"The Essential Functions of the Position: Collegiality and Productivity"--Job Analysis in Mad at School?

While I was reading the third chapter of Mad at School, I was struck by how much this idea of the "essential functions of the position" resonates with Industrial and Organizational Psychology.  After I read Wilson's chapter on Job Analysis (which I reflected on earlier), I was struck by this idea that the ADA really impacted job analysis by requiring jobs to determine "essential functions" (Wilson 227).  This created a greater need for the work of job analysis and pushed on the field in this direction.  I really think that what Price is doing in chapter 3 is job analysis--she's examining what the essential functions are of an academic job and then pushing the envelope.

This seems to be needed because while the corporate sector has gotten into practicing job analysis while advertising positions, this hasn't really infiltrated academia yet.  Yes, administrative and secretarial and janitorial etc. positions on campus often have very thorough job analysis reports, but with the more intellectual labor on campus, this seems to be absent.  What are the essential functions of being a professor?  Research, teaching, service, (and collegiality?) of course!  But wait: what do those even mean?  And what do they mean for people who are instructors and not professors?  For grad students and not instructors or professors?  For someone with mental disabilities?

Price asks,

What are the 'essential functions' (Americans with Disabilities Act) of academic employment--specifically, employment as a faculty member?  How are those functions defined, evaluated, and rewarded?  What happens to faculty with mental disabilities in this system?  And finally, how might recognition and accommodation of faculty members with mental disabilities enrich academic discourse?  What might 'universal design' come to mean if it is applied in professional kairotic spaces?  (105)

These are excellent questions.  I think that Price does a good job of showing how these essential functions of research, teaching, and service (and collegiality) are problematic, how they're rewarded (tenure), and what happens (people fall out of the system).  While she does address ways to change, I don't know if any of them feel super accessible to me.  I want change!  I do!  But I'm still not really sure how after this chapter.

Going back to the idea that I want change, this passage stood out to me:

Is it possible that fluency in kairotic space is an essential function of an academic job?  Is it true that a faculty member who is unable--perhaps occasionally, perhaps often--to make predictable, material appearances in kairotic space, or who is unable to operate smoothly in such spaces, is unqualified?  Are we ready to say that people with sever depression, or schizophrenia, or agoraphobia, cannot be professors?  I want to say no; I want to imagine an academic workplace where accommodations for mental disability are feasible, where we can bring our differences to work in ways that enrich our students, our colleagues, and ourselves. (112)

Huh.  Part of me feels like many in the field have come to believe that one of the essential functions of the professorate is a "sound mind."  But, that's obviously not the case.  How do we challenge this, though?  I mean, I'm just a grad student--I don't currently make decisions on hiring or tenure or anything really, so what can I do?

Okay, now that these feelings of helplessness are out there, here's something more uplifting: "But still more valuable to me have been those occasions on which my nondisabled allies have chosen to speak out" (133).  This reminds me of a TED lecture that I watched last night about the "bystander approach" to sexual violence prevention.  It's the idea that those who are affiliated with people who are being abused or doing the abusing can take a "leadership opportunity" to either help the person out of the abusive situation or to confront the abuser.  I have seen similar discussions in WGST about speaking out when others say things that are racist, sexist, homophobic, etc--that silence is consent.  I have trouble with this idea of silence as consent, because it assumes the person seeing/hearing has the power and position and ability to do the confronting, but I think it comes from a good place.  And I see this here too.  So, maybe one thing I can do is question people when they try to pathologize students, peers, professors or support my peers, students, and professors.

Overall, I think this is a really interesting chapter not only because it invokes I-O job analysis, but also because it aims to improve the working conditions of academics. The tenure clock and division of research/teaching/service doesn't work for everyone, but not everyone can choose not to get tenure or not to do research (because of needing health insurance, for example)--we need to be honest about this!  Discussions are starting in regards to what the professoriate even means: this should be one of the first things universities do.  Conduct job analysis.  Determine the essential functions.  Restructure departments to make positions more accessible.

I really think we can do this :)

Price, Margaret.  "The Essential Functions of The Position: Collegiality and Productivity."  Mad At School: Rhetorics of Mental Disability and Academic Life. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2011.  103-140.  Print

"The Expanding Role of Workplace Training"

 I don't have time now to do my full reflection, so I'll come back to this over the weekend.  However, I do want to say that I think pieces from this could be useful for thinking about how we train writing teachers and how the training of these teachers has developed over time.

Also, the author looks at four time periods in which workplace training was expanding:

• 1900-1930, Scientific Management Era
• 1930-1960, Human Relations Era
• 1960-1990, Participative Management Era
• 1990-present, Strategic Learning Era  (281).

I think it's super interesting how each author divides the last century into movements and then explains what happened during that time.  However, almost everyone has different divisions.  Why?

----

Here's an updated reflection on this piece as of 5/9:

When examining these four time periods when workplace training was expanding, the authors ask what the training looked like, what themes dominated, and what advancements were made (281). They could the following:

• 1900-1930 focused on efficiency (no surprise) and most training was done on site or in factory schools (282) with the model being "show, tell, do, check" (283).  In addition, machines had a large role with humans assisting the machines (rather than machines assisting humans): "Machines existed to simplify and standardize work, and workers existed to supplement what machines could not do on their own" (282).  Sounds like a fun time to have a job, right? :(
• 1930-1960 focused on worker attitudes and training with professionals.   There was a "growing appreciation for the importance of worker attitudes and motivation as well as for the changing role of the supervisor and the increasing complexity of work" (285).  I think this is key--work was getting harder.  Supervisory roles were complicated.  Thus, a position just for training was developed.  While this era focused on worker attitudes, it was still about the benefit of the organization, to "bring about the greatest returns to both the worker and the organization" (286).  Job rotation was also developed as a training tool at this time (287) and assessment for training was developed (289).
• 1960-1990 was similar to the previous era in that training methods continued to be developed, but the focus was more on assessment and self-efficacy: "social cognitive theories began to emphasize the role of self-efficacy in self-regulated behavior" (291) and "I-O Psychologists became even less interested in training methods and instead focused on assessment and design functions" (292)--I see this kind of relating to Rhet/Comp in the 80s/90s when so much focus went on assessing programs and people kind of declined in talking about the work of training up new graduate students.  I wonder what the larger cultural impulse was to make this happen in both fields?
• 1990 to present issued the development of the "corporate university" (297) whereby universities became training tools for jobs.

In conclusion, the authors write:

As jobs have become more cognitively based and as accountability for work outcomes has been more diffused, responsibility for defining and executing training has been shifted from supervisors to training professionals to the workers themselves. (304).

 Again, I see this happening in Rhet/Comp with the teaching of English 1000.  Work outcomes and job descriptions aren't as solidified any more.  Responsibilities for training are muddled.  Who teaches these people to be teachers?  Sometimes they teach themselves, sometimes they take a class, sometimes they have a mentor.  There isn't really one way.  In many ways I think this is good--we don't want robot teachers who all do the same things. However, this can also put a lot of pressure on teachers.  How could we improve this if the general impulse for most careers is going this way?



Kraiger, Kurt, and J. Kevin Ford.  "The Expanding Role of Workplace Training: Themes and Trends Influencing Training Research and Practice." Historical Perspectives in Industrial and Organizational Psychology.  Eds. Laura L. Koppes, et al.  Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2007. 281-310.

"A History of Job Analysis"

I thought I was going to read this chapter -- Lowman, Rodney L., John Kantor, and Robert Perloff.  "A History of I-O Psychology Educational Programs in the United States." 111-138. -- However, there really wasn't anything relevant in it.  It really was a history of almost every I-O Pyschology program, but it was based more on location and people than theories and ideologies.  So, it wasn't that relevant.

I skimmed over the chapters after this, one on formal and informal organizations, another on the military, another on employee selection, and none of these seemed that relevant either.  Then I hit "A  History of Job Analysis" by Mark Wilson, and I found some things that I think might be useful.

Wilson defines job analysis as "the process of collecting, organizing, analyzing and documenting information about work" (219).  It's largely a descriptive process and is one of the first steps when investigating most issues within I-O psychology (219).  Wilson's goal in this chapter is to provide a history of job analysis (219).  He does this by providing a history of job analysis over the century, organizing this into schools of thought, and then making conclusions about the field.  The time periods that he focuses on include:

• The industrial age, 1903-1940
• The golden era, 1841-1980
• The information age, 1981-2003

While Wilson goes over these schools of thought and conclusions, these didn't appear to be as relevant for my study.  However, I did learn a lot about key social forces that impacted job analysis in the industrial, golden, and information ages.

In the industrial age, the key events impacting job analysis included: "the passage of the National Labor Relations Act in 1935 and the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938" (224).  This gave workers the right to collective bargaining and set up rules for which jobs had working hour requirements and overtime rules (224).  This resulted in a division between labor and management which have continued to be divided (224).

In the golden era, the key events that impacted job analysis were the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and the Civil Rights Act of 1963 (Title VII) (225).  I knew this before, but Wilson goes into a bit more detail with what the implications of this were, writing "The Equal Pay act identified four compensable factors (skill, effort, responsibility, working conditions) on which jobs must be compared to determine their worth" (225).  Also, "Title VII of the Civil Rights Act was interpreted to require that nearly all employment-related decisions need to be job related" (225).  Wilson also states that, "It was during this era that 'management' as a job became increasingly important and influential in work life" (227).

In the information age, the key event that impacted job analysis "was the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA)" (227).  Wilson explains that "the ADA requires that employers examine their jobs to determine 'essential functions' as the basis of determining eligibility for work by disabled applicants" (227).  Wilson also explains that the call center worker typifies the era because of ht combination of technology and information economy (229).

Again, I'm finding myself most interested in the historical development of the field.  Wilson reinforced what I read in other chapters about other acts and outside forces impacting the development of the field.  What I'd like to learn more about, though, is HOW the ADA, Civil Rights Act, Equal Pay Act, etc actually impacted the field.  What changes had to be made? I'm also interested in this development of a manager.  It reminds me of Donna's book and the development of the managerial unconscious in Writing programs.  I'm seeing similar things happen here in I-O Psychology.

This idea of job analysis is also getting my interested in relation to my teaching. Hmmm. Could I have my students do job analysis research?  If so, what would be the point?  What would they get out of it?  What would it look like?


 Wilson, Mark A. "A History of Job Analysis."  Historical Perspectives in Industrial and Organizational Psychology.  Eds. Laura L. Koppes, et al.  Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2007. 219-242. Print