Search results

The introduction to Volume 17 of Research in the Sociology of Work: Workplace Temporalities, reviews prior literature and issues in the studies of time at work. It provides a brief summary of the chapters in this volume and addresses some of the major themes, particularly those with which sociologists might be unfamiliar, since this volume is, quite deliberately, interdisciplinary. The chapters in this volume demonstrate the complexities of workplace temporalities in the new economy and suggest that incorporating inquiry about time will inform understanding not only of the contemporary workplace, but also of social life more broadly.

This chapter draws on recent literature in I/O psychology, management and sociology to posit a relationship between organizational structure and temporal structure and develops the construct of layered-task time. Layered-task time is similar to polychronic time (P-time) in the inclusion of simultaneous, multiple tasks but includes additional dimensions of fragmentation, contamination and constraint. The chapter links the development of this new time and its resultant time-sense to variation in the degree to which organizations are hierarchical and centralized and develops propositions about these relationships. The chapter contributes to the growing literature on workplace temporalities in the contemporary economy.

This research aims to investigate the differences in evaluations of job performance between male and female managers by those managers’ immediate bosses and peers.

Drawing on gender structure theory, along with ideas about status characteristics, the authors use hierarchical regression to test the hypotheses that male and female bosses and peers deferentially evaluate the male and female manager’s global job performance. The authors hypothesize significant two-way interactions (gender of the manager by gender of evaluator) in predicting a manager’s job performance.

The results suggest that while male peers rate female managers’ job performance significantly lower than that of male managers, female peers do not discriminate between genders in their performance evaluations. Also, managers’ bosses were found not to discriminate between genders of their subordinates.

The limitations of this study have to do primarily with the data. While the data are rich on some dimensions, they are weak on others, especially with regard to the detail about the jobs the respondents did, detailed level of familiarity with the evaluated managers, as well as racial background. The data also do not provide information on the different facets of job performance, the evaluation of which could potentially be impacted by managerial gender; this study is focused exclusively on global job performance.

The authors discuss various theoretical explanations of this pattern of results, as well as its possible influence on female managers’ careers. Although the effect size of the negative bias that male peers exhibit toward female managers is relatively small, it may be argued that lower performance assessments can accumulate over years in multiple job evaluations, negatively affecting the career of female leaders.

The evaluations supplied by different organizational members gain importance with the increased use of 360-degree feedback instruments not just for developmental but also for the job performance appraisal purposes. While the job evaluations of managers’ bosses have been investigated in the past with regard to the possible gender bias, this study provides the first known to the authors’, evidence. Also, this study points to a direct bias in performance assessments, rather than a potentially more subtle, non-performance-based bias that affects the disparities in wages and promotions of female managers. Thus, this study helps to fill a significant gap in the literature on organizations and it may have practical implications for the advancement of female managers. In addition to this contribution, this study also provides data that may be useful in resolving the ongoing debate whether female bosses act more as cogs in the machine or as change agents in organizations.

To explain job hours in four health-care occupations – physicians, nurses, emergency medical technicians (EMTs), and nursing assistants, this paper focuses on three sets of factors: class and gender, job conditions and commitment, and family situation. We find that class counts, whether understood in terms of occupation or earnings. Gender shapes hours, but more as a characteristic of occupations than of individuals. Job conditions that explain hours vary, depending on occupational grouping. Families also matter – children, but not spouses, shape the work hours of nurses; spouses, but not children, shape work hours for the other three occupations.

Little is known about temporal trends in the intensification of work in America, or its determinants. This study analyzed two representative samples of the American labor force, and found that the pace of work increased significantly between 1977 and 1997. In a decomposition analysis, two-thirds of the increase in work intensification was attributable to objective economic changes, in particular job complexity and the length of work schedules. Future research should further explore the role of technology in quickening the pace of work, but not ignore the possibility that the demands of family life also affect perceptions of work intensification.

In recent years the Minneapolis (Minnesota) Public Schools have displaced over 1,800 teachers and professional staff. While there is an extensive job loss literature, there is no information available on the adjustments encountered by displaced teachers. Survey data were obtained from a random sample of teachers and licensed staff who were downsized from 2000–2001 through 2003–2004. The majority of downsized teachers reported difficulty in finding another teaching position, in large part because many of them were laid-off during the summer after other districts had completed their hiring. Continuing lay-offs have cut deeper into the seniority roster, exacerbating job insecurity tension for downsizing survivors.

Both declining job security and the need for dual careers constitute two complicating factors in the lives of middle-class American families. Rarely, however, are these two phenomena investigated simultaneously. Drawing on both survey and in-depth interview data of a sample of middle-class couples in upstate New York, we document the pervasiveness of couple-level job insecurity, and the extents at-risk couples anticipate job loss and employers prepare workers for job termination. We argue that the new middle-class job insecurity is effectively doubled for dual-earner couples, reshaping the temporalities of career development across the life course.

Time pressures in paid work and household labor have intensified in recent decades because of the increase in dual-earner families and long and nonstandard employment hours. This analysis uses U.S. time-diary data from 1998 to 2000 to investigate the association of employment and household multitasking. Results indicate that mothers do more multitasking than fathers and the gender gap in household labor is largest for the most intense type of multitasking: combining housework and child care. In addition, mothers employed for long hours spend more time multitasking than mothers employed 35–40h per week. It appears that motivations for multitasking are heterogeneous: some multitasking is done out of convenience, whereas other multitaskings are a strategy used to manage too much work in too little time.

This chapter draws from psychological and organizational research to develop a conceptual model of individual temporality in the workplace. We begin by outlining several general cognitive and motivational aspects of human temporal processing, emphasizing its reliance on (a) contextual cues for temporal perception and (b) cognitive reference points for temporal evaluation. We then discuss how an individual's personal life context combines with the organizational context to shape how individuals situate their time at work through: (1) the adoption of socially constructed temporal schemas of the future; (2) the creation of personal work plans and schedules that segment and allocate one's own time looking forward; and (3) the selection of temporal referents associated with realizing specific, valued outcomes and events. Together, these elements shape how individuals perceive and evaluate their time at work and link personal time use to the broader goals of the organization.