Workers Attempts To Survive Work Essay, Research Paper

Workers ATTEMPTS TO SURVIVE WORK INTRODUCTION Alienation is a factor that appears in the workplace. It can be looked at from two different positions. Karl Marx sees it as an nonsubjective province whereas Robert Blauner looks at it as a subjective province. Marx believes that all workers will inescapably see feelings of disaffection. This is because employees feel degraded and dehumanised making what they are making. They take an instrumental orientation to work as a agency to an terminal and hence feel they can non be themselves at work ( as they are being paid to make a undertaking, they feel they have to be person else ) . It is this province of head that causes people to hold a sense of disaffection. He goes on to state that labor is non voluntary but forced. As we have to work, we have no pick as we want to fulfill external demands outside work. These demands cause satisfaction, non the work itself. The work is the forfeit. Marx & # 8217 ; s states the existent end product of labor is the physical look of the attempt that has been undertaken and this so is an object of external being which becomes foreigner. This appears to me to hold been said to back up the remainder of his theory. What is evident, is there is a strong antipathy to capitalist economy. Everything he says leads back to capitalist economy. Capitalist workers would non merely be ineluctable victims of disaffection but would be in denial besides, as they would province in a false consciousness that their work was fulfilling and carry throughing. It is for this ground that the Marxist manner was & # 8216 ; beyond empirical probes & # 8217 ; ( Noon and Blyton 1997 ) which appears to me to be Marx & # 8217 ; s manner of covering his theory. In response to Marx & # 8217 ; s statements, if employees could work in an country specifically suited to their involvements, satisfaction would be more outstanding and disaffection would vanish. Blauner on the other manus argues that disaffection is non an inevitableness caused by capitalist economy but a & # 8216 ; general syndrome made up of a figure of nonsubjective conditions and subjective feeling-states, which emerge from certain relationships between workers and the socio-technical scenes of employment & # 8221 ; ( Noon and Blyton 1997 ) . Blauner recognises four provinces of disaffection: POWERLESSNESS, MEANINGLESS, ISOLATION AND SELF ESTRANGEMENT. & # 8220 ; There are at least four manners of industrial impotence which have preoccupied authors on the & # 8217 ; societal inquiry & # 8217 ; . & # 8221 ; These are:1. The separation from ownership of the agencies of production and the finished products.2. The inability to act upon general managerial policies.3. The deficiency of control over the conditions of employment and4. The deficiency of control over the immediate work process. & # 8221 ; ( Blauner 1964 ) This links in some ways with Marx & # 8217 ; s statement refering the Intrinsic and Extrinsic significance of work, which in a batch of ways I agree with. He sees powerlessness as a province where the employee is controlled and manipulated either by others or by engineering, and they can non alter this state of affairs. Meaningless work is another subscriber to disaffection because people lose motive really easy if they lack an apprehension of the whole work procedure or how their work contributes to this. i.e. if people don & # 8217 ; t understand the grounds for making something, they are less acute to make it. Isolation is reasonably self-explanatory. The employee feels no sense of belonging and can & # 8217 ; t or won & # 8217 ; t place with the company or its ends. This I perceive as being the strongest alienator of all the provinces. If a individual feels isolated, the feeling of being entirely and non belonging is really soul destroying. Last if the employee additions no sense of individuality or personal fulfillment from the work, and this means the work is non considered a worthwhile activity, the employee is known to be & # 8217 ; self-estranged & # 8217 ; . This in many ways is similar to the meaningless province. ( Blauner 1964 ) Blauner has criticised Marx & # 8217 ; s work and has been accused of trivializing & # 8216 ; by gestating it in subjective footings & # 8217 ; ( Watson 1987 ) . Personally I believe Blauner & # 8217 ; s work and the thoughts put frontward are much more realistic and seem more practically apparent in the workplace. Blauner attempts to demo that different employees have different disaffection programmes. He goes on to measure whether certain types of production engineering produced greater disaffection than others. Based on Blauner & # 8217 ; s rules, I would presume this is true. An employee will experience more powerless if they are controlled by a greater grade of engineering and will hence be more anomic. However, Blauner states this is non the instance. He believes greater mechanization will liberate workers from humdrum assembly lines ensuing in decreased disaffection. SUVIVAL TECHNIQUES Blauner has successfully broken down disaffection into its constituents which are variable and therefore comparable. The employee behavior form is really complex and can be interpreted in several ways and this is due to alienation being a comparative construct, instead than being absolute. Chemical reactions by employees can change and we can see these taking several different signifiers which are constantly their efforts to & # 8217 ; survive work & # 8217 ; . ( Noon and Blyton 1997 ) . Making OUT Making out is the first of the five signifiers. We can see from Michael Burawoy & # 8217 ; s primary research of employees working in an engine works, that employees have a system of informal behavior. They play games, and they find loopholes and contrivances in order to re-assert some control over their twenty-four hours but whilst still run intoing marks. The games enable employees to derive higher net incomes by pull stringsing the inducement systems. However, this is non why they do this. There are deeper inducements including go throughing the clip, ennui alleviation, alleviation of weariness and besides societal grounds. Workers manipulate regulations to accommodate them, but they do non interrupt them. Burawoy believes by making this they are conforming to direction regulations. Another industrial sociologist by the name of Katz, appears to hold. & # 8216 ; Katz sees the being of informal constructions as a means whereby formal authorization wins & # 8217 ; . ( Salaman 1986 ) . It is about a loath credence, or the workers manner of stating & # 8216 ; we & # 8217 ; ll do it but we are non happy about it. & # 8217 ; Hyman 1987 high spots tensenesss between Control and Consent. Should direction control and direct employees to guarantee the production and public presentation marks are met or do they seek to enlist the accomplishment and co-operation of employees in run intoing those marks, i.e. enforcing systems of close supervising to guarantee direction aims are complied with, as opposed to supplying infinite and freedom for the employees. ( Noon and Blyton 1997 ) . Katz argues that within work administrations & # 8220 ; There is ever some grade of liberty & # 8211 ; some countries where control is non applied. There is therefore range for the development of assorted informal forms: some forms lessen the ennui of workers and in other ways helps to acquire work done ( sic ) , others are contrary to the ends of the administration & # 8221 ; ( Salaman 1986 ) . If direction take a direct control stance, they will hold greater conformity from their employees but at the cost of some loss of committedness. If on the other manus they give the employees a grade of responsible liberty, you have the contrary. A solution to this is to use direct control to the unskilled, easy replaceable employee and give a little more autonomy to the skilled worker. If the employees feel they are disposable there will be small committedness to the administration. Directors feel they have to conceal their dependence on the work force because the more skilled employees may believe they are indispensable. Responsible liberty is seen by some as a gambit by directors to cover up this dependence. Buroway explains there are advantages in the devising of games for the employees and direction. He states the twenty-four hours to twenty-four hours versions of workers create their ain ideological effects that become focal elements in the operation of & # 8216 ; capitalist control & # 8217 ; . ( Buroway 1985 ) . In other words, the workers enjoy the games and direction are happy seeing the attendant co-operation. Collusion and Collectivity are both factors that assist co-operation and do the workplace run swimmingly. Too much collusion nevertheless can be antagonistic productive and direction can happen they have jobs as employees gang up, lodge together and bully the administration. Of class the work force could be split up utilizing public presentation inducements for single employees but this would ensue in puting employees against each other and co- operation would plump. Like everything else, it is about balance and this must be achieved for profitable production. It appears that Burawoy has a really optimistic position of doing out. Although he is foregrounding some advantages gained from it, it is after all rebellion. It would be really interesting to see if similar findings were gained from a workplace preponderantly of adult females ( e.g. fabrics works ) . FIDDLING When looking at workplace violins, we refer to Mars as this research has been taken the furthest. There are many ways to shirk in the workplace including revenue enhancement equivocation, larceny from the workplace, telephone calls from the office, knocking up disbursal claims, or utilizing stuffs and equipment from the workplace for personal fixs or fiscal addition. Mars believe people fiddle for many more grounds than fiscal addition which is proved by the fact that in many instances, the little fiscal addition seems non to warrant the hazard of a big punishment. So we look farther afield for an reply. After set uping the grounds are non extrinsic, they must be intrinsic. These grounds appear to me to be the feelings of sadness or ennui in the workplace. Other thoughts are peer force per unit area from workmates or retaliation against the administration, showing an unhappiness or non-acceptance of the regulations. Four classs have been identified & # 8211 ; Hawkes work entirely, there is no-one looking over their shoulder. Often these people will work for themselves and hence, shirking is easy. Donkeies have to be a small more sly as they have regulations and ordinances imposed upon them and are supervised. They would hold to watch their dorsums. Wolfs, as the name suggests, work in battalions and they use this to hedge the supervising and to acquire around the regulations. The group itself imposes certain statute law on what can and can non be done. The last class are Vultures who work on their ain, can be nomadic, but have some sort of group support giving them information but anticipating the group etiquette to be followed. ( Noon and Blyton 1997 ) The Wolves and Vultures could be seen as a sort of Mafia within an administration. Many directors know that shirking goes on but turn a unsighted oculus every bit long as the employees don & # 8217 ; t acquire excessively avaricious. It is tolerated for many different grounds within different types of administrations. Fiddling may be difficult to turn out for directors particularly with a conspiring work force and trade brotherhoods ready to endorse them up. One ground or account for it being allowed is that it may be the duty of senor staff to forbid this activity and hence if it were discovered, their ain occupations would be on the line. However, it may be the & # 8216 ; mole on the lawn & # 8217 ; scenario, where if one facet is stamped out, another appears in a different country.

A trouble directors have to cover with is if they tolerate it at first, th

en try to stamp it out later it would cause co-operation problems within the workforce and so it is probably a fairly cheap way of keeping the staff happy. As I said earlier, the financial gain in doing this is usually minimal so it may not be viable in many organisations to police this fiddling. However, a common strategy that seems to work is catching someone every once in a while and making an example of them. This could be argued on the other hand to increase the excitement of the fiddling and in Mars view, would make it more appealing to the worker. I am not convinced that the majority of fiddling is to suppress boredom or ’survive work’, although a substantial percentage of fiddlers will be motivated for reasons of peer and group acceptance, especially fairly new employees. Without suggesting people deliberately conspire to fiddle for financial reasons, I think an opportunist streak dominates people and with the opportunity to acquire some extra income paired with an environment where it is accepted, the temptation is too much for many to resist. JOKING Joking is basically an antagonism between two people where petty jokes are made at a person’s expense. Experience has shown that this would be initiated by one person and aimed at another with this ‘love-hate’ relationship or as Radcliffe-Brown 1952 (Noon and Blyton 1997) puts it – “permitted disrespect.” Each person permits the other to make jokes at their expense and is allowed to respond in a similar manner. The primary role is prevention and reduction of antagonism and the ‘joking relationship’ helps to reduce the intrinsic antagonisms caused by work roles. Difference of interest and status are negotiated through playful insults and teasing (Noon and Blyton 1997). In work situations of status difference, the sub-ordinate worker may use playful humour to ’score points’ off their superior worker in order to secretly regain some pride. This is even more effective in front of other employees because it is a two-way game of which it is underwritten and expected, that the second party will not respond seriously. A reaction in this way would more probably than not end the joking relationship. This behaviour is used to safely vent anger or frustration caused by any one or number of people in the workplace. The humour is capable of covering up mistakes in the workplace and prevents humilation. “Joking at work is a way of challenging authority structures. In other words, jokes are an expression of the informal triumphing over the formal” according to Douglas 1975 (Noon and Blyton 1997). There is a difference between this joking between pairs and that of bullying or sabotage. The jokes can soon turn into snide comments which fall outside the boundaries of humour, aimed at ‘egging you on’ or implying that you are doing something wrong. I believe humour in the workplace is ultimately a way of suppressing boredom and is what all five elements of Blauner’s model is about – suppressing boredom. Talking, fun and fooling around in some situations can be the only way of “Psychological Survival” (Salaman 1973) and could be considered a form of escapism but we shall look at this later. Humour and joking can be used to suppress alienation by increasing collusion with workmates. If you are laughing, you are having fun and the day is an enjoyable one. There is a different side to humour – entertainment. We have looked at making fun of each other initially, but another aspect is embarrassing people. This is entertaining to watch as the reactions are so varied. This is perhaps the motives of the classic “Jeering Builder”, trying to get a reaction from a passing female. This again is taking advantage of the “joking relationship”. SABOTAGE There are two categories. Firstly, temporary frustration and secondly, an attempt to gain control. Temporary frustration is when we do something in anger. This momentary lapse could be described as a mild form of rebellion to make a point. The management in an organisation would not be too concerned with this behaviour as long as it did not become a regular occurrence. What they will not stand for and are highly averse to is an attempt to gain control, which is recognised as a direct challenge to authority. Many writers talk about people acting stupidly or lazily and refer to them as saboteurs. In my opinion, for a person or group of people to be saboteurs, they must have malicious intent and must have conspired to perform the act. However, if we look at the wider meaning of the word, you might say somebody was a saboteur if they were cutting corners at work and making things easier for themselves. An example of this would be in a warehouse where mixed products are being sorted. Rather than trying to locate where a product belongs, they instead render it a damaged product and throw it away. It is easier to find the waste bin than the location for the product to be stored. Sabotage is also used to amuse and entertain bored workers or workers who are fatigued. In factories, engineers would purposely snap blades and drill bits off machines they worked on because it was less dull to change the parts of the machine, than continue cutting or drilling. (Buchanan and Huczynski 1997) We can see that sabotage, although extremely destructive, can be used very effectively by employees in a number of ways and for different reasons. The risks attached to it are high as it is seen as a shameful act of vandalism and would not generally be tolerated by an organisation. ESCAPING There are two types of escaping as we know it, physical and mental. Physical escape is fairly noticeable as the person is not where they should be. People may leave jobs due to unhappiness related to many things (pay, promotion, opportunities, co-workers etc.) People will also take voluntary absences for relief of pressures and frustrations at work. Escaping however is not necessarily escaping from the organisation. It is sometimes purely from the workplace. Workers may walk up a length of a warehouse and back to get a pallet truck when they were fully aware that there was one available nearer. Employees will create meaningless jobs that they make out ’should be done’ in order to escape their mundane tasks. Mental withdrawal on the other hand is generally harder to notice and the only way of studying it would be to survey employees and ask how often they escape from work in a ‘mental’ respect. Mental withdrawal generally is a state of daydreaming due to the monotony of some job. People may be more than able to carry out their tasks whilst their minds are in a totally different plane. Physical and mental escaping can co-exist when people daydream about escaping from their workplace to better places. They dream of better jobs, working conditions, pay and many other things and then implement them. Mental escaping can also be in the form of willed tenacity, sticking to what they are doing to ensure a better future for themselves or often their children. Many people seem to have a strong pride in sticking to their jobs purely for the benefit of their offspring. This form of escapism is the only survival method we have looked at that is fairly passive. The management of organisations are not alerted to it for this reason and is as I discussed earlier, almost undetectable. CONCLUSION There is no doubt that alienation exists in the workplace and the degree experienced depends on several factors. There are a variety of aspects that cause the feeling of alienation. In lay-persons terms I believe a worker must have an understanding of what and why he is doing what he is doing. They must feel important to the work process and their opinions must be valued. Most importantly of all, that person must feel at home, welcome and accepted in the workplace. I believe if these factors existed, alienation in the workplace would disappear. I find it hard to believe, contrary to Blauner’s opinion, that the introduction of certain types of production technology decreased alienation. The introduction of technology would surely lead to increased feelings of powerlessness and meaningless. On the assumption of this technology replacing men, feelings of isolation may be an issue also. However my argument is not water-tight. In Blauner’s defence, the words chosen were “Certain types of Production Technology” (Blauner 1964) We have looked at five methods of ’surviving work’, each of which produce different results for the worker and reactions from the management. Making out is, within certain boundaries, harmonious and beneficial for both parties – employees and employers. It helps workers to fight fatigue and boredom, whilst they are reservedly consenting to the rules of the management. It is difficult to say for sure why people fiddle, although there is no doubt it goes on. Mars writes that people fiddle for reasons of excitement, hitting back at the management, and other intrinsic reasons but he believes any extrinsic reasons (e.g. financial gain) to be in a minority. I believe financial gain plays more of a part in workers’ motives than Mars suggests. Humour is an integral part of feeling good. Incorporating jokes and promoting good relations will suppress each division of Blauner’s alienation model, especially any isolation, resulting in a feeling of acceptance and harmony. One must appreciate however the ‘joking relationship’ can be misused to manipulate people. Although temporary frustration will always be an element of the workplace as everyone has to let off steam, it is the other element of sabotage which involves an ‘attempt to gain control’ which is the most relevant in this case. There are three reasons for this type of sabotage – revenge/antagonism, amusement and laziness. This is the most destructive of all the survival techniques and for this reason is the least tolerated. In contrast, the survival technique that management can do nothing about, is mental escapism, where a worker simply day dreams whilst carrying out the task instructed. This is the most common state undertaken by workers. The processes we have looked at, in their own ways all reduce what is referred to as alienation. Whether employees consent to the rules of management or resist, people need to deal with certain situations in certain ways. For every action there is a re- action and if that reaction was not effective in its purpose, its use would cease to continue. These reactions seem to be the most prominent methods of suppressing alienation, although there may be more. It is not possible to label any of the five behavioural patterns as consenting or resisting the organisations rules. The only determinate of this is the severity of the behaviour and the interpretation of such behaviour by management. BIBLIOGRAPHY R. Blauner (1964) “Alienation and Freedom: the factory worker and his industry”. Chicago. University of Chicago Press. T.J. Watson: Sociology Work and Industry, Routledge 1987 Salaman G (1986) “Working” Tavistock, London. Salaman G (1973) “People and Organisations” Longman. Open University Press. Mike Noon, Paul Blyton (1997) “The Realities of Work” Macmillian Press Ltd. D.Buchanan, A.Huczynski (1997)”Organisational Behavior; an introductory text” Prentece Hall Europe, Hartfordshire