1962/01/01 by Harry R. Dick
Health Professions · Social Sciences · #Employment and Welfare Studies #Labor Movements and Unions
paper · doi:10.1111/j.1533-8525.1962.tb01545.x
W HITE-COLLAR workers are generally recognized as occupying an intermediate position in the American status hierarchy, below the managerial class but above the industrial worker. Indeed, the white-collar group is often regarded as the most representative in our society, the most typically middle class.' It is another significant part of the white-collar stereotype that the white-collarite is upwardly oriented and that he tends to be indentified more closely with the managerial than the laboring class. The managerial class, according to this stereotype, serves as his reference group; he tends to adopt the management point of view, presumably in hopes of some day rising to membership in that status group. However, working conditions have changed in recent times in a way that might suggest that a significant change may be under way in white-collar attitudes. The industrialization process, with its rationalization of business and industry, its emphasis upon specialization and mechanization, has some tendency to freeze workers at their occupational levels. It has made it increasingly difficult for the whitecollar worker to advance to a management position. At the same time, the routinization of many white-collar jobs, plus substantial improvements in blue-collar working conditions, have tended to blur some of the traditional distinctions between these two groups. Hence, it is not illogical to suspect that a change in orientation may be in process, one in which the white-collar worker is increasingly alienated from management and drawn more closely toward the laborer.