Characteristics of Contemporary Work Societies-Myassignmenthelp

Question: Identify the Characteristics of Contemporary Work Societies and the Prevalence of Work and Employment for Individual, Organisational and Social Wellbeing. Answer: We rationalise everything, not just work but the whole of society which results in rational (work) societies. Living in a rational society can indeed seem to be an alluring idea, considering the fact that greater efficiency with which systems are run, time-saving and labour-saving methods of operation and greater control through technology do help in creating a more structured and well-organized society. Unlike former times, it has become possible to improve the quality of life, as people can be engaged in trade activities that can benefit one and the whole community alike. With the help of bureaucratic government, it is possible to enforce greater power, control and authority over the limited resources to deter the possibility of exploitation of resources by just a wealthy class of people. Rationalization also slows for measuring and evaluating the progress, while also predicting the future actions. The four important characteristics of rationalization are calculability, control, measurement and predictability. As far as calculability is concerned, rationalized society strives to achieve goals that are highly quantifiable, in the form of larger quantity or increased sales, instead of setting up subjective goals such as taste and labour. A large amount of food for example being served to a consumer will replace the need of hiring highly efficient snd skilled labourers offering healthy and fresh quality ingredients to the consumers. Thus, this can help in creating economies of scale, an important feature of a rationalized society. Control is the next important feature here, and in order to ensure that the workplace is highly structured and organized, and work is done at the right time, it is important to have standardized employees working uniformly around the clock. This is why human labourers are being replaced by the non-human employees. Next, predictability is an essential fea ture of a well-organized and rationalized society as it assures the clients that wherever they will go, they will receive uniform or similar services only. Accordingly, the employees working in a rationalized society not only do the same work, and are trained to possess similar skills, but the products produced in such a society are highly similar as well. There are formalized laws and policies, which are to be followed by all the members of a society. Lastly, the rationalized society is highly measurable, where a large amount f product or a hug variety of service is being delivered to a consumer in a short time, and the society is capable of making economic calculations to determine the most profitable way of good production (Ritzer 1983). Rationalization helps in making work far more structured and organized, and can benefit each section of the people at large. Earlier each worker used to work on his own, making his own products and selling the same to a limited number of consumers. However, in absence of resources, many people were unable to buy their own products, and could not get employed anywhere. Rationalization reduces the need to work independently, and offers more or less equal opportunity to every person to contribute his share of work to the lot and earn money. With the help of rationalization, the work has become more systematized, culminating in the system where one is provided with super-efficient assembly lines where the work process is very much defined than before. Unlike former times, the production process is no longer limited to one person, and hence through co-operation amongst the people and sharing of greater resources, it is possible to improve human interaction, as inter-dependence is amongst the members of a society is an important feature of a rationalized society. This will certainly help in the economic advancement of a nation as well as the improvement in the socio-economic condition of the people involved in the process of rationalization. However, if rationalization is allowed to continue until our society becomes an iron cage, over-rationalization will destroy everyone, creating an extreme level of uniformity. Rationalization can be defined as a process whereby the modern society has become increasingly engaged with the ideas of efficiency, predictability, calculability and dehumanization. While this has definitely been able to benefit the employers who have chalked out a more cost-effective, time-saving approach to production, the employment of technology as a method of controlling human action has resulted in alienation of workers, leading to greater rate of employee disengagement, higher rate of employee absenteeism and employee turnover rate (Ritzer 1983). Again, since most of the employees working here have to surrender their autonomy to machines and procedures, and they suffer from higher rate of employee disengagement, alienation at workplace, employee absenteeism and even identity crisis and anxiety. While ra tionalization permeates the society, it often ends up prioritizing systematic integration over social integration, resulting in psychological alienation of the employees. It can lead to irrationality, by producing conflict between the values and self-interests. Reference List: Ritzer, G., 1983. The McDonaldization of society.The Journal of American Culture,6(1), pp.100-107.