Workplace technology use may increase both employees’ distress and productivity

As technology has become an inescapable part of most workplaces, it has become ever more important to understand its impact on employees. Using data from two surveys of U.S. workers, Noelle Chesley examines the effects of both personal and job-related technology use. She finds that increased technology use, especially when it extends work into personal life, is linked with higher levels of worker distress. However, it is also associated with gains in productivity, and personal technology use at work may help employees to manage work-related stress

The end of the career mystique? Policy and cultural frameworks that structure the work-family interface in the United States and Germany

'In den USA und in Deutschland prägt ein falscher Karriereglaube die Vorstellung des Normallebenslaufs; der Glaube nämlich, dass lebenslange, kontinuierliche und aufstiegsorientierte Erwerbsarbeit der Schlüssel zu einem beruflich und privat erfolgreichen Leben sei. Dieser 'Karrierewahn' ist die Kehrseite des 'Weiblichkeitswahns' (Friedan 1963) der 1950er Jahre; beide kulturelle Leitbilder versinnbildlichten die Trennung der Sphären von Beruf und Familie nach Geschlecht und fanden ihren Ausdruck im Ernährermodell als Norm des Familienlebens. Im Arbeitsmarkt und im Modus der sozialen Absicherung ist die Erwartung lebenslanger Erwerbsarbeit reifiziert, und Männer und Frauen streben heute eine kontinuierliche Vollzeittätigkeit an. So haben immer weniger Beschäftigte eine 'Hausfrau', die sie in ihrer Karriere unterstützt. Erst recht wenn Arbeitnehmer(innen) Eltern werden, brechen die Konflikte zwischen den Anforderungen der Erwerbsarbeit und der erhöhten Sorge- und Hausarbeit voll auf. Bei der Geburt von Kindern werden Berufs- und Familienrollen in der Paarbeziehung neu konfiguriert; die Vereinbarkeitsmodelle, die Paare dann wählen, sind mit geprägt durch Gelegenheitsstrukturen des jeweiligen wohlfahrtsstaatlichen, institutionellen und kulturellen Kontexts. In diesem Beitrag richten wir den Fokus auf drei Fallbeispiele (die USA, West- und Ostdeutschland), um darzustellen, wie wohlfahrtsstaatliche Politik und kulturelle Schemata zusammenspielen, und dabei bestimmte, geschlechtertypisierende Erwerbsmuster bei Elternpaaren und damit soziale Ungleichheiten hervorbringen und verstärken.' (Autorenreferat)'Both Germany and the United States endorse the culture of the 'career mystique,' the belief that a lifetime of continuous hard work is the path to occupational and personal success. The career mystique was the mirror image of the feminine mystique in the 1950s, and both cultural templates together reified a gendered work-family divide epitomized in the breadwinner-homemaker family norm in the middle of the 20th century. Today men and women increasingly see continuous full-time paid work as 'given,' with policies in Germany and the US reifying this pattern. However, very few employees - men or women - now have the luxury of a full-time homemaker available to support the commitment necessary to sustain this lock-step career mystique path. Most notably, as workers become parents, the contradictions inherent in fulfilling the career mystique (absent reliable back-up on the domestic front) become obvious and problematic. Since couples frequently reconfigure both work and family roles with the arrival of children, we illustrate the significance of policy, institutional and cultural contexts in shaping the work/family choices these couples make. We highlight three case examples (the US, West and East Germany) to demonstrate how policy regimes and cultural schema combine to produce distinctive and gendered work patterns, thereby serving to reinforce and reproduce both gender and class disparities.' (author's abstract

Professionals as Change Agents or Instruments of Reproduction? Medical Residents’ Reasoning for Not Sharing the Electronic Health Record Screen with Patients

The stability of physicians’ authority over patients despite decades of changes in medicine conflicts with newer institutionalist accounts of professionals as change agents rather than instruments of reproduction. We analyzed whether the cultural scripts that twenty-one residents used to justify their approach to a new change, the electronic health record (EHR), signaled a leveling of the patient-physician hierarchy. Residents are intriguing because their position makes them open to change. Indeed, residents justified using the EHR in ways that level the patient-physician hierarchy, but also offered rationales that sustain it. For the latter, residents described using the EHR to substantiate their expertise, situate themselves as brokers between patients and the technology, and preserve the autonomy of clinicians. Our findings highlight how professionals with little direct experience before a change can selectively apply incumbent scripts to sustain extant structures, while informing newer institutionalist accounts of professionals and the design of EHR systems

Professionals as Change Agents or Instruments of Reproduction? Medical Residents’ Reasoning for Not Sharing the Electronic Health Record Screen with Patients

The stability of physicians’ authority over patients despite decades of changes in medicine conflicts with newer institutionalist accounts of professionals as change agents rather than instruments of reproduction. We analyzed whether the cultural scripts that twenty-one residents used to justify their approach to a new change, the electronic health record (EHR), signaled a leveling of the patient-physician hierarchy. Residents are intriguing because their position makes them open to change. Indeed, residents justified using the EHR in ways that level the patient-physician hierarchy, but also offered rationales that sustain it. For the latter, residents described using the EHR to substantiate their expertise, situate themselves as brokers between patients and the technology, and preserve the autonomy of clinicians. Our findings highlight how professionals with little direct experience before a change can selectively apply incumbent scripts to sustain extant structures, while informing newer institutionalist accounts of professionals and the design of EHR systems