IRE240H1 Study Guide - Fall 2018, Comprehensive Midterm Notes - Collective Bargaining, Trust Law, Capitalism
12 Oct 2018
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IRE240H1
MIDTERM EXAM
STUDY GUIDE
Fall 2018
Introduction to Employment Relations
● The Evolution of Work
○ Non-linear progress, and it has differed across regions/societies at different
points in time
○ Broad trends (Budd 2011)
■ Prehistoric ancestors were nomadic hunter-gatherers
■ 2.5 million years ago rustic tools appeared and became increasingly
sophisticated
■ At the end of the last ice age (-10,000 years ago) we became less
nomadic and more sedentary
■ Slowly transitioned to an agricultural society (cultivated plants,
domesticated animals)
■ Craft specialization was the next major shift (-6,000 years ago)
■ Increased sophistication in the organization of work and the creation of
cities
■ Industrial revolution
● Budd’s 10 Conceptualizations of Work
○ Work as a Curse
■ A burden necessary for human survival or maintenance of social order
■ Story of Adam and Eve
○ Work as a Freedom
■ A way to achieve independence from nature or other humans and
express creativity
■ Work not so much as a family unit or community work, but move into the
realm of work as a very individualized activity
○ Work as a Commodity
■ An abstract quantity of productive effort; tradable economic value
■ Work is seen as very synonymous with units of labor, and those units are
no different than land, capital, technology, equipment, etc.
● Implications
○ Labor embodied in humans however, acts differently than
land, technology, etc.
■ Humans have characteristics where they can hide
effort or exert greater effort, etc.
○ Because you’re human, you are treated typically more
ethically
○ Work as citizenship
■ An activity pursued by members of a commodity entitled to certain rights
and standards of dignity and self-determination
■ Conceptualization of work as a human activity that needs to be tied to the
belief that humans have dignity and worth
■ Ideas about living wages, workers engaging in collective action, child
labor, etc.
○ Work as Disutility
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■ A lousy activity tolerated to obtain goods and services that provide
pleasure
■ All the work you’re doing is at the expense of leisure time
■ Nobody wants to work, the only reason you work is because you value
the goods and services you buy than the time you spend doing other
activities
■ Dominant way of thinking about work since early stages of industrial
revolution
○ Work as Personal Fulfillment
■ Physical and psychological functioning that satisfies individual needs
■ Intrinsic motivation for work
■ Desire to achieve self-actualization
○ Work as a Social Relation
■ Human interaction embedded in social norms, institutions, and power
structures/dynamics
○ Work as Caring for Others
■ The physical, cognitive, and emotional effort required to attend to and
maintain others
○ Work as Identity
■ Understanding who you are and where you stand in the social structure
○ Work as Service
■ The devotion of effort to others, such as God, family, community, or
country
● The Study of Work
○ Work is a multidimensional concept
■ Workers have complex economic, social, psychological, and political
motivations
■ People hold different values, conceptualizations, and ideas (perspectives
or cognitive frames) about work and why we work
■ These perspectives or frames result in different assumptions about
employment relationships, and the most appropriate mechanisms to
govern work and employment relationships
■ Requires knowledge of multiple disciplines and research approaches to
understand
● Employment Relations
○ Employment relations is the interdisciplinary study of all economic and social
aspects of people at work, their employment relationships, and how these
relationships are governed (e.g., markets, laws, unions, etc.)
○ A field that arose in the late 19th and early 20th century –coincided with the
industrial revolution and the rise of capitalism –to study the dynamics of work in
industrialized capitalist systems, and to resolve the particular problems that arose
as a result of the development of these systems
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Non-linear progress, and it has differed across regions/societies at different points in time. 2. 5 million years ago rustic tools appeared and became increasingly sophisticated. At the end of the last ice age (-10,000 years ago) we became less nomadic and more sedentary. Slowly transitioned to an agricultural society (cultivated plants, domesticated animals) Craft specialization was the next major shift (-6,000 years ago) Increased sophistication in the organization of work and the creation of cities. A burden necessary for human survival or maintenance of social order. A way to achieve independence from nature or other humans and express creativity. Work not so much as a family unit or community work, but move into the realm of work as a very individualized activity. An abstract quantity of productive effort; tradable economic value. Work is seen as very synonymous with units of labor, and those units are no different than land, capital, technology, equipment, etc.
