Industrial sociology

1800s: Martineau · Tocqueville · Marx · Spencer · Le Bon · Ward · Pareto · Tönnies · Veblen · Simmel · Durkheim · Addams · Mead · Weber · Du Bois · Mannheim · Elias Industrial sociology, until recently a crucial research area within the field of sociology of work, examines "the direction and implications of trends in technological change, globalization, labour markets, work organization, managerial practices and employment relations" to "the extent to which these trends are intimately related to changing patterns of inequality in modern societies and to the changing experiences of individuals and families", and " the ways in which workers challenge, resist and make their own contributions to the patterning of work and shaping of work institutions".

[2] Following Marx, Braverman argued that work within capitalist organizations was exploitative and alienating, and therefore workers had to be coerced into servitude.

[citation needed] Deskilled labour is cheap and above all easy to control due to the workers' lack of direct engagement in the production process.

[3] In turn work becomes intellectually or emotionally unfulfilling; the lack of capitalist reliance on human skill reduces the need of employers to reward workers in anything but a minimal economic way.

The notion the particular type of technology workers were exposed to shapes their experience was most forcefully argued in a classic study by Robert Blauner.

Studies have shown that cultural differences with regard to management–union relations, levels of hierarchical control, and reward and performance appraisal policies mean that the experience of the same kind of work can vary considerably between countries and firms.