How the Industrial Revolution affected the nature of work in modern society

¶ … Industrial Revolution heralded a shift in the way that goods were produced. Technological developments in particular began a shift in emphasis away from human capital towards financial capital. Human beings, once almost exclusively in one trade or another, became increasingly viewed as equivalent to machines, or worse. This marked a shift both in business and society with respect to the nature of work in society, a shift whose repercussions are still felt today. The Introduction section will highlight the background information -- defining the Industrial Revolution, the ways work was viewed in society prior to it and how work is viewed in society today, which will provide perspective of some of the critical changes that have occurred.

In his essay Why We Work, Andrew Curry outlines some of the more profound of these changes. These changes will form the basis of my research paper on how the Industrial Revolution affected the nature of work in society. Each change will be discussed in turn, tracing its evolution from concepts that emerged during the Industrial Revolution to modern day life. This will be the Discussion section, and it will form the bulk of the paper.

First, the structure of work itself will be discussed. Frederick Taylor and Henry Ford reframed the worker-work relationship on strictly economic terms. Taylor saw the worker as only useful for muscle; Ford knew workers would hate being on his assembly line and offered them extra pay to entice them. Psychologically, this shift had a profound impact on the role of work in society. Where once work and one's role were closely paired, work was now a money-making activity decoupled from one's identity. That so many persist with the work-as-identity paradigm is also worth of study, as this is a holdover from the pre-Industrial Revolution era, and complicates our relationship with work. Some of these long-lingering externalities take a negative toll on society (Crowley et al., 2010).

Second will be a discussion of how the changing nature of work has shifted our perceptions of time. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, work was done slowly and manually, and only enough was done to sustain one's livelihood. The Industrial Revolution heralded a shift away from this slow time orientation (Ferrante, 2005 ). Wage-earners may have sold their time to factory owners, but management could not. The Industrial Revolution thereby set in motion a shift towards work as consuming one's time, but not in the same way it did the artisan. Where the artisan controlled his or her workload, the Industrial Revolution increased the pace of production dramatically. This increase made it difficult for humans to keep pace -- the notion of the manager always being on the job was born. The research paper will show that the way today's communications technology drives people to work constantly is a reflection of the shifts in time orientation towards work that began in the Industrial Revolution.

The third area of focus will be with respect to the relationship that we have with work. The Industrial Revolution gave rise to the idea of the work ethic. Before, grueling work was sometimes necessary for survival, but the shift towards work as a means for monetary gain that occurred during the Industrial Revolution marked a shift in the way we view our relationship with work. The notion of work ethic as detached from basic survival is a relatively new concept, one created to support factory owners (Curry, 2003). This has become mantra for Americans since the Industrial Revolution, but the same societal shift has not occurred in Europe.

Lastly, wealth structures changed. Work may have become more about money, but ultimately changes to the nature of work in the Industrial Revolution changed our society. Before, wealth was acquired largely through land ownership, and was directly tied to prestige. Since the Industrial Revolution accelerated the means of production, it has allowed merchants, factory owners and financiers to also acquire power and wealth. For the average American, this means that work can also be a means to acquire social mobility. When work had no such connotation, there was little incentive to work beyond what was needed. With such a connotation, our relationship with work has changed, and we view it not just in Taylorist monetary terms, but as a means of improving our social standing as well. This has drawn us back towards work as a point of self-identity, when scientific management predicted exactly the opposite. There are perils implied in identifying too strongly with one's work, yet we persist all the same (Henderson, 2005).