Work and Occupations

The increased prevalence of team-oriented forms of production necessitates that we pay greater attention to the role of coworker relations in determining the nature and quality of work life. This article uses systematic analysis of the existing population of organizational ethnographies in conjunction with a more traditional telephone survey to generate new findings about coworkers and to verify these findings across research methods. The author finds that coworker conflict is negatively associated with both job satisfaction and good relations with management. Conversely, coworker solidarity generates high levels of job satisfaction. Somewhat surprisingly, coworker solidarity also is associated with better relations with management. The latter finding suggests that a significant component of positive vertical relations in the workplace rests on mutual support and solidarity among workers. These findings have implications for the development of team-oriented forms of production and suggest the need for renewed research on coworker relations as a foundation for understanding the contemporary workplace.

Data from a survey of more than 800 nurses who care for AIDS patients revealed that the organizational form of the unit and hospital in which care was provided significantly affected the likelihood of nurses reporting that they were emotionally exhausted. Nurses who worked in dedicated or specialized AIDS units, or in “magnet” hospitals known to possess organizational characteristics attractive to nurses, exhibited lower levels of emotional exhaustion than did nurses who cared for AIDS patients in general, scattered-bed medical units. These differences persisted after nurse characteristics were statistically controlled, but they were accounted for in part by controlling for the amount of organizational support that nurses perceived was present in their workplaces.

A central assumption of much of the previous research on race differences is that the process by which Blacks and Whites advance in the workplace is race blind so that if Blacks and Whites had the same amount of education and job experience and were located across the same bureaucratized structures, the gap in Black-White attainment in the workplace would disappear. The authors argue that to understand the systematic differences in Black-White outcomes in the workplace, we need to reexamine this assumption. The authors develop a theoretical argument for the existence of race-specific models of attainment that builds on Kanter's concept of “homosocial reproduction.” They then test this argument by estimating whether the determinants of promotion differ by race, using a nationally representative sample of U.S. workers and their employing organizations. Their findings indicate that the determinants of promotion systematically differ for Blacks and Whites.

Although economic theory and employers blame youths' labor market problems on skill and work habit deficiencies, hiring employers do not use information related to these attributes. To explore this discrepancy, the authors interviewed a sample of 51 employers about the information they use in hiring entry-level workers. They found that employers have much available information but mistrust information from most sources. This mistrust explains their strong emphasis on impressions in interviews, a method that has been shown to give invalid (and biased) results, which often results in their selecting unproductive workers. The authors also found that some employers overcome the problem of mistrusted information in two ways: using information from their own workers and from long-term social networks. Although economic theory assumes that labor markets respond to all sources of information, these results suggest that employers use only information received in a social context that ensures its trustworthiness.