The History of Work

In the new workplace authority is invested in knowledge, and knowledge is dissipated throughout society. (Location 211)

The alternative is to devolve their operations so that they resemble a federation of interests bound together by common values and a common purpose. (Location 758)

Skills diminish when a practice spreads out to a wider audience, where new practitioners enter the market and begin to compete on price. In these circumstances quality and artistry take a nosedive. (Location 791)

Quality only survives at the innovative fringe. (Location 793)

Guilds were an important grouping in the evolution of work because they regulated not only the work itself but also the particular enterprise, helping to keep wages steady and maintaining standards where otherwise commerce and trade would have been bedeviled by shoddy workmanship and cheating. (Location 808)

real authority comes from within, not from badges or titles or the size of your desk, your office, or your company car. (Location 889)

The people whose livelihoods depended on hand fulling pleaded for some kind of restraint against the new technology. But their pleas were ignored.22 (Location 947)

many weavers were attracted out of the swelling towns and began to cluster around the mills. It was the beginning of the textile mill communities and it weakened the town-based weaving guilds. (Location 949)

many monks forgot their monastic ideals and lived in “lazy comfort.” (Location 952)

the true Christian must repress mendacity and insist on the virtues of industry and thrift.”26 (Location 978)

Throughout the sixteenth century the Bible became the intellectual bread and butter of northern Europe. (Location 1023)

Almost every facet of life was subjected to rigorous biblical interpretation. (Location 1054)

a whole nation had been captivated by the Holy Spirit of the Bible, and its influence was all pervasive. (Location 1146)

Not until the Toleration Act of 1689 were the Quakers left to worship unhindered. (Location 1165)

one in ten of the inventors on Hagen's list were Quakers, suggesting a mini-sphere of industrial excellence and invention. (Location 1179)

They had a unified belief system, they watched each other's moral progress, and they founded schools for their children. They supported their fellows generously in trouble and spent time in each other's company, forming business partnerships, often cemented by marriage. In modern management parlance they were great networkers, but it was not networking born out of the desire to exploit another's usefulness. There was a strong vein of mutuality and self-help that made virtues of trust and fairness in their dealings. These carried over to their business activities outside Quakerism. (Location 1188)

these ruling executives were perceived by many of their membership not as champions of their trades but as a merchant oligarchy controlling the companies, fixing wages, prices, and conditions, often to the advantage of their individual businesses. (Location 1203)

the Leveller manifestos of pamphleteers like John Lilburne, (Location 1205)

Even if people did not agree with their religious views they knew they could respect these people and the moral code that permeated their business dealings. (Location 1208)

One family, the Lloyds of Birmingham, became so entrenched in ironworking that they could afford to run lines of credit for their customers through their own bank. (Location 1216)

the bank set up by David Barclay, another Quaker. (Location 1217)

This new ethic celebrated work in its own right. (Location 1226)

The Quakers and their Nonconformist cousins ensured that hard work would be venerated, embodied within the American dream in a self-generating virtuous cycle of industry and toil. (Location 1240)

modern capitalism was based indirectly on religious intolerance. The adversity created by intolerance drove many of the early achievements of the Protestant ethic. (Location 1248)

Capitalism was a logical extension of industrial efficiency. It was a means to an end but wealth creation was not the end in the formative Protestant enterprise. Wealth was a welcome by-product, useful only in as much as it could be invested in extending the enterprise. (Location 1250)

taken the parcels of work called jobs and structured them in shifts, controlled by employers, promising regular wages and the prospect of continuous employment. The job we recognize, the job our parents knew, was taking shape. (Location 1256)

The Japanese may not have led the way in inventions, but the way they exploited and built on innovation propelled their economy beyond most of those in the West. (Location 1269)

Protestants had a duty to improve the human condition. (Location 1282)

ideas and discoveries began to tumble over themselves. (Location 1291)

history is punctuated by events. Luther may not have started the Reformation, but he pointed out to us that there was something in the air. (Location 1317)

Most great inventions, in fact, tend to be refinements. (Location 1371)

It was just the first of a series of momentous strides in ironworking made by members of his family. (Location 1372)

The Quaker business ethic meant that Darby did not set a price for his pots but asked a buyer to name a fair price. (Location 1392)

underlying fairness in the way the Quakers did business is one of the defining characteristics of their success, establishing a strong link between honesty and customer loyalty that remains as valuable today as it did in Darby's time. (Location 1393)

The answer is quite simple – because it was cheap. (Location 1404)

Refinement of innovation at lower cost was the key to the widespread adoption of steam power. (Location 1407)

The job was changing, almost imperceptibly, from a piece of work that needed doing, to something that began to be perceived as a constant source of employment and income packaged by the parameters of time. (Location 1423)

Instead of working from dawn until dusk for intensive periods defined by a specific project such as the harvest, people would rest at the end of their shift. The next day there would be another shift. (Location 1435)