Consider these two statements, each by a famous
American president:
1.“Far and away the best prize that life offers
is the chance to work hard at work worth
doing.”2.“It’s true that hard work never killed any-
body, but I figured, why take the chance?”The first quote is by Theodore Roosevelt in
his annual Labor Day speech in 1903; the second
by Ronald Reagan at a speech in Washington
in 1987 (both in Columbia Dictionary of
Quotations, p. 1003).
Most of us don’t necessarily believe one and
not the other: We believe both are true—at differ-
ent times in our lives and under different circum-
stances. To the sociologist, what is most interesting is the circumstances under which
you live to work and the circumstances under which you simply work to live.
How We Work
In the early days of mass production, the assembly line basically imagined workers
as machines. People were simply trained to do a task with scientific precision and then
asked to do it repeatedly. No one really cared whether the workers felt challenged,
bored, intimidated, or humiliated. As industrialization progressed, social scientists,
management scientists, and even kinesiologists began to research how we respond to
the workplace, to co-workers, to bosses, and to labor itself. Happier workers, who
felt less bored and more valued, it turned out, were more productive—and that spelled
higher profits.
The Hawthorne Effect.The earliest experimental study of work productivity was
conducted between 1927 and 1932 at the Western Electric Hawthorne factory in
Chicago. Researcher Elton Mayo chose six female assembly-line workers and
assigned an observer to watch them, ask for their input, and listen to their
complaints. Then he made a variety of environmental changes, including breaks of
various lengths, different quitting times, different quotas, a day off, and a free
lunch. To his surprise, almost every change increased productivity. And when he
changed things back to the default, productivity increased again (Mayo, 1933)!
Mayo concluded that the changes themselves weren’t responsible for the increase
in productivity. It was that the workers had some input. The workers chosen for the
experiment had no boss telling them the “proper” procedure. They were allowed to
work in their own way; in fact, the observer displayed a keen interest in their indi-
vidual work styles. They were treated as intelligent, creative individuals rather than
as mindless machines.
The “Hawthorne Effect” or the “Somebody Upstairs Cares Syndrome” soon
became a standard in management textbooks: People work better and faster when
they feel valued.
Theory X and Theory Y.In 1960 Douglas McGregor published The Human Side of
Enterprise, about two theories of work. Theory X assumes that people naturally
WORK, IDENTITY, AND INEQUALITY 435TABLE 13.1
TIME TYPE OF WORKER ANNUAL HOURS13th century Adult male peasant, U.K. 1,620 hours
14th century Casual laborer, U.K. 1,440 hours
Middle ages English worker 2,309 hours
1400–1600 Farmer-miner, adult male, U.K. 1,980 hours
1840 Average worker, U.K. 3,105–3,588 hours
1850 Average worker, U.S. 3,150–3,650 hours
1987 Average worker, U.S. 1,949 hours
1988 Manufacturing workers, U.K. 1,855 hours
2000 Average worker, Germany 1,362 hoursSource:Compiled by Juliet B. Schor (1991) from various sources; Germany figure from
OECD data.Annual Hours over Eight Centuries