath and shows how central emotions are to understanding the social psychology of the event. Most important here is the fact that, when identifying themselves as fire victims, those affected by the disaster assumed that they experienced the same profound emotions at the same time. This emotional simultaneity led fire victims to emphasize their bonds to one another and heighten their boundaries with nonvictims. In turn, this led to their providing social support, comparative experiences, and practical assistance to each other.     

The polarisation and intensification of parental employment in britain: Consequences for children,families and the community

On the basis of an analysis of UK parental employment between 1984 and 1994, using data from the Labour Force Survey, the authors identify three important trends: increasing integration of women with children, particularly with young children, into the labour market; increasing differentiation in mothers' employment opportunities and growing polarisation in household employment patterns; and an intensification of paid work amongst employed parents, contributing to a growing concentration of work–both paid and unpaid caring work–among women and men in the so-called 'prime working years' of 25 to 50 years. The article considers some possible consequences of these trends for children, families and communities, including the polarisation of children's childhoods, family incomes and neighbourhoods, the increasing workload on individual parents and families, tension between parents over the division of child care and domestic tasks and the issue of lime. The article concludes that the current UK focus on policies to support working parents in 'reconciling employment and family responsibilities' begs the question of how far these, and other activities, are reconcilable–and if they are, under what conditions, what cost and to whom–and may fail to address the difficult, threatening and 'wicked issues' at the heart of the work-family relationship.     

Employee exposure to coworker substance use and negative consequences: the moderating effects of work group membership.

The current study assesses: (1) whether the relationship between individual exposure to coworker substance use and negative consequences resulting from exposure depends on work group membership, and (2) whether group-level characteristics moderate the relationship between exposure and consequences. At the group-level, we assessed occupations involving safety risk or high mobility and social factors of drinking climate and group cohesiveness. We conducted Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM) across two samples of municipal employees (ns = 650, 878; n of groups = 50, 49). Our results revealed that groups with higher proportions of jobs involving risk (e.g., machine work) and, to a lesser extent, groups with a higher level of drinking climate were those most vulnerable to consequences under conditions of exposure. Importantly, our findings controlled for individual risk factors (e.g., personal drinking, job stress). Our discussion examines the implications of this study for theory and policy related to workplace substance abuse.