soc of work quiz Flashcards
coworking spaces
a working arrangement in which people from different teams and companies come together to work in a single shared space
adv of cowork.. spaces
Flexibility
Connections with others
Positive work environment
Basic amenities (electricity, internet, snacks)
disadv of cowork.. spaces
Limited sense of community?
Expensive? (20-50 per day)
Limited in person face time with colleagues located elsewhere (loneliness)
promote inequality
bridging connections
tend to join dissimilar individuals
bonding connections
tend to join like individuals, typically along demographic dimensions, class,
interests, education, etc
supply-side inequality
individuals’ choices (subject to constraint) that may lead to disparate outcomes
Examples:
▪ Education investments
▪ Selection of job or employer
▪ Persistence through adversity
→ These shape access to, or
eligibility for, certain opportunities
IMPORTANT:
▪ This is not ‘victim blaming’–
Systemic factors shape available
choices
▪ Public policies/laws rarely target supply-side factors
human capital (hc)
The economic value of an individual’s skill set
▪ “[A]ny stock of knowledge or characteristics the worker has (either
innate or acquired) that contributes to his or her ‘productivity.’”
(Acemoglu and Autor 2011)
▪ Human capital cannot be separated from a person, in contrast to
financial assets
▪ Human capital includes schooling, training, skills, expertise, personal
attitude, and innate intelligence, among others
Examples:
▪ Education**
▪ Training**
Education and training are two of the most important human
capital investments, Highly correlated with economic outcomes in labor markets
▪ Intelligence
▪ Experience
HC: general skills
skills that are beneficial to the worker, and frequently portable across employers
Skills and abilities that are broadly transferable across settings. Typically paid for by individuals. Example: Public speaking expertise
HC: firm specific skills
skills that solely contribute to productivity within the current employer
Example: Org. floorplan knowledge
sources of HC differences
▪ Innate ability
▪ Pre-Labor market socialization (exp: norms of interaction)
▪ Schooling
▪ School Quality
▪ Training
SCHOOLING HC difference
Weekly Median U.S. Earnings by Education, 2022:
most: doctoral and professional, over 2000 a week
lowest: less than HS diploma, less than 750 a week
unemployment rates by education:
doctoral (1%)
to
less than hs diploma (5.5%)
skills vs signals- education
Human capital represents skills; proportional rewards are allocated
Human capital is a signal that is costly to obtain
sheepskin effect
One piece of evidence that diplomas function, in
part, as signals comes from comparing newly-minted bachelors graduates
with those that are very nearly complete
▪Completed bachelor degrees tend to be valued far more highly by
employers relative to those that are very nearly complete
Demand-side inequality
▪ Taste-based discrimination
▪ Statistical discrimination
▪ Status characteristics theory
(typically organizational) factors that
may lead to disparate outcomes. Exp:
▪ Decision maker bias/prejudice
(may be conscious or unconscious)
▪ Recruitment and selection systems that
reward different things
▪ Promotion and termination decisions
→ These play a gatekeeping role to
potentially lucrative opportunities
IMPORTANT
Important:
▪ Even ostensibly ‘merit-based’ systems
may produce unequal outcomes b/c of
supply-side processes
▪ Public policies/laws more frequently
target demand-side factors
DS INEQ: taste based
Explicit prejudice. Decision makers seek to avoid interaction and thus miss out on productive workers
DS INEQ: Statistical discrimination
Similar to profiling. Generalizations regarding group performance applied to individuals
DS INEQ: Status characteristics theory
Biased expectations. Socially-constructed perceptions shape expected behaviors for different groups
approaches to minimize bias
▪ Blinding/masking
▪ Collecting job relevant information
▪ Competency assessments
▪ Transparency programs
▪ Accountability programs
▪ Self-reflection
How do labor markets and
commodity markets differ?
labor markets:
1. Workers are not standardized
2. A multiplicity of markets
3. No central clearing house
4. Continuity of the employment relationship
5. Workers deliver themselves along with their labor
6. Workers (may) have bargaining power
Relative ease of discrimination during key employment events
easier to discriminate during hiring
harder during terminating
▪ In-group preferences
liking and helping people who are similar to you more than others
▪ Internal divisions of labor
significance: how labor is divided internally, can determine pay and how social interactions are structured
▪ Relative power
different ppl in org have diff amount of power which has an effect on people’s experiences in organizations
▪ Organizational environments
Coercive processes : pressures from really powerfully actors within environment that can change organization, e.g. legal environments, if laws change it is a coercive process that can change how organization goes
Normative processes: customs, the norm has an effect on how things are done in company
Mimetic processes: when orgs are facing uncertainty they adopt behavior that are similar within their field, they copy what other companies within their field are doing
