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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. // Foundations The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism Max Weber Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus, 1904 Online version Description: In The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Weber puts forward a thesis that Puritan ethic and ideas had influenced the development of capitalism. ... This is a list of terms in sociology. ... This article or section includes a list of works cited or a list of external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks in-text citations. ... The field of labor relations looks at the relationship between management and workers, particularly groups of workers represented by a labor union. ... A trade union or labor union is a continuous association of wage-earners for the purpose of maintaining or improving the conditions of their employment. ... Macrosociology is one of the main branches of sociology (contrast with microsociology) which deals with primarily with the statistical nature of society. ... Young people interacting within an ethnically diverse society. ...

Scientific Management ==

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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 exploitative 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. Harry Braverman (1920 – 1976) was an American Communist and political writer. ... In economics, a capitalist is someone who owns capital, presumably within the economic system of capitalism. ... Marxism is the political practice and social theory based on the works of Karl Marx, a 19th century philosopher, economist, journalist, and revolutionary, along with Friedrich Engels. ...

Braverman demonstrated several mechanisms of control in both the factory blue collar and clerical white collar labor force. A blue-collar worker is a working class employee who performs manual or technical labor, such as in a factory or in technical maintenance trades, in contrast to a white-collar worker, who does non-manual work generally at a desk. ... White-collar workers perform tasks which are less laborious yet often more highly paid than blue-collar workers, who do manual work. ...

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. Deskilling is the process by which skilled labor within an industry or economy is eliminated by the introduction of technologies operated by semiskilled or unskilled workers. ...

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 Andrew 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 hierarchy in organisations has remained constant, additional forms of control (such as technical control via email monitoring, call monitoring; bureaucratic control via procedures for leave, sickness etc) has been added to gain the interests of the capitalist class versus the workers.

Human Resource Management Theory

Organisational Misbehaviour

Post Modernism

See also

• Economic sociology
• Industrial and organizational psychology
• Important publications in industrial Sociology