Research in the sociology of work最新文献

Purpose: Most research on the work conditions and family responsibilities associated with work-family conflict and other measures of mental health uses the individual employee as the unit of analysis. We argue that work conditions are both individual psychosocial assessments and objective characteristics of the proximal work environment, necessitating multilevel analyses of both individual- and team-level work conditions on mental health.

Methodology/approach: This study uses multilevel data on 748 high-tech professionals in 120 teams to investigate relationships between team- and individual-level job conditions, work-family conflict, and four mental health outcomes (job satisfaction, emotional exhaustion, perceived stress, and psychological distress).

Findings: We find that work-to-family conflict is socially patterned across teams, as are job satisfaction and emotional exhaustion. Team-level job conditions predict team-level outcomes, while individuals' perceptions of their job conditions are better predictors of individuals' work-to-family conflict and mental health. Work-to-family conflict operates as a partial mediator between job demands and mental health outcomes.

Practical implications: Our findings suggest that organizational leaders concerned about presenteeism, sickness absences, and productivity would do well to focus on changing job conditions in ways that reduce job demands and work-to-family conflict in order to promote employees' mental health.

Originality/value of the chapter: We show that both work-to-family conflict and job conditions can be fruitfully framed as team characteristics, shared appraisals held in common by team members. This challenges the framing of work-to-family conflict as a "private trouble" and provides support for work-to-family conflict as a structural mismatch grounded in the social and temporal organization of work.

Purpose: We examine trends in religious attendance by educational group, with an emphasis on the "moderately educated:" individuals with a high-school degree but not a 4-year college degree.

Methodology: We conduct multivariate ordinary least-squares (OLS) regression models using data from the General Social Survey (from 1972 to 2010) and the National Survey of Family Growth (from 1982 to 2008).

Findings: We find that religious attendance among moderately educated whites has declined relative to attendance among college-educated whites. Economic characteristics, current and past family characteristics, and attitudes toward premarital sex each explain part of this differential decline.

Implications: Religion is becoming increasingly deinstitutionalized among whites with moderate levels of education, which suggests further social marginalization of this group. Furthermore, trends in the labor force, American family life, and attitudes appear to have salient ramifications for organized religion. Sociologists of religion need to once again attend to social stratification in religious life.

Prior research showed that danwei, the work unit, was very important in determining workers' social, economic, and political lives in pre-reform urban China. In this paper, we argue that danwei continues to be an agent of social stratification in contemporary urban China. Using data from a 1999 survey we conducted in three large Chinese cities, Wuhan, Shanghai, and Xi'an, we assess the extent to which workers' socioeconomic well-being depends on the financial conditions of their danwei. Results show that the financial situation of danwei remains one of the most important determinants of earnings and benefits. However, the explanatory power of danwei's financial situation is much greater for earnings than for benefits.