Soc of Work Bolded Terms (Lectures & Readings) Exam #1
Questions with Correct Answers
Why organizations exist - ✔✔Lone individuals cannot easily
coordinate/cooperate, certain tasks are time- and capital-intensive and require
large amounts of money/resources, and organizations can minimize transaction
costs, which are expenses incurred when buying/selling
3 ideal types of orgs - ✔✔Rational systems, natural systems, open systems
Rational systems - ✔✔Goal-oriented bureaucracies with relatively highly
formalized social structures, carefully constructed to achieve pre-determined
outcomes w/ max efficiency, focused on data, optimization, and implementation,
and solving challenges through rules, hierarchy, and goal setting
Natural systems - ✔✔Messy collectives that may pursue multiple goals and "social
groups" attempting to adapt & persist, where participants share a common
interest in survival of the system, engage in collective activities that are informally
structured, may have disordered & complex interaction, may experience a
potential disconnect between expressed & actual goals, and solve challenges
through common values, norms, and relationships
Open systems - ✔✔Systems of interdependent activities linking shifting coalitions
of participants, embedded in the environments in which they operate, with
flexible/less well-defined organizational boundaries, dependent upon and
reacting to resources/exchanges w/ external actors, ideally self-regulating in
response to external changes, and solving challenges through managing external
dependencies and protecting internal capabilities
,Coworking spaces - ✔✔Working arrangement in which people from different
teams & companies come together to work in a single shared space, originating in
the early 2000s as an alternative to working in public spaces, restaurants, and
coffee shops
Coworking space downsides - ✔✔Few social relationships tend to emerge from
exchanges b/c of user busyness or competition, can lead to loneliness, and may
promote inequality, such as a masculine culture of WeWork described as off-
putting to some women and selectively inhibiting interactions
Bridging connections - ✔✔Connections that tend to join dissimilar individuals
Bonding connections - ✔✔Connections that tend to join like individuals, typically
along demographic dimensions, class, interests, education, etc.; the connections
coworking exchanges promote
Structural inequality - ✔✔System of individual, organizational, & societal
processes that may advantage/disadvantage different groups; aka systemic
inequality and institutional inequality
Supply-side inequality - ✔✔Individuals' choices, subject to constraint, that may
lead to disparate outcomes and shape access to/eligibility for certain
opportunities; public policies/laws rarely target these factors because they are
about individuals' own choosing, but this is NOT victim blaming because systemic
factors shape available choices
Physical capital - ✔✔Tangible assets, often created by humans, that may be used
in the production process. E.g. buildings, machinery, computers, tools, and
equipment
,Human capital (Becker reading) - ✔✔Economic value of an individual's skill set, or
"any stock of knowledge/characteristics the worker has (either innate or
acquired) that contributed to his/her productivity"; unlike financial assets, cannot
be separated from a person
2 of the most important human capital investments - ✔✔Education, broken up
into schooling & school quality, and training
Firm-specific human capital - ✔✔Skills that solely contribute to productivity
within the current employer, such as proprietary computer programs/AI models,
skills to operate company-specific tech, and floorplan knowledge; employers
often invest in it
General human capital - ✔✔Skills that are beneficial to the worker and frequently
portable across employers, such as training in public speaking, widely-used
programming language, and paying for employees' grad school; employers rarely
invest in it
2 views on the value of education - ✔✔Education imparts skills, and education
provides a "signal"
Signaling theory - ✔✔Theory that even if schooling were to provide limited skills,
it may still be valuable to employers as a means of finding high ability workers,
especially if high-ability people find it easier to attend school because of lower
costs due to scholarships or because classes require less effort
, Sheepskin effect - ✔✔One piece of evidence that diplomas function, in part, as
signals; it was found by comparing newly-minted bachelor graduates vs. those
that are very nearly complete, with the result that completed bachelor degrees
tend to be valued far more highly by employers
Demand-side inequality - ✔✔Typically organizational selection processes that
may lead to disparate outcomes and play a gatekeeping role in potentially
lucrative opportunities; public policies/laws target these factors more than
supply-side factors
Labor markets vs. commodity markets - ✔✔Workers are not standardized, there
is a multiplicity of markets, there is no central clearing house, there is continuity
of the employment relationship, workers deliver themselves along w/ their labor,
and workers may have bargaining power
3 theories of discrimination - ✔✔Taste-based discrimination, statistical
discrimination, status characteristics
Taste-based discrimination - ✔✔Decision makers may be biased against
interacting w/ a particular group, primarily due to aversion; similar to overt
prejudice; first theory to argue that in the long run, a competitive market should
eliminate discriminatory practices because orgs w/ biased decision makers lose
out on talented workers
Statistical discrimination - ✔✔Drawing on relevant group-level performance to
assess an individual that is a member of that group; similar to profiling
Status characteristics - ✔✔Expectations decision makers may hold about the ideal
behaviors & relative performance of different demographic groups; similar to
Questions with Correct Answers
Why organizations exist - ✔✔Lone individuals cannot easily
coordinate/cooperate, certain tasks are time- and capital-intensive and require
large amounts of money/resources, and organizations can minimize transaction
costs, which are expenses incurred when buying/selling
3 ideal types of orgs - ✔✔Rational systems, natural systems, open systems
Rational systems - ✔✔Goal-oriented bureaucracies with relatively highly
formalized social structures, carefully constructed to achieve pre-determined
outcomes w/ max efficiency, focused on data, optimization, and implementation,
and solving challenges through rules, hierarchy, and goal setting
Natural systems - ✔✔Messy collectives that may pursue multiple goals and "social
groups" attempting to adapt & persist, where participants share a common
interest in survival of the system, engage in collective activities that are informally
structured, may have disordered & complex interaction, may experience a
potential disconnect between expressed & actual goals, and solve challenges
through common values, norms, and relationships
Open systems - ✔✔Systems of interdependent activities linking shifting coalitions
of participants, embedded in the environments in which they operate, with
flexible/less well-defined organizational boundaries, dependent upon and
reacting to resources/exchanges w/ external actors, ideally self-regulating in
response to external changes, and solving challenges through managing external
dependencies and protecting internal capabilities
,Coworking spaces - ✔✔Working arrangement in which people from different
teams & companies come together to work in a single shared space, originating in
the early 2000s as an alternative to working in public spaces, restaurants, and
coffee shops
Coworking space downsides - ✔✔Few social relationships tend to emerge from
exchanges b/c of user busyness or competition, can lead to loneliness, and may
promote inequality, such as a masculine culture of WeWork described as off-
putting to some women and selectively inhibiting interactions
Bridging connections - ✔✔Connections that tend to join dissimilar individuals
Bonding connections - ✔✔Connections that tend to join like individuals, typically
along demographic dimensions, class, interests, education, etc.; the connections
coworking exchanges promote
Structural inequality - ✔✔System of individual, organizational, & societal
processes that may advantage/disadvantage different groups; aka systemic
inequality and institutional inequality
Supply-side inequality - ✔✔Individuals' choices, subject to constraint, that may
lead to disparate outcomes and shape access to/eligibility for certain
opportunities; public policies/laws rarely target these factors because they are
about individuals' own choosing, but this is NOT victim blaming because systemic
factors shape available choices
Physical capital - ✔✔Tangible assets, often created by humans, that may be used
in the production process. E.g. buildings, machinery, computers, tools, and
equipment
,Human capital (Becker reading) - ✔✔Economic value of an individual's skill set, or
"any stock of knowledge/characteristics the worker has (either innate or
acquired) that contributed to his/her productivity"; unlike financial assets, cannot
be separated from a person
2 of the most important human capital investments - ✔✔Education, broken up
into schooling & school quality, and training
Firm-specific human capital - ✔✔Skills that solely contribute to productivity
within the current employer, such as proprietary computer programs/AI models,
skills to operate company-specific tech, and floorplan knowledge; employers
often invest in it
General human capital - ✔✔Skills that are beneficial to the worker and frequently
portable across employers, such as training in public speaking, widely-used
programming language, and paying for employees' grad school; employers rarely
invest in it
2 views on the value of education - ✔✔Education imparts skills, and education
provides a "signal"
Signaling theory - ✔✔Theory that even if schooling were to provide limited skills,
it may still be valuable to employers as a means of finding high ability workers,
especially if high-ability people find it easier to attend school because of lower
costs due to scholarships or because classes require less effort
, Sheepskin effect - ✔✔One piece of evidence that diplomas function, in part, as
signals; it was found by comparing newly-minted bachelor graduates vs. those
that are very nearly complete, with the result that completed bachelor degrees
tend to be valued far more highly by employers
Demand-side inequality - ✔✔Typically organizational selection processes that
may lead to disparate outcomes and play a gatekeeping role in potentially
lucrative opportunities; public policies/laws target these factors more than
supply-side factors
Labor markets vs. commodity markets - ✔✔Workers are not standardized, there
is a multiplicity of markets, there is no central clearing house, there is continuity
of the employment relationship, workers deliver themselves along w/ their labor,
and workers may have bargaining power
3 theories of discrimination - ✔✔Taste-based discrimination, statistical
discrimination, status characteristics
Taste-based discrimination - ✔✔Decision makers may be biased against
interacting w/ a particular group, primarily due to aversion; similar to overt
prejudice; first theory to argue that in the long run, a competitive market should
eliminate discriminatory practices because orgs w/ biased decision makers lose
out on talented workers
Statistical discrimination - ✔✔Drawing on relevant group-level performance to
assess an individual that is a member of that group; similar to profiling
Status characteristics - ✔✔Expectations decision makers may hold about the ideal
behaviors & relative performance of different demographic groups; similar to
