Modernization theory

About: Modernization theory is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 14641 publications have been published within this topic receiving 232469 citations.

Modernization of the chinese family business

Abstract: In order to study the modernization of the Chinese family business, the contrast between formal rationality and substantive rationality was used to characterize significant features of Western culture and Chinese culture respectively. A theoretical model of Chinese social behaviors as influenced by the substantive ethics of Confucianism was adopted to describe the organizational behaviors which were frequently observed in Chinese family business. Several empirical studies comparing organizational climates as perceived by employees working in foreign-invested business, private business with Formal regulations, and family business were cited to support the argument that such Confucian virtues as loyalty to the organization, working hard, maintaining interpersonal harmony, etc., are most likely to be manifested in organizations where formal regulations of Western-style management were enforced.

Labors Appropriate to Their Sex: Gender, Labor, and Politics in Urban Chile, 1900–1930

Abstract: In Labors Appropriate to Their Sex Elizabeth Quay Hutchison addresses the plight of working women in early twentieth-century Chile, when the growth of urban manufacturing was transforming the contours of women’s wage work and stimulating significant public debate, new legislation, educational reform, and social movements directed at women workers. Challenging earlier interpretations of women’s economic role in Chile’s industrial growth, which took at face value census figures showing a dramatic decline in women’s industrial work after 1907, Hutchison shows how the spread of industrial sweatshops and changing definitions of employment in the census combined to make female labor disappear from census records at the same time that it was in fact burgeoning in urban areas. In addition to population and industrial censuses, Hutchison culls published and archival sources to illuminate such misconceptions and to reveal how women’s paid labor became a locus of anxiety for a society confronting social problems—both real and imagined—that were linked to industrialization and modernization. The limited options of working women were viewed by politicians, elite women, industrialists, and labor organizers as indicative of a society in crisis, she claims, yet their struggles were also viewed as the potential springboard for reform. Labors Appropriate to Their Sex thus demonstrates how changing norms concerning gender and work were central factors in conditioning the behavior of both male and female workers, relations between capital and labor, and political change and reform in Chile. This study will be rewarding for those whose interests lie in labor, gender, or Latin American studies; as well as for those concerned with the histories of early feminism, working-class women, and sexual discrimination in Latin America.

Borrowed Men on Borrowed Time: Globalization, Labour Migration and Local Economies in Alberta

Abstract: Josephine Smart Prairie Centre of Excellence for Research on Immigration and Integration (PCERII) www.pcerii.metropolis.globalx.net Department of Anthropology, The University of Calgary Calgary, AB T2N 1N4 NAFTA is part of the evolving entrenchment in globalization and the consolidation of the post-Fordist/postmodern era. Globalization is not a new phenomenon, but its intensification since the 70s in the form of industrial restructuring and trade liberalization has created a new set of economic and social conditions that have far reaching impacts for countries around the world. Moody (1995) suggests that the deindustrialization in the Canada-US rust belt gave rise to the "shanty industrialization" in Mexico; formerly well-paid, often unionized workers in the north are replaced or displaced by a growing body of "contingent workers" both at home and in partner countries. A central feature of globalization in the current era is the increased mobility of capital aided by both formal and informal free trade agreements (NAFTA, APEC, EU; ASEAN) and policies of modernization/development. This increased mobility of capital is driven by and in turn supports a drive towards increased flexibility of production systems (Drache and Gertler 1991) and flexible workforce deployment (Moody 1995) within and across territorial boundaries. In the discussion of the increasing flexibilization of labour in Canada, the primary focus is on the changing work conditions and employment patterns for Canadian workers. NAFTA is said to be the cause of the permanent loss of "hundreds of thousands well-paying, skilled" jobs in Canada as the jobs crossed the line "in droves into low-wage southern states or to the maquiladoras in Mexico" (Darcy 1992:x). Canadian workers come under the pressure to accept lower wages and inferior social programmes, while the Mexican workers will remain exploited by multinational capital (Darcy 1992). Many workers, especially women, become an "on-call, part-time labour force" (Bourque 1992:160) like the supermarket cashiers in Deborah Barndt's study (1998). Bourque (1992) suggests that the existing polarization and segmentation of the Canadian workforce will become even more so in the form of "a small number of core workers, largely white....[and] a large contingent of peripheral workers. Most of these part-time workers will be women, the majority, immigrant and visible minority women. The core workers will be multi-skilled, technologically trained workers; the majority of these will be men." Similar to Barndt's findings, a recent paper by Preston and Giles (1997) also supports the above suggestion of immigrant women being an important component of the polarized labour force in Canadian economy. Overall, the outcome of globalization is seen as a strategic transformation that boosts the power of multinational corporations (Sinclair 1992, Brecher et al. 1993). It is less favourable for the workers who are faced with increasing job insecurity, wage polarization and demand on flexibility in skill and working conditions (Dreche and Gertler 1991, Levine 1995, Smith et al. 1997, Smith 1997). Labour Flexibility and Temporary Workers from Abroad Within the Canadian economy, we clearly see a rise in part-time work and self-employment since 1976 (see tables 1, 2 and 3). At the same time, the flexibilization of labour is expressed in the form of temporary and seasonal employment that involves a rising number of foreign nationals. There are an estimated 80 million non-nationals abroad in 1990 (Mehmet 1997), a significant proportion of whom are engaged in contractually limited employment ranging from professionals to domestics (Myrah 1997, Grandea 1997). This global mobility of labour is largely driven by economic reasons. Labour tends to move from the poor countries to the rich countries. The majority of temporary workers take on `the socially least regarded jobs, which were often the worst paid or least secure, that could not be filled with nationals'. …

Modernizing Muscovy : Reform and Social Change in Seventeenth-Century Russia

Abstract: Introduction 1. Modernization in the Early Modern Context: The Case of Muscovy Jarmo Kotilaine and Marshall Poe Background 2. The Sixteenth-Century Background Janet Martin The State and its Servants 3. The Expanding Role of the State in Russia Richard Hellie 4. The Evolution of Bureaucratic Administration in Seventeenth-Century Russia Peter Brown 5. Modernization of Law in Seventeenth-Century Muscovy George Weickhardt 6. Absolutism and the New Men of Seventeenth-Century Russia Marshall Poe 7. The Assembly of the Land (Zemskii Sobor) as a Representative Institution Donald Ostrowski The Economy 8. Mercantilism in Pre-Petrine Russia Jarmo T. Kotilaine 9. Arel, The Archangel Trade, Empty State Coffers, and the Drive to Modernize: State Monopolization of Russian 10. Export Commodities under Mikhail Fedorovich Maria Solomen The Military and International Relations 11. Muscovy and the Thirty Years' War: Porshnev's Missing Link Paul Dukes 12. European Mercenary Officers in the Armies of Seventeenth-Century Muscovy: A Re-examination of the Modernization Model William M. Reger, IV 13. Modernizing the Military: Peter the Great and Military Reform Carol B. Stevens 14. The Musketeer's Rebellion of 1698: An Episode of Resistance to Late Muscovite Modernization Graeme Herd Religion and Culture 15. Church Reform and the White Clergy in Seventeenth-Century Russia Debra Coulter 16. The Patriarch's Rivals: Local Strongmen and the Limits of Church Reform During the Seventeenth-Century Georg Michels The Arts and Sciences 17. Secularization and Westernization Revisited: The Visual Arts in Seventeenth-Century Russia Lindsey Hughes 18. The Administration of Western Medicine in Seventeenth-Century Russia Eve Levin 19. A Jesuit Aristotle in Seventeenth-Century Russia: Cosmology and the Planetary System in the Slavo-Greek-Latin Academy Nikos Chrissidis Self and Society 20. Kollmann Society, Identity and Modernity in Seventeenth-Century Russia Nancy Shields 21. Discovering Individualism Among the Deceased: Gravestones in Early Modern Russia Daniel H. Kaiser Afterword 22. The Legacy of Seventeenth-Century Reform in Petrine Times Paul Bushkovitch