Читать книгу Essentials of Sociology - George Ritzer - Страница 152

At one time, socialization into a workplace was a fairly simple and straightforward process. Many workers were hired for jobs in large corporations (e.g., General Motors, U.S. Steel) and remained there until they reached retirement age. Especially for those who held jobs in the lower reaches of the corporate hierarchy, socialization occurred for the most part in the early stages of a career. Today, however, relatively few workers can look forward to a career in a single position within a single company. Increasing numbers of workers are changing employers, jobs, and even careers with some frequency (Bernhardt et al. 2001; Legerski 2012). Each time workers change jobs, they need resocialization to unlearn old behaviors, norms, and values and to learn new ones. They can no longer rely (assuming it was ever possible) on what they learned as children, in school, or in their early years on the job.

Ask Yourself

In one or more of your jobs, have you ever been involved in an orientation or training period or program? What occurred during this time that you could now classify as part of a workplace socialization process? How successful was it, and, thinking back, do you believe it could have been done better?

Consider the findings of one study of U.S. workers’ experiences in the job market. The researchers found that the generation of workers who entered the labor market in the late 1980s were 43 percent more likely to change jobs during their lifetimes than the generation that began in the early 1960s (Bernhardt et al. 2001). Today, workers will hold an average of 12 jobs during their lifetime and average just 4.2 years per job (Doyle 2018). Millennials, in particular, tend to “job hop,” or work less than two years in a job position (Chatzky 2018). Clearly, workers are changing jobs more frequently and filling more different jobs over a lifetime.

Allison Pugh (2015) argues that this change in work has helped create a culture of insecurity—a “tumbleweed society”—that affects not just the economy and our jobs but also our personal relationships and self-identity. She discovered through her interviews with 80 mothers and fathers that this culture of insecurity profoundly shapes their expectations of commitment, loyalty, and obligation. Flexibility in the workplace has weakened employer commitment but not the work ethic of the labor force. Some workers value flexibility because it gives them more freedom and mobility. This is especially true for well-educated professionals, who are better positioned financially to relocate for a new job. But others, particularly unskilled males, feel angry that their hard work does not guarantee stable employment. Interestingly, this anger is directed not against their bosses but at themselves for being too dependent on their jobs. Pugh describes this as a “one-way honor system” that holds individual workers, not their employers, responsible for their job successes and failures.