How We View Work: A Historical Perspective

Douglas J. Cremer ()
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Douglas J. Cremer: Woodbury University

Chapter Chapter 1 in The Palgrave Handbook of Fulfillment, Wellness, and Personal Growth at Work, 2023, pp 3-18 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Our experience of work has been changed by massive industrial, technological, and communicative revolutions. In an increasingly globalized economy, there has been a shift toward automation in advanced industrial societies and a rapid increase of industrialized labor in other regions of the world. Along the way, we began to experience work less as a process resulting in a series of accomplishments and more as a cycle of repetitive, partial, and unending tasks, whether on the assembly line or in the office cubicle. The world of personal life, regularly taking care of daily needs and desires, has merged with the world of occupational work in its rhythms and repetitions, making them virtually indistinguishable. Labor and work with and among other people have moved from being seen as a means to particular ends, whether the caretaking of domestic life, the provision of material means for life, or a meaningful activity taken with others, toward something in which either caretaking, provision, or meaning seem distant and unreachable goals. Understanding how and why we got to this place in our experience of work is essential to grasping what can be done to reveal a sense of fulfillment in our personal and working lives.

Keywords: Work; Labor; Domestic; Industry; Fulfillment; Happiness; Meaning (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-031-35494-6_1

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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-35494-6_1

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