SOCIOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF SKILL
| Published date | 01 March 1970 |
| Author | Philip Sadler |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8543.1970.tb00569.x |
| Date | 01 March 1970 |
SOCIOLOGICAL
ASPECTS
OF
SKILL
PHILIP
SADLER*
INTRODUCTION
IN
recent years ergonomists and industrial sociologists have found con-
siderable common ground in the study of the impact of technological
change on work. The former have been concerned mainly with the ways
in which new technologies affect the activities and skill requirements of
the individual worker and with studies of newly emerging man-machine
systems. The latter have turned their attention more to the impact of
technological change at the level of the total organizational system and
on the occupational structure of industrial society. Conceptions of skill
and ideas about levels of skill are highly relevant to both lines of enquiry,
but in bringing the two approaches together
a
problem arises, in that ‘skill’
as
defined for the purposes of ergonomics research
is
something different
from ‘skill’ as an element in the social structure of a manufacturing plant
or
the occupational structure of an industrial society. The purpose
of
this
paper
is
to demonstrate the existence of two sets of ideas about
skills,
to
show how they relate to each other in occupational life, and to examine
the implications
for
technical progress.
THE
DIFFERENT
CONCEPTIONS
OF
‘SKILL’
From
the standpoint of ergonomics research,
‘skill’
is
usually defined in
terms
of
the specific activities involved in the performance of
a
task.
Welford,’ for example, states that skilled performance has three character-
istics
:
a)
organized and coordinated activity in relation to an object
or
b) activity which is learned in the course ofrepeated experience;
c)
activity which
is
serial in that each stage of the activity
is
dependent
Borger and Seabornea point out that this conception of skill can be
applied to an individual or class of individuals performing closely similar
activities as well as to an activity. It is appropriate to talk of an individual
possessing
skill
as
well
as
of an activity demanding
skill.
Borger and Seaborne3 also point out, however, that in industry skill
‘is essentially a status term’. Whether
or
not a worker is classified as ‘skilled’
display
;
on the previous one and influences the next.
*Principal, Ashridge Management College, Berkhamsted, Herts.
a
R.
Borger and
A.
E.
M. Seaborne,
The
Psyhology
of
Learning,
Pelican
Books,
1966,
p. 127
a
Borger and Seaborne,
op.
cit.,
p.
128
22
A.
T.
Welford,
Skill
Md
Age,
Oxford University
Press,
1951
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