Sociology of Work and Industry. Perspectives on the dynamics of the workplace and international approaches to work-related issues.

In the book Sociology, Work and Industry, the author Tony Watson argues that sociology came about in the first place to make sense of the massive upheavals caused by the industrialization of societies, and believes that its potential is no less in the face of contemporary upheavals.

Sociology of Work and Occupations includes a wide range of work areas, addressing such current topics as:

Work and Family - Labor force trends - Working in later life
Workplace Diversity - Internal labor markets - Organizational careers
Organizational Culture - Work group dynamics - Socialization processes
Relational Demography - Absenteeism and turnover Violence in the workplace
Gender and Race relations - Labor-management relations
Work attitudes and behaviors - State regulation of the workplace
Technological change and labor process - Worker Cultures
Industrial and Labor Relations (ILR) - School of Industrial and Labor Relations of the Cornell University, USA - ilr.cornell.edu/
ILIR The Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations at the University of Michigan was created in 1957 to provide a vehicle for research and a focus within the University on issues pertaining to employment... - ilir.umich.edu/noframes/overview.htm
Historical Background Institute for Labor and Employment (ILE) The IIR Today Specialized Sub-Units - iir.ucla.edu/
Australian Centre for Industrial Relations Research & Training (ACIRRT) - econ.usyd.edu.au/acirrt/

Canadian Industrial Relations Association (CIRA) - Devoted to the promotion of research, discussion and education in the field of industrial relations in Canada. - cira-acri.ca/_e/m-about.htm

Centre for Industrial Relations - University of Toronto - chass.utoronto.ca/cir/

Perspectives on the dynamics of the workplace and international approaches to work-related issues. Analysis of all forms of work and critical examination of the changing nature of work, their relation to wider social processes and structures, and to the quality of life.

Eironline - The database/website of the European Industrial Relations Observatory, a project run by the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, an agency of the European Union. The aim is to provide accurate and up-to-date information on developments in industrial relations in the countries of the European Union (plus Norway) and at European level. The target audience is trade union and employer organisations (at all levels) EU institutions and national governmental bodies, but EIRO aims, through the website, to make the information and analysis generally available, not least to the research and academic communities. EirObserver is the bi-monthly bulletin of the EIRO. It contains an edited selection of feature and news items, based on some of the reports supplied for the EIROnline database over each two-month period. From this page you can download electronic editions of each issue of EIRObserver. By registering, you can have the electronic edition sent to you automatically. Editor: Mark Carley. - eiro.eurofound.ie/

Industrial Relations and Human Resource Management Resources at Middle Tennessee State University. An IRRA resource document for faculty, students and practitioners. Editor: Richard L. Hannah. - mtsu.edu/~rlhannah/IR_HR.HTML

Industrial Relations Center - University of Minnesota, USA - irc.csom.umn.edu/

Institute of Industrial Relations (IIR) - University of California, Berkeley, USA. - violet.berkeley.edu/~iir/

Labor Relations and Research Center - University of Massachusetts Amhert, USA - umass.edu/lrrc/

Sociology of Work at Rutgers. This course presents two interrelated aspects of work: the academic field of Sociology of Work and an introduction to career planning. In Sociology of Work, we will critically examine the changing nature of work. - crab.rutgers.edu/~deppen/431F2001.htm

Soc. 2800 – Sociology of Occupations Dr. Bernard J. Gallagher

This course is about the social psychology of work. The specific topics discussed are very diverse. Studies are included on attitudes toward work as they have changed historically, as they vary between members of different occupational groups and people of diverse political orientation as well as the behavior of lottery winners. The question of how individuals are socialized both for an occupation and within it is treated by tracing the causal effects of child-rearing, religion, traumatic life experiences, sibling position, race, ethnicity, and gender.

The interpersonal aspects of on-the-job activity are viewed from the social psychological perspective of role theory. Examples include restaurant workers, call girls, chiropractors, cabdrivers, military chaplains and a few dozen other jobs. We also discuss jobs from various points on the occupational prestige continuum, from the professional, to the executive, to the blue collar work roles.

One unique aspect of this course is the issue of occupation and deviancy. Established but socially unaccepted occupations, such as prostitution are examined. Deviancy is also considered within socially accepted occupations as a reaction to the situational pressures of occupational stress. Here, quackery and drug addiction among physicians serve as examples. In addition, there is a separate analysis of the relationship between occupation, mental illness, and suicide.

It is the main purpose of this course to develop a broad understanding of the many ways in which occupation affects people’s lives. Usually, this understanding comes in fragmented ways as a person enters the occupational world and learns from personal experience. Hopefully, this lengthy, often painful process can be shortened by introducing college students to the social psychology of the occupational world before they enter it.

To make the course more realistic, prominent guest lecturers appear in class throughout the semester. Although the specific speakers vary from year to year, they include people from criminal law, medicine, dentistry, finance, criminal justice, teaching, TV broadcasting, human services, international business and public relations. Occasionally recent Villanova alumni who are now dealing with graduate school come and talk about their experiences. In addition, there are films, which run the occupational gamut from the trials of medical school and student teaching to the horrors of losing your job.

Aims of the Course
To introduce the basic problems, theories and empirical research findings on enterprises in their socio-economic environment.

Syllabus
1. Problems of industrial sociology
2. The creation of enterprises
3. Organizational structures
4. Management and work
5. Ownership and control
6. Markets, hierarchies and industrial networks
7. Social and cultural effects

SO212 Sociology of Work, Management and Employment
Dr Patrick McGovern, lse.ac.uk/

Pre-requisites and excluded combinations: Optional course for Bachelor’s degrees in Sociology, Management and Industrial Relations. Outside option for Course Units (BA and BSc).

Core syllabus: Coverage of contemporary sociological perspectives on the employment relationship, labour market divisions, economic restructuring, globalization and contemporary developments in management.

Content: The employment relationship; control and consent at work; scientific management and McDonaldization; emotion work; labour market divisions; employers and labour markets; women in the labour market; discrimination at work; developments in contemporary management such as Total Quality Management, lean production and management gurus; globalization and labour; employment practices of multinational corporations; the future of work.

Reading list: There is no recommended textbook. Books of a general nature that cover substantial parts of the syllabus are: K Grint, The Sociology of Work (2nd edn); C Lane, Industry and Society in Europe; C Tilly & C Tilly, Work under Capitalism; T Watson, Sociology, Work and Industry (3rd edn). A more comprehensive bibliography will be available to students taking this course.

Work, Employment & Society: Published in Association with BSA - sagepub.com/journal.aspx?pid=301
Editor: Paul Stewart University of The West of England, UK
Description: Analyses all forms of work and their relation to wider social processes and structures, and to quality of life. It embraces the study of the labour process; industrial relations; changes in labour markets; and the gender and domestic divisions of labour.

Industrial Relations, the Institute's academic journal, is in its thirty-fourth year of publication. With four issues a year, Industrial Relations offers a valuable international perspective on current topics in industrial relations. Each issue includes research articles, notes, and symposia on all aspects of employment relations and the labor market. - socrates.berkeley.edu/~iir/indrel/

Japan Institute of Labour - Publisher of the monthly journal Japan Labour Bulletin. All the articles are full-text and organized in special topics: labour law and social policy; labour market and employment; working conditions / HRM; industrial relations; women workers; aged workers; disabled workers; foreign workers; contingent workers; HRM; social security; working life / worker' opinion; industry / business. - jil.go.jp/english/ejournal/index.html

Work and Occupations: An International Sociological Journal - sagepub.com/journal.aspx?pid=162
Editor: Daniel B. Cornfield Vanderbilt University
Description: Get a broad perspective on the dynamics of the workplace and examine international approaches to work-related issues in this respected journal. Work and Occupations offers distinguished scholarship with an interdisciplinary perspective.
Work and Occupations brings you original contributions in a wide range of work areas, addressing such current topics as:
Absenteeism and turnover
Labor-management relations
Workplace diversity
Working in later life
State regulation of the workplace
Gender and race relations
Internal labor markets
Labor force trends
Organizational careers
Organizational culture
Relational demography
Socialization processes
Technological change and the labor process
Violence in the workplace
Work and family
Work attitudes and behaviors
Worker cultures
Work group dynamics

MARX, COMPUTERS AND THE END OF INDUSTRIAL UNIONISM - personal.umich.edu/~twod/sof/asa_abstract.html
Thomas W. O'Donnell[Department of Physics, U Michigan] & Sanjiv Gupta[Department of Sociology, U Michigan, U Mass., Amherst]
ABSTRACT
In this paper we argue that traditional industrial unionism is doomed and will not survive as a significant social force into the next century. The technological basis for its obsolescence is the incursion of information technology (IT) into every kind of work. Just as earlier forms of worker organization like the guild and craft union were destroyed by the steam engine, the industrial union is being undermined by the computer. This is not to say, however, that worker organization itself is a thing of the past. Rather, we expect it to take on new forms that are better suited to the new technology. The industrial union itself evolved as a type of worker organization that was better adapted to mass production than were the guild and craft union. But its heyday is past, and it will be overtaken in turn by other forms of organization.

The theoretical motivation for our hypothesis is Marx's claim that changes in technology, and in the economic base generally, drive major social phenomena such as changes in forms of worker organization (Marx 1970). Marx argued that capitalist manufacturing created an industrial proletariat that was compelled, by the very conditions of its work, to organize into industrial unions. We extend this argument to the present: IT is creating a new kind of working class that will be forced, by the new conditions of work, to organize itself in postindustrial forms.

The infiltration of IT into every production and distribution process has resulted in the reduction of almost all kinds of work to their information constituents, and the manipulation thereof. In her seminal study In the Age of the Smart Machine, Zuboff (1988) describes this transformation as it takes place in paper mills. She characterizes the process as the 'abstraction' of manual labor. That is, industrial operations are reduced by computers to their information components, which are then used by human operators to issue instructions to the machines that actually perform the work.

A Journal of Economy and Society. From the Institute of Industrial Relations. Abstracts only. - violet.berkeley.edu/~iir/indrel/abstracts/index.html

Bob Fortier's article about the health and social impacts of telework. ivc.ca/media/part25i.html#health

The water cooler dries up: Freelancer and veteran work-at-homer skeptical that lifestyle is healthy for him and for society at large. ework.com/content_article.cfm?article_id=78

Considerations and Impacts of Teleworking outside Canada - For Canadian Federal employees who normally work in Canada but have requested to work outside Canada.