Japanese management practices have attracted much interest in the United States. The use of quality circles (QCs) common in Japan, has been considered a promising approach to improving Americn workers' productivity. A quality circle is made up of workers from the same group who meet to discuss quality problems, recommend solutions, and implement…

Longitudinal data from blue-collar maintenance personnel and utility engineers were used to identify the plausible mediators between participative decision making (PDM) and job satisfaction (JS). Covariance structure analysis was also performed on the data. Role ambiguity, perceived obstacles, and performance-reward expectancy were found to…

Research suggests that higher level jobs are more likely to contain the essential job characteristics needed to cue achievement motives in high achievement workers. A comparison of university administrators and maintenance workers confirmed that the higher the level of the occupation, the higher the morale of the worker. However, no significant…

This study examined the relationship of the age and gender of the child, and the occupational status and gender of the parent, to the incidence and frequency of physical punishment and two levels of physical abuse of children, as measured by the minor, severe, and very severe violence indexes of the Conflict Tactics Scales. The subjects were…

The expansion theory, which maintains that an individual has unlimited energy to expend in work or marital involvement, and the drain theory, which maintains that an individual's energy for work can be depleted by overcommitment to family, compete with each other in explaining the effect of worklife on the adult male's family relationships. To…

Data from in-depth interviews with more than one hundred women over a three-year period suggest that the experience of women in skilled and semiskilled jobs contradicts the conventional wisdom about the values and motives of these women and challenge many sociological findings regarding the alienating character of much blue collar work. The women…

This paper reviews the program of the Bryn Mawr Summer School for Women Workers in Industry, held from 1921 to 1938, and attempts to discern whether the curriculum and pedagogy of the school was feminist. An introduction notes that sources for the paper include course syllabi, videotaped interviews, and first person accounts of the school's…

Although informal age norms which influence the timing of major role transitions have been well documented, recent research questions the pervasiveness of this influence. In order to assess the effects of age, sex, and occupational level on perceptions of informal age norms, white-collar and blue-collar men and women (N=462) at two age levels,…

Published research on vocational interests and personality has not often assessed the characteristics of workers and the work environment in blue-collar, women-dominated industries. This study administered the Self-Directed Search (Form E) to 318 sewing machine operators in three clothing factories. Holland codes, productivity, job satisfaction,…

Reanalysis of a standard set of data for 16 nations has brought new insights into the leading issues of comparative social mobility. The reanalysis provides considerable support for the Featherman-Jones-Hauser hypothesis, which claims that there is convergence in mobility processes once conditions of occupational supply and demand are controlled.…

Investigating the reading habits of adults in Egypt, East Africa, a study examined 294 Egyptians (233 males and 61 females) in post-secondary education in Cairo, and in the industrial cities of Shopra El-Khema, and Impapa, El-Giza. Marital status, sex, and occupation were used to group the subjects. Subjects completed a 29-item questionnaire…

Occupational stress is specific to the workplace and tends to be a global term used to describe stressors, the occupational conditions that cause difficulties for an individual, and strains, the conditions resulting from experiencing work stressors. While the effects of occupational stress on employees are well documented, this study further…

Career counseling is a particularly critical need for blue collar men, displaced workers from the declining industries of manufacturing. This article uses developmental theory based on the model of adult development of Daniel Levinson (1978), "Seasons of a Man's Life," to discuss the difficulty of blue collar men in attaining developmental…

Studies of emergent, previously unstudied groups in the context of a complex urban society (such as the Project on Working Women, a three-year study of women in nontraditional blue collar and working class jobs) present methodological problems related to sampling, interviewing, and methods of analysis. Crucial to a successful methodology are…

A critical analysis of terminal vocational education reveals that its benefits may be modest, at best. Supporters argue that vocational education will reduce unemployment by preparing more students for upwardly-mobile "middle-level" jobs. They further contend that vocational education will reduce the number of four-year college graduates and bring…