Main trends of research in the social and human ... - unesdoc - Unesco

Sociology 97
the sole purpose of increasing productivity or of reducing turnover. In Com-
munist countries it is a goal in itself, and something similar to a calculus is
attempted by which some combination of work satisfaction and productivity is
maximized, even if the latter is not as high as it could be, were it considered the
main target. Unfortunately there are no detailed reports available on how this
difficult problem is approached through empirical research. There are some
studies which show that only a restricted proportion of the working class expe-
riences work as apart of civic duty; these studies conclude that what is needed is
not only more exhortation, but also more worker participation and a closer tie
between education, standard of living, and the type of work assigned. Another
interesting study shows that manual workers with higher education (unless they
are over-qualified) seem better able to integrate their work into their personality
matrix - a result which might parallel the finding about the American soldiers
cited at the beginning of this section.
I single out the topic of work for several reasons: it is an especially severe
challenge for a good empirical research design; it is of considerable social
importance; and it is especially susceptible to bias. Because of the urgency of the
matter in a Communist country there is the danger that negative results might
not be clearly brought to light, while positive results - increases in work
satisfaction - are reported but not analysed in a broad context. In Western
profit-minded countries the problem is seen in a more detached way - some
wil say unfortunately. But as a result it might be possible, perhaps with foun-
dation support, to study empirically the integration of work, personality and
leisure time. Guided by the theoretical discussion in Communist countries,
Western countries might be able to develop an appropriate design.43
Communist sociologists have developed careful distinctions between sub-
groups of manual workers: those who have recently arrived from the country,
those who work on machines requiring special intellectual qualifications, those
who are more concerned with their private lives than their contributions. Of
special interest are what are called innovators, workers who make a techno-
logical or administrative contribution to the management of their factory. In
Rumania, there is a detailed statistical study of several thousand innovators,
describing in detail their characteristics. Data on the frequency with which indi-
vidual workers made suggestions showed that the majority of workers submitted
only one. This seems to have inspired new studies to determine whether the
findings signify that management did not properly reward the first idea or
whether the suggestion itself was more or less accidental and not indicative of
a special gift. I know of no similarly detailed study by a Western industrial
sociologist. The idea of work rotation mentioned above is also linked with the
activity of innovators.#
In a planned economy, it is an obvious problem to match the occupational
wishes of young people to the allocation of work specified in the plan. A widely-
quoted study done in Novosibirsk has looked into this matter. Information is
available on the career aspirations of I 4-year-olds and the occupations they
later took up. The discrepancies are great and suggest that the level of aspiration
is much higher than actual achievement. Such data are rare even in Western