The Working Life: The Promise and Betrayal of Modern Work,
by Joanne B. Ciulla New York, Times Books, 2000, 266 pp.

Joanne Ciulla presents a historical and philosophical overview of work -- its varying meanings, its historical evolution, and the current paradoxes in modern institutions, worker expectations, and management trends of the 1980’s and 90’s. Dr. Ciulla currently holds the Coston Family Chair in Leadership and Ethics at the Jepson School of Leadership Studies at the University of Richmond. She was formerly a Senior Fellow at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and was also a Post Doctoral

Ciulla’s underlying question is how work came to hold so much power in our lives. She argues that work “often promises to contribute more to our lives than it can deliver”, that “we have gone beyond the work ethic, which endowed work with moral value, and now dangerously depend on our jobs to be the primary source of our identity, the mainspring of individual self-esteem and happiness.”

She draws from interesting literary and historical sources throughout the book, examples: Aristotle, Aesop (“The Grasshopper and the Ant” to address the question, To work or not to work?), Studs Terkel (of course), the poet Lucretius, philosopher Hannah Arendt, Friedrich Engels, the Old Testament (Genesis), theologians, economists, play writers, etc.

I thought Ciulla’s look at work through the lens of history from the ancient Greeks through the present (chapters 3-9) was the strongest part of the book. She addresses what work provided, the meaning of work, who worked and why and has a way of getting her readers to look at work with unexpected insights. She succinctly summarizes historical periods or trends. Here is an example how she summarizes one historical period, the ancient Greeks through Calvin and Luther, “We have been looking at how religion shaped the moral value of work. The ancients saw work as a necessity and a curse. The medieval Catholic Church bestowed on work a simple dignity; the Renaissance humanist gave it glamour. But the Protestants endowed work with the quest for meaning, identity, and signs of salvation.” (p. 52)

She continues in the next chapter, “When you detach the work ethic from its religious moorings, there isn’t much to recommend it. Why should people work hard, if there is nothing in it for them? Why is it that the man who works at a job that pays subsistence wages is considered good and not stupid? It’s possible to believe abstractly in the work ethic, but if one was to live by it, the ethic had to make sense. For most people, work had to promise something a little closer to home than heaven.”

Ciulla highlights some interesting observations about business in the early nineteenth century:

Ciulla’s analysis continues through the Industrial Revolution with the development between 1900 and 1930 of three innovations and initiatives which fundamentally changed the nature of work and shaped the workplace as we know it today: scientific management, welfare capitalism and the human relations approach to management. (Chapter 6 Taming the Worker)

She provides a concise and readable review of recent management theories, connecting them with historical antecedents and providing a quick summary of their promises and results. Ciulla admits her bias, criticizing “modern management for focusing more on trying to make one feel good than on creating a just workplace“ and for reshaping “the social significance of work so that work slowly took over a larger slice of our lives.” Her chapter (9) Betrayal, about the massive layoffs during the 90’s and the effect on workers is excellent. “General cynicism about employers has permeated the popular culture. Scott Adams’s comic strip Dilbert is probably the best and most accurate critique of what many today think about work.” (p.163)

I thought in Ciulla’s last section “Work and Life” lost focus. She attempted to make connections between work and time, speed, the relation between home and work, the culture of busy-ness, leisure and consumption, and the “mother of all philosophic questions: What is the meaning of life?”, but it felt too scattered and only skimmed the surface with illustrations or explanations that supported her point of view, which became clearer and more obvious toward the end of the book.

In her final chapter Ciulla asks, “Has work gotten better? Is there more fairness in the workplace? Are individuals treated better? Has work improved our lives? While work may improve the material conditions of life, does it improve the quality of our lives? Do our jobs make us better persons?” Ciulla concludes that employers have over promised what they can provide. Ciulla has a strong admonition against activities such as prayer meetings in the workplace and well meaning attempts like it. “In an environment where employment is precarious, it is important for people to be connected to activities and organizations unrelated to work. In this way they build more stability into their lives…In a world where job security is increasingly fragile, we need to move away from entrusting important elements of our welfare and social life to employers.” (p. 231)

About the topic of vocation and calling, Ciulla is confusing. On the one hand she writes, “Meaningful work is something that we have to find on our own. We may not be able to define it, but we know it when we see it. While some occupations, such as religious service, appear to be inherently meaningful they still are meaningful only if the person who engages in them finds them so. Meaningful work is not always a bed of roses…However, having meaningful work energizes one’s life as a whole.” (p. 226) Ciulla’s final bit of advice when discussing the dilemma of “the problem of rising expectations, rising frustrations, and numerous choices and rewards” is “Yet if we are willing to make some trade-offs between an interesting or prestigious job, consumption, leisure, and security, we can gain control and possibly improve the quality of our lives.” (p. 234)

Reviewed by Susan O. Lane, 7/2002