This dissertation examines the intersections of the body, senses, and labor within a Post-Fordist, consumption based economy. Data was collected via ethnographic research of specialty coffee baristas. The concepts of “sense work,” “taste frameworks,” and “minimum wage connoisseurship” are introduced for identifying the social components of sensory experience. The specialty coffee industry serves as one examples of a larger “taste economy.” This research demonstrates how sensory experience can fall under management control and aid in the development of a new, niche “consumer market” (Otis 2011), characteristic of Post-Fordism. Additionally, an examination of the boundary work and identity formation within the specialty coffee industry provides new insights into how the body and the senses are implicated in the production and reproduction of class inequality.

Thesis advisor: Michael G. Pratt / Evidence is mounting that recognition from others may play a critical role in shaping an individual’s experience of meaningful work; so how do workers find meaningfulness when their work is “invisible”? I examine this tension through a qualitative, inductive study of the occupation of linemen—the women and men who construct and repair power lines. By examining this invisible occupation, my research explains the conditions that foster the “recognition gap”—a disparity between the recognition linemen believe they deserve and the recognition they actually receive. This recognition gap ultimately produces meaningfulness insecurity—feelings of uncertainty or doubt about the meaningfulness of their work. Moreover, this research also explains how linemen overcome this meaningfulness insecurity through intuitive feelings of pride in beautiful completed work. Through a process motivated by a desire to avoid criticism for ugly work, linemen develop “expert schemas” that allow for intuitive—rapid, nonconscious, and affectively charged—reactions to the appearance of a completed job. When positive, these intuitive judgements foster experiences of meaningfulness. By explaining these processes, this dissertation re-casts meaningfulness from an individual accomplishment to one that is deeply dependent on social cues; and from a process requiring thoughtful reflection to one driven by intuitive judgements. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2023. / Submitted to: Boston College. Carroll School of Management. / Discipline: Management and Organization.

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Research report MMed 10 December 2018 / Background: Burnout is a response to prolonged stress and consists of three elements: Emotional Exhaustion (EE); Depersonalisation (DP); and Personal Accomplishment (PA). Existence of burnout under doctors is often not acknowledged but has major consequences for personal and professional life. Only limited research done regarding prevalence of burnout amongst registrars in South Africa. Objectives: To describe the prevalence of burnout, and asses for relationships between burnout and socio-demographic factors. Methods: A cross-sectional descriptive, internet survey was conducted. Respondents were registrars within the departments of the School of Clinical Medicine at the University of the Witwatersrand. To measure burnout the Mashlach Burnout Inventory (MBI) was used. Relationships were assessed by independent samples t-test and ANOVA. Results: Of the 585 successfully delivered questionnaires, 201 registrars started the survey (response rate of 34%). 170 questionnaires were analysed. The mean age of the respondents was 33 years, the male to female ratio was 1:1.8. The average score for EE was 3,5 (SD1.2), for DP 2.7 (SD1.1) and for PA 4.1 (SD1.1). The overall level of burnout was 84%. None of the respondents scored low over all categories. No significant association between socio-demographics and MBI dimensions was found. Conclusion: The prevalence levels found in this study was higher than found in national and international literature. Extremely high levels of DP were found. This is worrisome as DP affects professionalism and engagement of doctors. In keeping with international literature no associations were found with socio-demographic factors and burnout, suggesting the cause of burnout should truly be sought out in the work environment. Efforts to improve autonomy in the workspace, development opportunities and promoting peer collaboration, are needed to prevent of burnout. / E.K. 2019

The present study sought to determine the direction and degree to which occupations representative of all major occupational categories are viewed as age-typed (i.e., more appropriate for older or younger workers). The 60 occupations examined were the 12 most common and familiar occupations in each of five occupational categories used by the U.S. Census Bureau. I randomly assigned 365 participants to one of three survey conditions. Participants rated the feature centrality, proportional representation, normative age, and optimal performance age of 20 of the 60 occupations and the age-type of 20 different occupations. Results showed that participants reliably rated the occupations on a continuum from highly young-typed to highly old-typed. Occupations viewed as most appropriate for older workers included psychologists (clinical), bus drivers, and librarians, whereas those viewed as most appropriate for younger workers included recreation and fitness workers, bartenders, and hosts/hostesses. Interestingly, despite commonly held stereotypes that older workers are less competent than younger workers (Kite, Stockdale, Whitley, & Johnson, 2005), old-typed occupations were viewed as requiring higher competence than those viewed as young-typed. Additionally, roughly three times as many workers are needed to fill the most young-typed jobs compared to the most old-typed jobs (U.S. Census Bureau, 2000). Both of these findings suggest problems for an increasingly aging workforce (Administration of Aging, 2010). I also found that perceived proportional representation accounted for 79% of the variance in predicting the age-type of occupations. This suggests that people rely on general impressions of current worker ages, which supports career timetables theory‘s approach to the formation of occupational agetype. Implications for theory and research are discussed.

This dissertation investigates the question: are mission critical occupations more favored than other occupations in performance appraisals in pay pools? While many types of bias in performance appraisals occur, such as gender or race, occupational bias--favoring or showing preference for one occupation over another in performance appraisals and subsequent ratings-- has not been fully examined. There is a lack of empirical evidence that addresses occupational bias in performance appraisal and ratings in the Federal civil service sector, and more specifically the Department of Defense. The importance of occupational bias in performance appraisals is seen in the cost to organization and taxpayer, the degradation to fairness and trust in the workplace, and the erosion of organizational values. The methodology used to address this dissertation's hypothesis is a quantitative-qualitative inquiry that investigates performance ratings of the engineering occupational series within three Department of Defense (DOD) engineering agencies. The methodology is comprised of three parts: quantitative analysis of pay pool rating data and qualitative analysis of archived documents and expert interviews. Each part of the methodology is intended to be mutually supportive. The quantitative analysis yields a null finding of the hypothesis based on two findings. First, indicators of occupational bias were not found using differences of average occupational performance ratings between engineers and other occupations in three DOD engineering organizations. Second, Fiscal Year 2008 engineer occupational series performance ratings in three Department of Defense engineering agencies did not show statistically significant differences when compared to occupations such as personnel management specialists and accountants. This may be due to privacy act limitations in the data set used. Anecdotal evidence of preferences for mission critical occupations in performance appraisals and ratings was found to support the hypothesis. / Ph. D.

The purpose of this study was to determine if there were any differences in stress levels for African-Americans working in technical and non-technical based occupations. In order to adequately address the differences in stress levels for African-Americans, this study examined the data from an existing study called the Jackson Heart Study. Based on the weekly stress of individuals when performing their occupations, information and data were collected from 3 questionnaires that were correlated with stress and occupations of African-Americans in Mississippi. These questionnaires were the Household Enumeration Form, Personal Data and Socioeconomic Form, and the Stress Form. The research design for this study was descriptive and correlational. The study was made-up of 4451 participants (3371 females and 1935 males). The average age of the participants was 55 for females and 54 for males. 57% of the participants in this study indicated that their occupation was not stressful. After the data were collected and analyzed, this study found that there was a significant relationship between occupation traits and stress levels for African-Americans working in Mississippi. This study also found that there was a statistical relationship between stress on the job and technical occupations, which suggests higher stress was found in technical based occupations. In addition, this study found that females had a 40% higher odds of stress while working in technical occupations and men. Also, this research study found that older people had lower odds of stress on the job than younger people. Overall, Jackson Heart Study participants who identified as working in technical occupations were more stressed than participants in non-technical occupations. Based on the results of this study, it was recommended for future studies to use a broader national population of Caucasian, Asia Americans, and African-Americans in the North, East, and West that were made up of diverse occupations and backgrounds to examine if there was any difference in stress levels. Also, it was also recommended that future studies use a more in-depth investigation of health issues of employees caused by the job.

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A key precept in work place motivation theory is that management knows what job attributes are valued by the employee. Management can benefit by asking employees what they want from their work experience (i.e., job attribute preferences), rather than assume they know. This is particularly important to Polish high technology companies that are in transition to a free-market economy and to Polish workers who must be appropriately motivated to compete globally. This study attempts to better understand the job attribute preferences of Polish managers and workers, the potential gaps between Polish managers' perception of their workers' preferences (system), and how these preferences are affected by the worker's personal economic situation (sub system) and by business organization type (supra system). Managers and workers from five Polish high technology enterprises were surveyed on-site regarding their job attribute preferences. The results compared to a similar survey done with six American high technology firms(Eder 1988). Consistent with Maslow's prepotentcy theory, workers who tended to be optimistic about their personal economic situation rated all five extrinsic job attributes higher and four of the five intrinsics lower than those workers who tended to be pessimistic. Polish workers at firms that operated under central planning had only a few differences in their job attribute preferences indicating a strong supra-system or organizational effect on individuals in the firm. Contrary to what was expected, the Polish managers and workers rated a number of intrinsic attributes higher than their American counterparts suggesting a pent up need for intrinsic-type motivational policies. Polish managers appeared to be closer and more in touch with their workers than their American counterparts. American managers clearly underestimated the importance of intrinsic job attributes and overestimated the importance of the extrinsics, while Polish managers accurately predicted most of the workers' job attribute preferences. The results also raised questions regarding the stability of job attributes and the concept of clusters of extrinsic and intrinsic groups of job attributes.