Reflections on a 30-Year Career of Research on Work and Personality by Melvin Kohn and Colleagues

An overview of Melvin Kohn's 3 decades of research, suggesting that Kohn broke ground by showing that class-related patterns had causal explanations in the conditions of people's work lives, & workers were affected by both the structural conditions of the workplace & the self-const...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Sociological forum (Randolph, N.J.) N.J.), 1998-03, Vol.13 (1), p.169-181
Main Author: Spenner, Kenneth I.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Environmental sociology
Inertia
Personality
Research design
Review Essays
Social Class
Social classes
Social psychology
Social research
Social self
Social Stratification
Social Structure
Social structures
Sociological Research
Species
Work Environment
Workplaces
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Summary:An overview of Melvin Kohn's 3 decades of research, suggesting that Kohn broke ground by showing that class-related patterns had causal explanations in the conditions of people's work lives, & workers were affected by both the structural conditions of the workplace & the self-construction of their world. He was among the first to apply nonrecursive structural equation models & to use cross-sectional data to extend core findings to classic sociological problems. Kohn's research was impacted by changes in the social environment, as evidenced by his late-1980s conceptualization of social class in discrete Marxist categories, & the significance of class vs stratification in the relationship between work & personality. It is argued that, despite some weaknesses, Kohn's body of work redirected the field of social structure & personality, & opened new avenues for future research. 16 References. J. Lindroth
ISSN:0884-8971
1573-7861
DOI:10.1023/A:1022120401296