WORK AND LEISURE AND LEISURE AND WORK

OUTLINE Preface

Viewing the world in terms of “work” and “leisure”

Satisfaction with work

Relations between work and leisure

Who works and for how long

From specialist to generalist : changes in the roles of women and men

Careers and retirements

The changing nature of work

New meaning of management

Jobs as the critical issue of the next decade

PREFACE

Work is often thought of as externally compelled activity rather than internally compelled

Activity undertaken because other people require you to do it or because circumstances, such as lack of food, shelter or other things defined as necessary, require you to do it

Work is what you need to do, and leisure is what left over. You punch the time clock and begin working, punch it again when you stop

SATISFACTION WITH WORK

Parker, a researcher, found six main themes concerning work satisfaction. Work was satisfying when these six elements were part of the experience:

Creating something- a feeling that one has put something of oneself into a product

Using skill- whether the skill is manual or not

Working wholeheartedly and not being arbitrarily slowed down

Using initiative and having responsibility- freedom to make decision

Mixing with people- social contact

Working with people with people who know their job- competent bosses and associates

DISSATISFACTION

Work was not satisfying when the following five themes were in evidence:

Doing a repetitive job

Making only a small part of something-making the worker an appendage of the machine

Doing useless tasks

Feeling a sense of insecurity

Being too closely supervised

COMPLAINTS ABOUT WORK

Complaints about work didn’t center around salary

Some complain the lack of variety and challenge

Additionally, complaints centered around conflicts with other people on the job, especially the boss.

Those complaints related to “burnout”

Workers who experienced too much stress, too little time to think or too little time to spend with their family

DISSATISFACTION

Those with higher education may have far higher expectations or needs about a job in terms of their ability to use skills, the opportunity to take part in decision making and in self-expression

Today many highly educated people are ‘underemployed, having little chance to use their knowledge, judgment, or skill

LEISURE AS COMPENSATION FOR UNSATISFYING WORK

People want to have leisure to make up their work dissatisfaction, but very often, it doesn’t, why?

People are more likely to be in flow experience at work than at leisure. About ½ the time they are working they are confronting challenges

which are above average.

As for leisure, people were more likely to express apathy, feeling passive, weak, dull and dissatisfied.

People who suffer from work dissatisfaction may not compensate for it during their leisure because of the choices they make during leisure.

If those choices do not provide for opportunities to exercise skill, accept challenges, undertake activity which leads to an attractive identity, leisure is unlikely to provide compensation for unsatisfying work.

CHANGING DEFINITIONS OF WHERE WORK SHOULD BE DONE

The computers and other digital devices of communication make the location of many people’s work more and more flexible.

People can finish work in remote location

RELATIONS BETWEEN WORK AND LEISURE

Leisure may serve two functions as for work:

Spillover or compensation

Work may be said to spill over into leisure to the extent that leisure is the continuation of work experiences and attitudes.

Leisure is compensatory if it seeks to make up for dissatisfaction felt in work.

WHO WORK AND HOW LONG

Mostly, people work to get money.

The most frequent cited statistic to measure how much time we work or doing leisure activities is based on work week length.

From 1900 to 1950, there was a decrease in the amount of time individuals spent in paid labor.

The workweek was dropping from close to 60 hours a week to 40 hours due to the power of labor unions.

The workweek length has remained around 40 hours for full-time employee since 1940s.

The population in the labor force has actually increased slightly.

FROM SPECIALIST TO GENERALIST: CHANGE IN THE ROLES OF WOMEN

AND MEN

In most preindustrial societies, everyone had some work role: children, old people, sick people- everyone contributed.

the industrial revolution changed all around

Children doesn’t have to do anything productive-

Work become specialized, and when and how the work was done was planned to suit the needs of those who owned the means of production

Today, a typical household contains a husband who is employed full-time and a wife who is not employed outside home is considered false in all modern nation

CHANGE IN THE ROLES OF WOMEN AND MEN

A higher percentage of younger are becoming full-time worker and millions of women are attached to long-term careers that pay well.

Higher education attainment of women, changing aspirations, and inflation, etc. transformed women’s perspectives toward work.

Another reason for women’s entry into the labor force and attachment to career has been the fact that there has been little financial gain for most house holds during the last few decades but higher expectations.

CHANGES IN HOUSEWORK

As women have entered into the labor force, the term second shift has come to mean the work that is done before and after work.

During the second shift, shopping, household cleaning and maintenance, childcare, meal preparation, and other duties are performed.

Women put far more hours into the second shift than do men.

Today, two trends are evident concerning housework –

First, the total time devoted to housework is declining.

Second, males are participating more than a few decades ago

CHANGES IN HOUSEWORK

Women spent average of 27 hours per week on housework in 1965, in 1995 they spent only 15.6 hours.

Men’s housework increased from 4.6 hours per week in 1965 to 10.1 in 1985 and then declined slightly in 1995 to 9.5 hours

Not surprisingly, women still do more of the work inside the house.

Males spent per week cooking in 1995 while women spent 4.5 hours.

CONSEQUENCES AND STRATEGIES

Partially as a response to the changes in work and household roles, young females and males are deferring marriage, getting more formal education, having fewer children and placing more importance on career.

Average marriage age is 28 for female and 29 for male in Taiwan

The birth rate is closer to 1.0 in Taiwan and 2.0 in the United States.

Fatherhood is being taken more seriously by many men.

WORKPLACE TRENDS

Money : increasing pressure from shareholders for short-term profits means that there is greater pressure on employees to produce results and on training to show a return on investment

Diversity: the growing cultural diversity of organizations means a greater need for people with different backgrounds to work together and find better ways of balancing the local with the global

Time: the increasing expectations for just-in-time products and services is resulting in shorter time frames for learning, often facilitated through technology.

WORKPLACE TRENDS

Work: with the rise of virtual work and virtual workplaces, people are increasingly physically disconnected and have to learn to work in new ways.

World: changes in the distribution of the world’s population- in geography, economic standing, age and race- pose new challenges for organizations as they seek the right human capital to succeed.

Meaning: in a world where things seem to be constantly changing, people are increasingly looking for work that has meaning and which nurtures them spiritually

WORKPLACE TRENDS

Change: as the pace of change appears to quicken, people become increasingly resistant to change and question whether technology has advanced too quickly

Knowledge: as the knowledge sector accounts for even larger percentages of the world economy, what people know and do becomes more important

Technology: technology is increasingly used to automate work, changing the types of skills people need and forming how they learn.

Careers: the changing relationship between employees and employers and the rise of the free agent worker challenge the traditional notion of career

WORK TREND IN THE NEAR FUTURE

Employees will work in more decentralized, specialized firms, and employer-employee relationships will become less standardized and more individualized.

Slower labor force growth will encourage employers to adopt approaches to facilitate greater labor force participation among women, the elderly, and people with disabilities

Greater emphasis will be placed on retaining and lifelong learning as the U.S workplace tries to stay competitive in the respond to technological changes

Future productivity growth will support rising wages and may affect the wage distribution

The tie between employment and access to fringe benefits will be weakened.

THE CHANGING NATURE OF WORK

The kind of work done in a global economy is subject to rapid change.

The nature of work is changed by three factors:

Demographic changes in population, the growing desire for higher per capita income among people in underdeveloped nations, and technological change.

Technological may be the most inportant.

JOB AS THE CRITICAL ISSUE OF THE NEXT DECADE

Most of the fastest-growing jobs are in the service sector, which accounts for almost four out of every five jobs.

Theses jobs are in areas such as medical care, law enforcement and corrections, travel and hospitality industries, food services, data processing and social work.

CEOs look for technology-literate people capable of learning, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills, oral and written communication skills, and the ability to work in teams

The most important is the ability to learn.

Students who thinks they have “ completed their education” are in for rude shock.

A person’s knowledge about knowledge or information about information will be critical

EXERCISE

What kinds of work do you expect to do when you leave the university and why?