Industrial sociology
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Industrial sociology (also known as "sociology of industrial relations" or sociology of work) is both a study of the interaction of people within industry (e.g. boss-subordinate, inter-departmental, and management-union relations) and, on a macrosociological scale, the study of the impact of industrialization on whole societies.
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[edit] Scientific Management
[edit] Labor Process Theory
One important branch of industrial sociology is Labor Process Theory (LPT). In 1974, Harry Braverman wrote Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century, which provided a critical analysis of scientific management. This book analyzed capitalist productive relations from a Marxist perspective. After Marx, Braverman argued that work within capitalist organisations was expoitative and alienating, and therefore workers had to be coerced into servitude. For Braverman the pursuit of capitalist interests throughout time ultimately leads to deskilling and routinisation of the worker, and it is the taylorist (see Frederick Taylor, Scientific Managementwork) design that is the ultimate embodiment of this tendency.
Braverman demonstrated several mechanisms of control in both the factory blue collar and clerical white collar labor force.
Braverman's key contribution was in his "deskilling" thesis. Braverman argued that capitalist owners and managers were incessantly driven to deskill the labor force to lower production costs and ensure higher productivity. Deskilled labour is cheap and above all easy to control due to the workers lack of direct engagement in the production process. In turn work becomes intellectually or emotionally unfulfilling; the lack of capitalist reliance on human skill reduces the need of employers to to reward workers in anything but a minimal economic way.
Braverman's contribution to the sociology of work and industry (i.e., industrial sociology) has been important and his theories of the labor process continue to inform teaching and research. Braverman's thesis has however been contested, notably by A. Freidman in his work "Industry and Labour" (1977). In it, Freidman suggests that whilst the direct control of labour is beneficial for the capitalist under certain circumstances, a degree of 'responsible autonomy' can be granted to unionised or 'core' workers, in order to harness their skill under controlled conditions. Also, Richard Edwards showed in 1979 that although hierachy in organisations has remained constant, additional forms of control (such as technical control via email monitoring, call monotoring; bureaucratic control via prodedures for leave, sickness etc) has been added to gain the interests of the capitalist class versus the workers.
