The Changing Nature of Work Implications for Occupational Analysis (1999) / Chapter Skim
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4 Changes in the Structure and Content of Work
4 Changes in the Structure and Content of Work
Pages 105-163
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From page 105... ...
However, they tell us little about what is happening to the nature of work within these categories or whether the categories are themselves useful for distinguishing among the activities and experiences of workers in different occupations. In the sections that follow we examine closely the changes occurring within occupations by using the following broad categories: blue-collar, service, technical/professional, and managerial workers.
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From page 106... ...
complexity, or the degree of cognitive activity and analysis needed to do a job. We will refer to this dimension as cognitive complexity.
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From page 107... ...
Task scope has been the subject of considerable debate over the years and focuses on the horizontal division of labor. Ever since scientific management and early industrial engineers formulated narrow specialization as a principle of job design, scholars and practitioners have debated the trade-offs of specialization versus job enlargement, job rotation, team-based work systems, and other means of expanding the scope of a job.
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From page 108... ...
. Although the Bureau of Labor Statistics does not use "blue-collar work" as a specific occupational category, their categories that come the closest to encompassing the popular notion of blue-collar work are "skilled and semiskilled production" and "craft workers," "operatives," and "laborers." Using these categories, blue-collar workers represented approximately 25 percent of the labor force in 1996, down from 40 percent in 1950.
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From page 109... ...
Moreover, for some production workers, narrow job definitions are giving way to broader involvement in work teams and interactions with external customers, clients, and patients. Part of our understanding of the changing nature of bluecollar work builds on research concerning the adoption of "highinvolvement" or "high-performance" work systems.
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From page 110... ...
As such, it changes both the vertical and horizontal divisions of labor. Teambased work structures also increase cognitive complexity and the interaction requirements of blue-collar work.
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From page 111... ...
of team effectiveness (see Figure 4.1) that focuses on the influences of organizational, work, and task characteristics on requirements for both individual task competencies and team competencies.
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From page 112... ...
Work in these categories requires the development of interactive as well as cognitive skills. Both qualitative case studies and quantitative studies of the changing nature of blue-collar work have documented the importance of communications, problem solving, and coordination within and across teams (Adler, 1993; MacDuffie, 1996; Rubinstein, forthcoming; Appelbaum and Berg, 1997~.
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From page 113... ...
They found that, compared with workers in traditional job structures, those working in teams reported higher levels of participation in problem solving, communications with supervisors and managers both in their units and in other parts of the organization, and greater responsibility for a wide range of duties traditionally reserved for supervisors and managers. One effect of these changes is to blur the traditional lines of demarcation between blue-collar and managerial work in settings that rely heavily on teams, as well as the distinction between blue-collar workers and the technicians and other professionals who design and support the technical and organizational systems associated with their work.
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From page 114... ...
114 THE CHANGING NATURE OF WORK nondeterministic ways (Hirshhorn, 1984; laikumar, 1986; Kelley, 1986; Keefe, 1991; Adler, 1992~. Moreover, these studies suggest that past debates over the effects of technology have been framed too narrowly.
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From page 115... ...
CHANGES IN THE STRUCTURE AND CONTENT OF WORK 115 multidimensional ways in which technology affects the content of work. For example, Zuboff (1989)
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From page 116... ...
Over the first half of the 1980s, GM invested over $50 billion in pursuit of this objective, only to find at the end of the investment cycle that it still had the highest-cost manufacturing operations in the industry. The company concluded that it had failed to adequately integrate human resource and work organization considerations with the new technology and subsequently began to revamp its approach to introducing technology.
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From page 117... ...
Effects of Industrial/Organizational Restructuring To illustrate the changing nature of blue-collar work and its consequences, three industry examples are summarized below. Each case illustrates the interdependent nature of the content and contexts of work that is, the changes occurring in blue-collar work are part of a larger organizational restructuring that encompasses other features of the internal labor market.
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From page 118... ...
demonstrated that the greatest payoffs to productivity and quality came from a systemic transformation of work structures from traditional narrow jobs to team-based work systems accompanied by changes in complementary human resource and labor-management relations. A traditional auto assembly plant might have over 100 different job titles, whereas at the Saturn Corporation, where work is organized around a team system, there is one title for production workers and six titles for skilled trades.
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From page 119... ...
Blue-collar work may thus be increasing in diversity at the same time that it is leading to a blurring of the boundaries across blue-collar, managerial, and technical work. There has been considerable research on blue-collar work and
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From page 120... ...
The increase in the range of tasks performed by blue-collar workers does not mean, however, that they demand greater skill or increased cognitive complexity. Craft work has always had high levels of cognitive complexity, but some other blue-collar jobs are increasing in their analytic content.
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From page 121... ...
For example, many clerical occupations circa 1975 were still located in small, local establishments. Business office or customer service staff had moderate levels of autonomy, task scope, and cognitive complexity, more relational interactions with customers, but very low levels of technology use.
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From page 122... ...
encompassed considerably higher levels of autonomy, variety, complexity, and relational interactive content. In summary, although many of the jobs in service occupations required low formal education and received low pay, the range of variation in work along other dimensions was considerable, varying by occupational specialty and organizational context.
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From page 123... ...
. Such jobs are generally characterized by significant autonomy and variety, moderate cognitive complexity, and minimal use of technology.
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From page 124... ...
Rationalized service work typically reduces autonomy, task scope, and cognitive complexity and can be associated with significant use of technology. It is important to note that although many of the jobs in service occupations have required low formal education and received low pay, and generalizations can be made with respect to the characteristics of relational and rationalized service work, the variation in work processes is considerable.
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From page 125... ...
What were once local customer service and/or sales operations providing personal service to repeat customers have become large "call centers" providing remote service through toll-free numbers. Examples include call centers in telemarketing operations, banking (Hunter, 1998a)
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From page 126... ...
it increases the standardization of work (reducing autonomy, task scope)
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From page 127... ...
signaled the potential for information technologies to increase the skill and complexity of clerical work; over the last decade, there is more evidence of that trend occurring. An additional source of cognitive complexity is the growth of business strategies that compete on product variety, customization, and innovation rather than low-cost, standardized goods.
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From page 128... ...
In any case, the content of service work involves considerably more discretion, variety, and cognitive complexity and use of technology than that found in a strict production line approach. Case studies of the adoption of this approach are found in a wide range of personal service, clerical, and sales work across various industries including nursing homes (Eaton, 1997; Hunter, 1998b)
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From page 129... ...
Finally, create the products and services that meet the requirements of your target market segments." Customer segments are then linked to groups of service providers, with variation in the content of work and human resource practices driven by customer characteristics. There is nothing new about attempts to find the right match between the social characteristics of the service workforce and the clients that they
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From page 130... ...
The result has been a distinct reconfiguration of customer service and sales jobs: these jobs are more differentiated by skill and education requirements, discretion, use of technology, compensation, and career opportunities. Service jobs at the low end are transactional and have low autonomy, variety, and complexity but high levels of computer-related skills.
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From page 131... ...
A typical residential call center houses between 500 and 1,500 customer service representatives, who handle 90-100 customers per day and have a call cycle time of about 3-5 minutes. They complete transactions with customers on-line and are discouraged from interacting with fellow employees.
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From page 132... ...
Batt (1999b) finds that customer segmentation is a primary determinant of work content in a nationally representative sample of customer service and sales establishments in telecommunications.
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From page 133... ...
There may be a better match of skills, however, in information service jobs that offer greater cognitive complexity and opportunities for the use of computer skills. To the extent that rationalization and other management strategies improve productivity and added value, these jobs may also offer higher wages.
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From page 134... ...
There is good reason to believe that this is an important part of the recent story. Effects of Organizational and Internal Labor Market Restructuring In the decades from the end of World War II to the mid-1970s, the role of management was viewed in both the academic and the business literature as a defense and justification of formal and fairly lengthy managerial bureaucracies (Chandler, 1977; Thompson, 1967; Williamson et al., 1975~.
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From page 135... ...
and in which managers have greater responsibility and discretion for managing these relations. The Changing Nature of Managerial Work Traditionally, the most distinguishing feature of managerial work has been its place in the vertical division of labor.
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From page 136... ...
However, as corporations have downsized, flattened their large bureaucracies, and moved from impersonal and authoritative controls to team-based peer controls, the role of managers has changed. New forms of work organization are based less on individuals' compliance with rules or supervisors' orders, and more on their commitment to organizational goals, fellow workers, and to satisfying their customers both inside and outside the organization.
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From page 137... ...
, this means a focus on external investors and relationships with groups such as boards of directors. For manufacturing managers, there is an increased premium on the capacity to work effectively with external suppliers as the boundary of the firm has weakened and more operations take place through outsourcing and joint ventures (Cappelli, 1999~.
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From page 138... ...
Confirmation of these general statements comes from case studies of managerial work. In her research at a Regional Bell Operating Company, Rosemary Batt conducted surveys of managers.
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From page 139... ...
139 Similar patterns emerge in other industries. For example, John Paul MacDuffie examined the changing role of managers in automobile companies with the introduction of "lean production," the system of operation that all American firms are borrowing from the Japanese.
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There appears to be some loss of directive autonomy by managerial workers, particularly loss of control over subordinates by low-level supervisors. Many of these managers are now coaches and facilitators of work teams.
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From page 141... ...
. Analysts most commonly define the professional and technical labor force using the two broad occupational categories of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, "Professional Specialty Occupations" and "Technicians and Related Support Personnel."2 The occupations that fall within these categories are listed in Box 4.3.
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From page 146... ...
Corporate Growth Organizations, like individuals, consume professional services, and corporate growth has both directly and indirectly increased the demand for professional services. As organizations have become more numerous over the 20th century, corporate demand has augmented individual demand for professional services, thereby enlarging the market for professionals.
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From page 147... ...
Commercialization of Scientific Knowledge The increasing economic importance of scientific knowledge is the second reason for the expansion of the professional and technical workforce. One researcher has estimated that, by the 1960s, scientific output was doubling every 6 to 10 years, a rate of growth "much faster than that of all nonscientific and nontechnical features of our civilization" (Price, 1986:141~.
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From page 148... ...
The dynamic is also prevalent in other industries, where it has given birth to a plethora of technical occupations ranging from the well-known paralegals, electronics technicians, chemistry technicians to the obscure test and pay technicians (see Kurtz and Walker, 1975~. Demographic Change Increasing life spans and the upward shift in the age distribulion have also contributed to the increasing prominence of professional and technical work.
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From page 149... ...
By 2006, computer-related occupations are anticipated to provide employment for 3 million people or 2 percent of the labor force (Silvestri, 1997~. The explosion of occupations directly related to the computer, however, is only the most visible sign that technology may now favor the professional and technical workforce.
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From page 150... ...
To successfully deskill or eliminate workers via automation, firms must also reallocate the more complex aspects of a target occupation's work to another occupation. Since the occupations that benefit from such reallocations tend to acquire cognitive and technical responsibilities, deskilling unintentionally expands the number of technical workers.
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From page 151... ...
Implications of the Growth of Professional and Technical Work The expansion and proliferation of recognized professional and technical occupations, combined with the possibility that other lines of work are becoming increasingly technical, carry tremendous implications for vertical (autonomy/control) and horizontal (task scope)
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From page 152... ...
, and other observers of professional work in organizational contexts have repeatedly noted, in an occupational hierarchy, superiors may be able to set goals but they are less capable of dictating practice. The third organizational form, which Stinchcombe (1959)
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From page 153... ...
The parallels between craft, professional, and technical forms of organizing highlight a crucial and often overlooked implication of the spread of professional and technical work: the increasing prominence of horizontal divisions of labor. A horizontal division of labor implies a dispersion of authority among experts from distinct occupational groups.
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From page 154... ...
Cognitive Work Professional and technical work has always required considerable cognitive and analytical skill and familiarity with esoteric bodies of knowledge. There is little reason to believe that this will become any less or any more common among most established professional and technical occupations.
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From page 155... ...
However, it would be a mistake to believe that technical work eliminates the need for contextual knowledge of materials and techniques, as some analysts have suggested. What is more likely is that work will increasingly require a more complex interweaving of analytical and contextual knowledge that the culture's current system for classifying work has difficulty accommodating.
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From page 156... ...
The dual processes of transformation and caretaking that define the core of technical work also make it culturally anomalous. To be effective troubleshooters at an empirical interface, technicians must comprehend the principles of the technologies and techniques they employ as well as be familiar with more abstract, systematic bodies of knowledge.
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From page 157... ...
Team-based professional and technical work also demands effective emotional labor. Summary Professional and technical workers have always enjoyed considerable autonomy, and we expect that this will generally remain the case.
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From page 158... ...
Cognitive complexity is a central feature of professional and technical work, but its substance is shifting quickly in many occupations. Draftsmen have moved from skilled constructors of material images to operators of software for computer-aided design.
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From page 159... ...
Second, it is much easier for researchers to gain access to blue-collar settings than it is to gain access to any other type of work, with the possible exception of clerical, technical, and professional work. Third, techniques for describing and analyzing physical work are better developed than techniques for describing and studying mental and interpersonal work.
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From page 160... ...
Developments in the content of service work are far less consistent. For instance, studies of service work sometimes indicate a reduction in autonomy and control, less cognitively complex tasks, a narrowing of task scope and more routinized and scripted interpersonal interactions.
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From page 161... ...
Professional and technical jobs continue to afford considerable autonomy and control over work processes, to have considerable scope, to offer cognitively complex challenges, and to demand high levels of interpersonal skills. The primary trends in professional and technical work are continued expansion and increasing specialization, which tends to generate even more professional and technical occupations.
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From page 162... ...
Given the variation of developments within and between broad occupational groups and the paucity of research on service and especially managerial work, it is difficult to draw many strong conclusions regarding general trends in the nature of work. Nevertheless, considering all available evidence, the committee believes two conjectures concerning the broader trajectory of work in a postindustrial economy seem particularly plausible and worthy of considerably more scrutiny.
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From page 163... ...
The tendency toward the reduction of job categories and the increasing scope of work in blue-collar work, the expansion and proliferation of professional and technical jobs, the segmentation of service work by problem area and market, and the hypothesis of increasing specialization of managerial work all point to a more horizontal system for organizing tasks, skills, knowledge, and responsibility. In horizontal divisions of labor, coordination occurs though the ongoing collaboration of experts rather than through a system of command and control.
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