12. THE WORK ETHIC AS A MOTIVATION FACTOR. The American Constitution is a secular document, shaped by secular political philosophers, but sanctified with popular attitudes derived from religion, especially from the Protestant Work Ethic (PWE). This impulse imbued the Constitution with the idea of "bettering oneself" and of economic progress, and made it the cornerstone of an American civil religion that drives the economic, political, educational, industrial, and religious activities of a nation. The PWE is a term that is used to describe this principle in America (Kristol, 1987). Overman (1983) supported this position. He researched a collection of commentary on work and play, including sources spanning some three centuries of American history. He noted that the work ethic, in its various forms and shades, perceptibly provided the leitmotif for the American experience in work and play, and was an earlier form of defining work ethic and other types of motivation. In order to better understand the PWE as a motivating factor in humans, research in many diverse areas conducted by educators, businesses, and politicians describes how it enhanced the development of the civilization as we know it, and the way individuals fit into it via their own work ethic. Early Americans were credited with holding the Protestant work ethic, a set of work-related beliefs involving the traits of industriousness, individualism, ascetism, community involvement, and an overall valuing of work as the most worthwhile way to spend one's time. Tang (1988) found that the American work ethic today is not the same as it was in early America. In order to examine whether the American work ethic today was undergoing a significant change, he studied the major characteristics of individuals who endorsed the Protestant work ethic. He investigated the relationships between the Protestant work ethic and some demographic variables in a sample of 689 subjects in the middle Tennessee area. Subjects completed a 25-page questionnaire which included the Mirels-Garrett Protestant Work Ethic Scale and items measuring selected demographic variables. The results revealed that the PWE endorsement was positively related to Republican Party identification and negatively related to age, educational level, employment status, annual income level, and marital status. Hedges (1983) examined indicators that have been used to assess job commitment: statistical series on absence from work; quits; working part time by choice (phenomena generally associated with weak commitment); and multiple job-holding and overtime (often associated with strong commitment). He found that the those who worked full time correlated highest with self- esteem, and a propensity to achieve to the fullest, and those who worked part-time were significantly lower on self-esteem and fulfillment. Super (1982) presented a model for examining the role of work. He discovered the importance of the work ethic and the role of work in meeting people's needs. His results identified in the Work Importance Study identified commitment, participation, and knowledge as the basic motivating components of work or other life-career roles. Stanton (1983) reviewed the decline in productivity and motivation, theories of work motivation, and changes in the work ethic and work attitudes in America. He recommended the revitalization of five essentials of sound management: recruitment and selection, training and development, performance appraisal, supervision, and compensation. He believed that the PWE was not dead, but dormant, due to the evolutionary changes taking place in the economic environment in America and the world. Grant (1982) examined possible reasons for declining employee motivation and found these: greater instability and diversity of values; more guaranteed rewards; inability of rewards to satisfy emerging needs; disappearing work ethic; reduced costs of failure; rising income and progressive taxation; more group production and problem solving; decreased employee loyalty; less supervisory power; shorter time perspectives. He concluded that the PWE was not in demise but was shifting its form and beginning to evolve into a 21st century structure. Maywood (1982) cited three studies which indicated that today's worker is searching for personal significance in his/her job. He considered this problem: what is the role of vocational education in helping our society to build and maintain a reasonable work ethic? No definitive answers were discovered, but he indicated that the work ethic was not in decline but in flux in America for a variety of reasons like the changing economic structure, the advent of the information age, and new and better forms of management which have facilitated participatory management in the organizations worldwide. In Canada, Maguire (1982) described the development of an instrument to measure high school students' opinions toward the world of work and the results of administering the 75-item questionnaire to 1,035 students in Alberta. He showed their opinions supportive of the traditional PWE. He indicated his results tended to be consistent with those presented in literature. Thomas (1982) surveyed 50 graduate students in rehabilitation counseling regarding their attitudes toward the Protestant Work Ethic (PWE). He found the students more likely to endorse those aspects of the PWE reflecting the intrinsic value of work were those dealing with the condition of people rather than those concerned with their earnings, social status, and advancement for themselves. In studying the effects of money and status on motivation, Tang and Gilbert (1992) found that money significantly impacted peoples' motivation, behavior, and performance. Their study was conducted to further validate and explore the Money Ethic Scale (MES), an instrument developed to examine the meaning of money, in a sample of mental health workers in Tennessee. It examined mental health workers' (N=155) attitudes toward money, as measured by the MES, exploring how those attitudes related to demographic, personality, and organizational variables. The results of separate step-wise multiple regression analyses for the six factors of the MES scale (money is good, money is evil, money represents achievement, money represents respect, money represents freedom/power, and "I budget my money carefully") showed that males tended to feel more strongly that money represented respect, freedom, and power than did females. The respect factor was also associated with a Type A personality. Respondents who endorsed the Protestant Work Ethic tended to think that money represented achievement and that money was good. Respondents who claimed that they budgeted their money carefully tended to have high self-esteem, Type A personalities, be older, have low organizational stress, and have low incomes. Intrinsic job satisfaction was related to the attitude that money represented freedom and power, whereas extrinsic job satisfaction was related to the notion than money is not evil. In a separate study, Tang (1991) suggested that the PWE is a multidimensional concept. The concept of PWE has been examined in many different samples and societies. Little research has been done concerning the factor structure of the PWE scale in a Chinese sample. He examined the factor structure of the PWE scale in a sample of medical students (N=115) in Taiwan. The 19-item PWE scale was administered to these students. The subjects were asked to rate each item on a 7-point scale. Data were subjected to principal components factor analysis. Four factors were identified as PWE behaviors: hard work, internal motive, asceticism, and leisure. The factors of hard work, asceticism, and leisure were closely related to three factors revealed in Furham's previous research. However, factors such as religion and morality and independence from others were not found in this study. This was caused by the fact that seven measures of the PWE were used in Furham's research and only one measure was used in this study. He reported that future research may compare the endorsement of the PWE in different groups and populations in the same or different cultures or societies. One answer to rekindling the PWE in the American work place was presented by Levitan (1991). He explored the role of public jobs programs in the U.S. economy from the 1930s to the present. He postulated that jobs programs are necessary because they serve four separate but overlapping needs: alleviating joblessness, hardship, and poverty; helping the economy emerge from recession; providing jobs to able-bodied welfare recipients; and producing needed services that otherwise are neglected. He showed that jobs programs are necessary even in good economic times so that disadvantaged persons can secure employment that the private sector will not give them. He also recounted the problems of previous jobs programs, such as insufficient management, too-rigid selection processes, unworkable compensation formulas, and substitution of federal funds for local government funds, and suggests ways to avoid these pitfalls. Finally, he recommended job programs for the 1990s as a way to work out of recession, have needed work done, and promote the work ethic as a motivating factor to improve the productivity and self-esteem of American workers. Relating school learning to work can make adolescents take school more seriously. Hamilton (1990) proposed that the one mission of schools is to prepare the young to assume work roles. Schools were used to teach basic academic material and a work ethic that were equally applicable to a wide range of occupations. He cited John Dewey who argued that preparation cannot be effective unless it simultaneously addresses immediate needs and interests. Although U.S. vocational schools teach job-related knowledge and skills in preparation for employment, the German Berufsschule teaches the same lessons after employment has started. The Berufsschule comes about as close as possible to integrating instruction in job-related knowledge and skills at school and work. Schools should engage young people in critical reflection on their work experience as a means of fostering their ability to understand work places as sociotechnical systems and, using that understanding, to act constructively to improve them and to improve their positions in them. This is very different from seeking the direct transfer of job-specific knowledge and skills, general academic subjects, or of problem-solving strategies. Principles for practicing this integration include the following: (1) reflection is a process of discovery; (2) learners become action-researchers; (3) the social impact of technology should be examined; and (4) journals, critical incidents, and literature are useful aids to reflection. Poole (1989) developed an instructional activities guide intended to integrate a comprehensive program of instruction in employability skills into the local K-12 curriculum in Wisconsin. The nine employability skills taught were the work ethic, commitment, communication, interpersonal relationships, responsibility, job-seeking and job-getting, reasoning and problem-solving, health and safety habits, and personal attributes. The beginning sections explained the document's background, listed the employability skills and associated competencies, and introduced the instructional activities. Instructional activities followed for each employability skill. In each case, the activities appeared in groups for lower elementary, upper elementary, middle-junior high, and high school students. For each activity, materials, procedures, evaluation methods, and enrichment activities were suggested. Materials such as checklists, sample letters to employers, sample reward stickers, interview questions, puzzles, mystery game clues, patterns to be duplicated, and assignment logs were included. While concerns grow regarding the possible "decline" of America's traditional work ethic, there is a growing interest in Japanese economic successes and their work ethic. Engel (1985) compared the work ethics of American and Japanese men. A questionnaire was designed to measure values related to America's "Protestant work ethics" and to traditional Japanese work ethics. Work Ethic Questionnaires were distributed to samples of 220 American and 368 Japanese employed men. T-test comparisons of groups resulted in significant differences on 29 of 34 work ethic items. American men were found to place a higher value on individualism, independence, and self-sufficiency, and tended to believe that education and hard work lead to success. Japanese men were found to place a higher value on group involvement, loyalty to employer and country, and large over small organizations; and tended to agree with many of the values that have been termed "Puritan" or "Protestant work ethic" in America. Results were discussed in terms of American and Japanese cultural traditions and change. The data provided evidence that "Protestant ethics" are still strong in America, while some aspects of traditional Japanese work ethics may be changing. More culturally diverse research was needed, the author concluded. In order to prepare the future generation of young people for work in the 21st century, new strategies will need to be implemented by the educational establishment. Some of these are presented in the following studies. According to a survey of 148 small business employers conducted by McCoy and Reed (1991), schools should teach youngsters basic math, reading, listening, speaking, and writing skills, along with specialized skills needed for technology, business, public service, personal service, health, and consumer occupations. Schools should also teach good grooming, healthy habits, and the old-fashioned work ethic, meaning that hard work will pay dividends in the end. McCracken (1990) supported this position. He maintained that although values are the most important outcome for vocational education, they are often considered as extraneous. The curriculum should teach and practice the work ethic, further egalitarianism and educational unity, and develop an awareness of global issues. Etlinger (1990) found that minority participation in the work force, and by extension in vocational education, was becoming increasingly important to the economic welfare of the United States. He described the need for focusing on minority issues and concerns in vocational education related to programs, students, staff, and research. He recommended the development of role models, funding, and curriculum, and teaching the work ethic as part of a regeneration of values that could lead to success in the future for an entire generation of disenfranchised minority youths. Miller (1989) hypothesized that vocational ethics instruction is education that develops an enabling work ethic. Small group discussion activities can promote values assessment for ethical choices, mediation skills for conflict resolution, and reasoning skills for recognizing and solving ethical problems. Miller and Coady (1988) presented a model for teaching vocational ethics and helping students develop an enabling work ethic. It concentrated on teaching two main types of skills: ethical reasoning skills and mediation skills. The format of instruction included presenting and discussing ethical problems as related to the work place. They maintained that conscious teaching of the work ethic could instill in the next generation the same ethic. Naylor (1988) completed extensive research into this issue. She proposed a new concept, vocational ethics, as an extension of what appeared to be the demise of the PWE. She found that many studies described how employers have traditionally agreed on the behaviors and attitudes they expect from employees and on the security and benefits that they are willing to provide in return. Various factors, including rapid technological advancement and increased foreign competition, have changed this. Today's workers generally have less job security than their predecessors. Different employers require different attitudes and behaviors from their employees. These changes made it necessary for vocational and career educators to revise their approach to preparing students to enter and function in the world of work. This revised approach, which has come to be known as vocational ethics, is intended to (1) provide students with a framework for recognizing and resolving internal and external ethical conflicts and (2) give students the opportunity to develop an enabling work ethic. Vocational ethics instruction is centered around two main topics: ethical reasoning skills and mediation skills (assertiveness, emphatic listening, principled negotiation, and risk taking). Studies conducted in the 1970s (Maywood 1982) provided evidence that employers have traditionally agreed on the behaviors and attitudes they expect from employees and the security and benefits that they are willing to provide in return. According to Maywood, employers' rankings of the attributes most desired in employees consistently confirm that the most desirable employee is one who demonstrates the traditionally valued characteristics of reliability, dependability, pride of craftsmanship, and willingness to learn and who derives personal gratification from a job well done. Vocational education has traditionally responded to this need through instruction on appropriate work behaviors and attitudes. An example of this approach is teaching students to exercise integrity and good judgment (maintain and demonstrate confidentiality, loyalty, and honesty), respect property, and follow company rules (follow company policies and procedures and negotiate to resolve conflicts) (Lankard 1987). The transition from an economy based on local agriculture and manufacturing markets to a global, information-based economy has been accompanied by an increasing orientation toward jobs based on mental rather than physical activity. The following changes have especially profound implications for the work place: 1. In an attempt to meet increasing foreign competition by improving product quality and productivity, management has begun to encourage and, in many cases, require greater worker participation in decisions affecting both the quality of the work environment and the production process. According to Wirth (Miller and Coady 1984), this trend has blurred the traditionally sharp demarcation between labor and management. 2. The accelerating pace of technological advancement has made it much less likely that workers will hold the same job throughout their working lives, and the increasing economic pressures brought to bear by a global economy have made it far less likely that workers will begin and end their working lives at the same organization (Miller and Coady 1984). 3. As organizations adopt different strategies to increase their productivity and improve the quality of their product or service, they adopt the new collaboration-based model of structuring the work place to different degrees. Sometimes an organization will even adopt the model to varying degrees in different facets of its operations. One example cited by Wirth (Miller and Coady 1984) is Anheuser-Busch, which has plants based on both the traditional and collaborative models. These two emerging trends--the blurring of the traditional sharp demarcations between the rights and responsibilities of labor and management and rapid technological and economic change, have resulted in reduced job security. Jennings stated that "sometimes the economy, the high-tech and service sector-oriented kind of economy of the future, may be healthy as a whole precisely by virtue of an extremely and rapidly fluctuating job market" (Miller and Coady 1984, p. 17). As job security decreases and as job restructuring and career change become more widespread, vocational educators charged with preparing students to enter and function in the world of work must bear the additional responsibility of equipping students with the thinking and negotiating skills necessary to manage their own career development. A second result of the changes in the work place is that different employers have begun requiring and expecting different attitudes and behaviors from their employees. According to Miller and Coady (1986), as early as 1982, U.S. companies were beginning to differ with regard to the value themes they emphasize; hence their conclusion that students being prepared for the post-industrial work place must be made aware that (1) no one set of values may be assumed to be held in equal value by all organizations at all times and that (2) employers may not be "the single source of guiding work values in all work contexts" (Miller and Coady 1986, p. 5). To distinguish between work maturity, work ethic, and vocational ethics, the term "work maturity skills" is defined as the set of attitudes and behaviors; punctuality, honesty, dependability, taking pride in one's work that has traditionally been expected of employees (Lankard 1987). According to Miller and Coady (1986), the term "work ethic" refers to the "beliefs, values, and principles that guide the way individuals interpret and act upon their job rights and responsibilities within the work context at any given time" (p. 5). In his discussion of changing attitudes toward work, Maywood (1982) defined the "Protestant work ethic" as the view that humans have a moral duty to work diligently, regardless of their station in life, and that by doing so they can reap societal regard and the personal reward of knowing that a job has been well done. This Protestant work ethic has, according to Maywood, Jennings, Wirth, and others, largely shaped the traditional approach to teaching students about appropriate work attitudes and behaviors. Miller and Coady (1986) pointed out that, as innovation, flexibility, and collaborative efforts are accepted on an increasingly wider scale, the way in which many of these values (for example, punctuality) are viewed will differ dramatically from employer to employer. Vocational educators and career counselors will have to focus less on teaching a set of universally accepted skills and values (such as those associated with the PWE) and more on equipping students with the higher-order decision-making and problem-solving skills that they will need to cope with increased individual responsibility for shaping their work environments. In many respects, this shift away from specifics to higher-order and more generalizable skills parallels the movement away from job-specific to transferable skills that is occurring in many vocational programs. This revised approach to preparing students to enter and function in the world of work has come to be known as "vocational ethics." The use of the word "ethics" here should not be interpreted in its general sense of a theory or system of moral values. The definition of vocational ethics offered by Jennings, "the rights of a worker as well as the rights that management demands of a worker and what a worker demands reciprocally" (Miller and Coady 1986, p. 67) makes it clear that ethics in this context has a narrower scope that is perhaps closer in meaning to "professional ethics." Miller and Coady (1986) defined the purpose of vocational ethics as being to (1) provide students with a framework for recognizing and resolving ethical conflicts within themselves, with others, and with their environment in such a way as to promote individual job satisfaction and continuous and productive employment, and (2) give students the opportunity to develop an enabling work ethic (p. 5). This viewpoint is reinforced by Copa et al. (1985). One of the purposes they identified for vocational education is to "socialize individuals to manage the work aspects of their lives in a way that is to their benefit and that of the larger community" (p. 7-7). Dimensions of this role include the relation of work to community, relation of self to work, and relation of work to other facets of an individual's life. Miller and Coady outlined strategies and materials for use in teaching vocational ethics and helping students develop more individual responsibility through (1) overt instruction and (2) indirect instruction (also referred to as the "hidden curriculum"). Overt vocational ethics instruction is centered around two main topics: ethical reasoning skills (also termed values assessment criteria) and mediation skills. Six values assessment criteria provide students with the decision-making tools needed to make a comprehensive evaluation of options available when they are confronted with an ethical dilemma: reciprocity, consistency, coherence, comprehensiveness, adequacy, and duration. The concept of reciprocity focuses on the impact of a decision on the feelings and situation of those affected by it, consistency refers to the congruity of a decision across situations and over time, coherence focuses on the interrelationship of the people affected by a decision and their relationship to the larger environment, comprehensiveness focuses on the implications of a course of action if everyone in a given environment were to adopt the same course of action, adequacy refers to whether an action satisfactorily addresses all aspects of a given problem, and duration considers the impact of a decision over the long term. The criteria help students consider the direct and indirect consequences of a decision in a manner that is both comprehensive and non-moralizing (Miller and Coady 1986). The following mediation skills are intended to enable students to implement their decisions successfully. ASSERTIVENESS. The ability to stand up for one's rights without infringing upon those of others by using such techniques as "I-language"; assertive body language; sensitivity to such factors as location, timing, relationships, and frequency when making assertive statements; giving and appropriately receiving positive and negative feedback; conversation skills such as open-ended questions, self-disclosing statements, and process observation. EMPATHIC LISTENING. The ability to give verbal feedback demonstrating an understanding of the emotional and intellectual content of others' communications, recognize messages conveyed through facial expressions and body language, recognize when conflicting messages are being conveyed, respond to others with compatible verbal and body language so as to promote interpersonal understanding, empathize with the personal experiences expressed by others, and make statements identifying the feelings and attitudes being expressed by others. PRINCIPLED NEGOTIATION. The ability to respond to issues rather than the personalities of those involved in negotiations, identify the underlying interests of those involved in the negotiation process, determine the extent to which the stated positions and underlying interests of individuals involved in the negotiation process are compatible, generate a variety of possible solutions to a given problem before entering into the negotiation process, and develop and use objective and fair standards to obtain a negotiated statement. RISK TAKING. The ability to recognize one's own value hierarchy; estimate one's chances of success or failure relative to a number of courses of action involving risk; understand the influence of deprivation and oversufficiency in relation to one's personal values; understand and predict the consequences of success and failure in a given decision-making process; understand the influence of one's attributions of the causes of one's past failures and successes on future risk-taking behaviors; understand expected outcomes of win-win, win-lose, and lose-lose situations; and understand the influence of group members on one another in making group decisions involving risk (Miller and Coady 1986). Miller and Coady emphasized that the hidden curriculum, that is, the relationship between the authority figure (teacher) and those charged with carrying out tasks (students), is equally, if not more, important in helping students develop more individual responsibility and the skills required to develop an enabling work ethic. They pointed out the pitfalls of such policies as enforcing mandatory attendance, not enforcing deadlines, emphasizing rote learning, measuring material retained versus concepts mastered, focusing exclusively on "final products" in grading, developing meaningless rewards and punishments, keeping interpersonal contact to a minimum, and settling conflicts in private. Thus, structuring vocational classrooms in accordance with a more democratic, collaborative model provides yet another opportunity for vocational educators to help their students develop a greater appreciation of the consequences of their attitudes and behaviors and thus assume more individual responsibility for them. Summarizing the research on the PWE, the following characteristics were discovered: 1. PWE was positively related to Republican Party identification and negatively related to age, educational level, employment status, annual income level, and marital status. 2. Those who worked full time correlated highest with self-esteem, and a propensity to achieve to the fullest. 3. Results of the Work Importance Study identified commitment, participation, and knowledge as the basic motivating components of work or other life-career roles. 4. The PWE was not dead, but dormant, due to the evolutionary changes taking place in the economic environment in America and the world. 5. The work ethic was not in decline but in flux in America for a variety of reasons. 6. Students most likely to endorse those aspects of the PWE reflecting the intrinsic value of work were those dealing with the condition of people rather than those concerned with their earnings, social status, and advancement for themselves. 7. Intrinsic job satisfaction was related to the attitude that money represented freedom/power, whereas extrinsic job satisfaction was related to the notion than money is not evil. 8. Four factors were identified as PWE behaviors: hard work, internal motive, asceticism, and leisure. The factors of hard work, asceticism, and leisure were also present in those who demonstrated a strong PWE. 9. In the 1990's schools should engage young people in critical reflection on their work experience as a means of fostering their ability to understand work places as sociotechnical systems and, using that understanding, to act constructively to improve them and to improve their positions in them. 10. The nine employability skills that need to be taught in 1990's schools are the work ethic, commitment, communication, interpersonal relationships, responsibility, job-seeking and job-getting, reasoning and problem-solving, health and safety habits, and personal attributes. 11. Schools should teach youngsters basic math, reading, listening, speaking, and writing skills, along with specialized skills needed for technology, business, public service, personal service, health, and consumer occupations. Schools should also teach good grooming, healthy habits, and the old-fashioned work ethic, meaning that hard work will pay dividends in the end. 12. Vocational ethics instruction supports education that develops an enabling work ethic. Small group discussion activities can promote values assessment for ethical choices, mediation skills for conflict resolution, and reasoning skills for recognizing and solving ethical problems. 13. Vocational ethics instruction (VEI) is centered around two main topics: ethical reasoning skills and mediation skills (assertiveness, emphatic listening, principled negotiation, and risk taking). In its conceptual design, VEI is proposed as one solution to the current dilemma facing the work milieu in America.