The Family as a Basis of Work Organization

Along with gender, age, race, and ethnicity, the family one is born into is a significant ascribed status—after all, we can’t choose our mother, father, siblings, and other blood relatives. Modern societies are inconsistent when it comes to delineating the connection between family-based status and an individual’s economic opportunities. The inheritance of a family business is considered to be entirely proper, but in an organizational setting, it is seen as illegitimate to use family connections as a basis for hiring and promotions, a practice known as nepotism. Whether viewed as a legitimate influence or not, family ties often have been incorporated into the organization of work, and they continue to be important today.

Family membership was especially evident in preindustrial workplaces. Most of the work was done in family settings, so much so that there was scarcely any distinction between “family” and “work unit.” One description of the French rural economy in the 17th and 18th centuries can be applied tomany other times and places:

The family and the enterprise coincide: the head of the family is at the same time the head of the enterprise. Indeed, he is the one because he is the other . . . he lives his professional and his family life as an indivisible entity. The members of his family are his fellow workers. 

Although this description of the linkage between work and family implies that the head of the operation was a man—presumably the husband and father—women, be they wives or daughters, also made essential contributions to family enterprises. On the farm, they were engaged in a variety of tasks, ranging from garden cultivation to the brewing of beer. In craft enterprises, women could often be found working alongside their husbands, and there are numerous instances of widows taking over the business upon the death of their husbands.

From the agricultural revolution until fairly recent times, the primary work activity for most people was farming. But rural work entailed considerably more than sowing, weeding, reaping, gleaning, and other agricultural tasks. Farm families had to supply many of the goods and services they needed, everything from making clothing and preserving food to treating illnesses and providing much of their own entertainment. Today’s families, both rural and urban, generally do not exhibit this level of self-sufficiency, but a considerable amount of work continues to be done as a family-based activity. Necessities and luxuries are for the most part purchased rather than made at home, but the home continues to be the center of many work activities, even though they may not involve direct payments to those doing the work. In particular, the raising of children and the constant performance of household chores can surely be counted as work, even though it is not done for direct remuneration. Work of this sort is still disproportionately borne by the women members of a family. Their tasks have changed over time, but the total time spent on housework has not diminished as much as might be expected.

A reliance on family ties and the ascriptive statuses inherent in them resolves a lot of organizational issues within an enterprise. For one, the assignment of particular tasks often parallels one’s place in the family. This has been most evident in preindustrial societies, where fathers, mothers, children, and other members of the family all have certain kinds of tasks assigned to them. Family structure also provides a ready-made hierarchy that reflects age and gender, with fathers and older males usually exercising authority over women and younger members of the family. The fairness of this arrangement can certainly be questioned, but it does provide a basis for allocating and coordinating the work performed by individual family members, as well as a way of justifying who has authority over whom.

Families also offer something that is vital to the functioning of effective organizations: trust. To be sure, one may learn through bitter experience that not all family members are trustworthy, but because of their duration and intensity, family ties offer a better basis for relationships of trust than social connections that are more distant and ephemeral. This is especially true in societies where it can be presumed that extra-familial organizations such as the government, military, and even organized religious bodies are primarily out for themselves and that their relationships with individuals are likely to be exploitative. Under these circumstances, membership in a family unit constitutes a bulwark of protection and mutual support in a world full of dangers, uncertainties, and real and potential enemies.

Trust, of course, is a two-way street. In return for the physical and emotional benefits of family membership, individuals are usually expected to pull their own weight, and a great deal of pressure can be applied to those who don’t. This aids considerably in addressing another issue confronting all organizations: motivation. An outside employer can punish or fire an employee for dishonesty or poor performance, but the loss of the respect of family members (and in extreme cases, expulsion from the family) is likely to be a far more severe sanction. More positively, the honor and respect that come from supporting one’s family can be a powerful stimulus for hard work, as exemplified by the millions of immigrants from poor countries who send substantial portions of their incomes to their families back home.