Time and Work Flashcards
Adam (1990)
‘Time is one of the major structuring devices for human activity and there is considerable evidence of temporal order in industrialized societies’
Mark Hearn
‘Time is frequently considered as a resource in the context of work and work organization and as such, contains an assumption of efficiency. The idea is captured and demonstrated for example, by the themes of ‘time management’ and ‘just in time’
E.P Thompson
Clock time vs Task time
What is Task Time?
- non-clock measurement of time
- irregular and flexible patterns of work – bursts of intensity and idleness
- ‘natural’ rhythms (e.g. tides in fishing communities, seasons in farming communities, bodily rhythms)
- blurring between work and life – temporally and spatially
- economy of self-producers/piecework
- common in pre-industrial societies but still exists today (e.g. self-employed craft workers, artists, new mothers)
What is Clock-time?
- clock measurement of time
- regular and inflexible patterns of work (e.g. timetable
- unceasing linear movement – detached from natural rhythm of ebb and flow
- strict division between work and life (e.g. ‘clocking on’ and ‘clocking off’)
- economy of wage laborers
- emerged with industrial revolution in late 18th century
What happens to time when people are being employed by changing from task-orientation to timed labour?
“As soon as actual hands are employed, the shift from task-orientation to timed labour is marked…Those who are employed experience a distinction between their employer’s time and their ‘own’ time. And the employer must use the time of his labour, and see it is not wasted…Time is now currency: it is not passed but spent.”
Herod (2002)
‘technology, he argues, has sped up work production and information flows and restructured geographic relationships’
Noon and Blyton
“The subjective nature of working time has been particularly under- recognized, with too common a tendency to view work time [as] regular, unerring, and one-dimensional…rather than as an aspect of social existence which is experienced in a variety of ways.”
What is the account of actory life in Dundee as cited in Thompson?
“The clocks at the factories were often put forward in the morning and back at night, and instead of being instruments for the measurement of time, they were used as cloaks for cheatery [sic] and oppression. Though this was known amongst the hands, all were afraid to speak, and a workman was then afraid to carry a watch.”
Bylton, et al:
Time discipline and industrial capitalism
“There is systematic pressure towards the more intensive use of time as part of the search for improved efficiency. As a result, workers’ control over their time at work is progressively reduced. The control of time becomes an essential feature of the power struggle between capital and labour.”
What are some resistance to time discipline?
- ‘Saint Monday’: tradition of absenteeism (the state of being absent, especially frequently or without good reason) on a Monday
- Skiving off
- Absenteeism
- Daydreaming
- ‘Time-wasting’ at work
- POETS day: Piss off early, tomorrow’s Saturday
How it time managed in professional service sector?
Time management in professional service sector – practically and symbolically:
More autonomy and discretion in the performance of work tasks
What is taylorism’s time and motion study?
- the evaluation of industrial performance, analysis of the time spent in going through the different motions of a job or series of jobs
- these studies came to be adopted on a wide scale as a means of improving the methods of work by subdividing the different operations of a job into measurable elements
- such analyses were in turn, used as aids to standardization of work in checking the efficiency of people and equipment and the mode of their combination
What is the method for establishing employee productivity standards?
(1) a complex task is broken into small, simple steps
(2) the sequences of movements taken by the employee in performing those steps is carefully observed to detect and eliminate redundant or wasteful motions
(3) precise time taken for each correct movement is measured
What does the method for establishing employee productivity standards tell us?
- from these measurements production and delivery times and prices can be computed and incentive schemes can be devised
- generally appropriate for repetitive tasks
