Work and Occupations

The intrusion of a new group into the power relationships within an occupation shifts the bases upon which segments of an occupational group may build their influence. In the case of doctors in Ontario, the advent of a universal health insurance scheme has brought with it greater control on the part of government over the relationships between doctors and patients. Using Johnson's typology of professional-client relationships, this paper examines the structural supports for increasing power of doctors who teach and research in comparison to community practitioners in Ontario. The implications of such a shift for some aspects of health delivery are examined, as examples of a more general pattern of behavior occurring with greater government control over professional practice.

This paper draws on initial field experiences of the authors as participant observers of family members engaged in household work. Negotiating access and establishing rapport provided more than unusual problems of data collection. Such experiences also generated substantive insights into the characteristics of household work. Discussion focuses on the relationships between features of the household work setting, lack of consensus on the criteria by which household work is judged, and respondent views of household work.

Impressions of male and female medical and nursing students are compared in a sample of high-school students. There are few differences in the ratings of the male and female medical students and both are described as competent and attractive. However, male nursing students are rated as unattractive, unrealistic, and unambitious. The results suggest that men entering a predominantly female profession may be perceived as more deviant than women entering a predominantly male profession.

This paper examines the consequences of the introduction of playleaders into two children's wards in Great Britain: one in Wales, the other in an English hospital. Playleaders' freedom to innovate in their work was found to be limited by the degree of cooperation that they were able to achieve with existing workers in the wards. Negotiations with nurses, teachers, and domestic staff are considered in detail, and an analysis of relative sources of power is presented. It is suggested that the predominant mode of response of staff to playleaders was distancing and isolation, which will pose problems for the greater deployment of playleaders in hospitals, and has consequences for the professional development of play in hospitals.

Tools, costume, and jargon are used as implicit indicators of the occupational socialization process for a sample of apprentice construction electricians (195). The data support the notion that occupational identification increases in a linear fashion as the apprentice moves through a five-year program toward journeyman status.

Hypotheses concerning the moderating effects of job involvement and pro-Protestant ethic attitudes on perceived leader behavior-satisfaction relationships were assessed for a sample of production workers (n = 131). Statistically significant moderating effects were not isolated. However, it was noted that job involvement and pro-Protestant ethic attitudes impacted somewhat differently on the perceived leader behavior-satisfaction relationships examined. The relationship between job involvement and pro-Protestant ethic attitudes was discussed.