Labor Control and Worker Identity Meaning Making: The Culture of Motherhood and Education.

Abstract

Social scientists have long concerned themselves with the question of how employers manage their employees (Burawoy, 1979). The literature shows that employers control their workforces in different ways, including: physical control (Marx 1844), emotional control (Hochschild 2003), and control using gender stereotypes (Leidner 1991). However, little attention has been paid to the management of women working in the low-wage labor market and in non-traditional workspaces and their response to those control mechanisms. This thesis examines how employer control functions in a largely low-income female labor force. The study site was Love Dreams, a direct selling organization specializing in sexual enhancement products. The research question informed by Burawoy’s (1979) work on labor control is: how does Love Dreams manufacture labor control consent in a decentralized work environment? And in addition: how do workers make meaning of their work identity under these labor control mechanisms? This ethnographic case study uses the theoretical framework of symbolic interactionism based on a constructionism epistemology. Interviews and field notes were taped, transcribed, and entered into a qualitative program, MAXqda, for purposes of analysis.

Findings show that Love Dreams exerted labor control over its workforce through the practice of cultural shilling, a social process that used familiar social identities to entice compliance. Cultural shilling consisted of two components. First, the company created a culture of motherhood that was comfortable and attractive to women because it gave them a feeling of belonging, thus ensuring loyalty. Second, the company offered continuous education, in conjunction with the Kinsey Institute, on sexual behaviors and products thereby medicalizing sexuality and empowering women by making them experts in their field. Together the cultural shilling practices resulted in a loyal, highly educated and compliant labor force. This thesis contributes to the labor control literature by considering the cultural practices used to manage a marginalized workforce in a decentralized business. With the emergence of new and increasingly diverse work environments come challenges to existing knowledge on labor control. Future research should focus on other non-traditional work environments as well as other marginalized work forces to better understand evolving management practices.