Dic & check: work ethic

work ethic:

1. A set of values based on the moral virtues of hard work and diligence.
2. a belief in the moral value of work.

.... The American Heritage, Collins Essential

※ 메모: work ethic의 사전적 정의는 위와 같지만, 그렇다고 "근로윤리", "작업윤리", "일의 도덕성", 혹은 더 나아가 "근로 기강"으로 이해하기에는 영어권 문화에서의 쓰임과 괴리가 꽤 커보인다. 아래에 불완전해보이지만 위키피디아를 붙여둔다. 일단은...

자료: Wikipedia, http://www.answers.com/topic/work-ethic

Work ethic is a set of values based on hard work and diligence. It is also a belief in the moral benefit of work and its ability to enhance character. An example would be the Protestant work ethic. A work ethic may include being reliable, having initiative or maintaining social skills. (중략)

Promotion of Work Ethic concept

Steven Malanga refers to "what was once understood as the work ethic—not just hard work but also a set of accompanying virtues, whose crucial role in the development and sustaining of free markets too few now recall.^[1]

Weber quotes the ethical writings of Benjamin Franklin:

Remember, that time is money. He that can earn ten shillings a day by his labor, and goes abroad, or sits idle, one half of that day, though he spends but sixpence during his diversion or idleness, ought not to reckon that the only expense; he has really spent, or rather thrown away, five shillings besides. ... Remember, that money is theprolific, generating nature. Money can beget money, and its offspring can beget more, and so on. Five shillings turned is six, turned again is seven and threepence, and so on, till it becomes a hundred pounds. The more there is of it, the more it produces every turning, so that the profits rise quicker and quicker. He that kills a breeding sow, destroys all her offspring to the thousandth generation. He that murders a crown, destroys all that it might have produced, even scores of pounds.(Italics in the original)

Weber notes that this is not a philosophy of mere greed, but a statement laden with moral language. Indeed, Franklin claims that God revealed to him the usefulness of virtue.^[2]

Criticism of Work Ethic concept

Slacker and hippie cultures have challenged these values in recent times.

In the 19th century, the Arts and Crafts movement of William Morris in the UK and Elbert Hubbardin the US noted how "alienation" of workers from ownership of the tools of production and their work product was destructive of the work ethic because in the expanding firms of that era, the workers saw no point in doing more than the minimum.^{[citation needed]}

The industrial engineer Frederick Taylor revised the notion of work ethic to include giving up control over the work process to management so that the latter could study and "rationalize" the work process, and the notion of work ethic thereafter included acknowledgment of management control.

Marxists, and most non-Marxist sociologists, make short shrift of "work ethic" as a useful sociological concept. They argue having a "work ethic" in excess of management's control doesn't appear rational in any mature industry where the employee can't rationally hope to become more than a manager whose fate still depends on the owner's decisions. The French Leftistphilosopher André Gorz wrote:

"The work ethic has become obsolete. It is no longer true that producing more means working more, or that producing more will lead to a better way of life. The connection between more and better has been broken; our needs for many products and services are already more than adequately met, and many of our as-yet- unsatisfied needs will be met not by producing more, but by producing differently, producing other things, or even producing less. This is especially true as regards our needs for air, water, space, silence, beauty, time and human contact. Neither is it true any longer that the more each individual works, the better off everyone will be. The present crisis has stimulated technological change of an unprecedented scale and speed: `the micro-chip revolution'. The object and indeed the effect of this revolution has been to make rapidly increasing savings in labour, in the industrial, administrative and service sectors. Increasing production is secured in these sectors by decreasing amounts of labour. As a result, the social process of production no longer needs everyone to work in it on a full-time basis. The work ethic ceases to be viable in such a situation and workbased society is thrown into crisis." André Gorz, Critique of Economic Reason,Gallilé,1989

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