BOWLING ALONE Read online

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  THE RECENT HISTORY of professional associations seems at first glance entirely different. The percentage of Americans who belong to professional associations and other economic organizations (apart from unions) has doubled over the last four decades. During the 1950s and 1960s most surveys found roughly 8–10 percent membership rates in such organizations, whereas in the 1980s and 1990s virtually all surveys reported equivalent rates of 16–20 percent.8 The rate of membership in professional and academic societies in the general population rose from 13 percent in 1974 to 18 percent in 1994, an increase of nearly 50 percent in barely two decades.9

  This impression of rapid growth in professional associations seems confirmed by the membership rolls of the major national professional organizations. Total membership in the American Medical Association rose from 126,042 in 1945 to 201,955 in 1965 and then to a record 296,637 in 1995. The American Institute of Architects is smaller, but its growth has been equally impressive—from 8,500 in 1950 to 23,300 in 1970 and then to a record 47,271 in 1997. Membership in the American Society of Mechanical Engineers nearly tripled from 19,688 in 1945 to 53,810 in 1968 and then doubled again over the next three decades to 107,383 in 1997. For the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers the equivalent jump was from 111,610 in 1963 to 242,800 in 1997. Growth of the American Bar Association (ABA) was even more breathtaking, as total membership quadrupled from 34,134 in 1945 to 118,916 in 1965 and then tripled again to 357,933 in 1991. And so it goes for most major professional organizations. Here at last, it seems, we find welling up unstaunched in the late twentieth century America’s Tocquevillean energies.

  Before reaching this conclusion, we must, as always, take into account changes in the size of the relevant constituencies, for these same decades have witnessed massive increases in the numbers of people in professional occupations. The more relevant question for our purposes is not “How big is the ABA?” but “How big is the ABA compared to the number of lawyers in America?” And indeed, the changing rate of membership in professional associations among members of a given profession turns out to have followed a surprisingly familiar path.

  For roughly the first two-thirds of the century the percentage of practicing physicians, lawyers, architects, accountants, and dentists who belonged to the relevant professional association rose sharply and steadily, except for the familiar slump during the Great Depression. (Figure 15 displays the average market share of eight major professional associations over much of the twentieth century.)10 Typically this increase was about tenfold, from roughly 5–10 percent early in the century to 50–90 percent by the 1960s. Strikingly, in virtually every case one can detect the same postwar acceleration in membership growth between the 1940s and the 1960s that we have already seen in community-based and religious organizations. Generally speaking, membership rates in professional associations roughly doubled between 1945 and 1965, just about the

  Figure 15: Average Membership Rate in Eight National Professional Associations, 1900–1997

  same rate of growth as we observed earlier in the case of community organizations.

  Then in each case the postwar membership boom suddenly slowed, halted, and in almost all cases reversed. First to reach its peak and begin to decline was the American Medical Association (AMA) in 1959, followed by the American Dental Association and the American Institute of Architects (both in 1970), the American Bar Association (ABA) in 1977, and finally the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants in 1993. While the number of registered nurses in America doubled from 1 million in 1977 to 2 million in 1998, membership in the American Nurses Association (ANA) fell from 190,000 to 175,000, so that the ANA’s “market share” was cut exactly in half from 18 percent of all RNs in 1977 to 9 percent in 1998. In the case of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), the postwar boom had essentially ended by the 1950s, and ASME’s market share never regained its pre-Depression peak. The Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) was formed in 1963 from the merger of two older organizations, both of which had grown very rapidly in the preceding two decades, but the familiar decline in market share began at the very birth of the IEEE itself.

  The downturn in membership rates after 1970 was initially masked by rapid growth in the national pool of professionals. Even if the rate of catch was declining, the fishing was still very good. For example, membership in the American Institute of Architects more than doubled between 1970 and 1997, although the fraction of architects who were members fell from 41 percent to 28 percent over this period. Membership in the IEEE, drawing on the ebullient electronics industry, more than doubled from 1963 to 1997, even though its “market share” was falling from 51 percent to 37 percent.11

  Gradually the staff and leadership of each association began to notice their declining membership rates, and eventually in every case relative decline turned into absolute decline, even though the underlying profession continued to burgeon. Thus, just as the leadership of Kiwanis and the League of Women Voters and the Parent-Teacher Association had begun to fret in the 1960s and 1970s about how to reverse their membership slowdown, so too the leadership of the AMA, the ANA, the ABA, and so on now began to discuss what could be causing their slippage.12

  In each case a broadly similar list of suspects was interrogated—excessive dues, stale programs, competing local or more specialized associations. One common theme was the possibility that as the underlying professions were becoming bigger and more complex, members had shifted their interests and professional identity from, say, medicine to perinatal anesthesiology or from law in general to, say, the intellectual property bar of New York City. I cannot entirely exclude this interpretation, but some initial probes that we conducted were not consistent with it. For example, even specialized groups like the American College of Surgeons and the American Society of Anesthesiology have experienced stagnating or even declining membership rates in recent decades.13

  So while the absolute number of Americans who belong to professional associations has grown significantly over the last thirty years—and in that sense, this domain is a singular exception to the general pattern we have seen of declining membership—this is the exception that proves the rule, since even in this area of apparent growth, we see the same pattern of growth in sociability during the first two-thirds of the century, followed by sudden stagnation and then decline during the last third. (I leave aside here the familiar issue of whether membership in unions and professional associations today betokens active membership in local chapters, as it once did.)

  THUS, SOCIAL CAPITAL in the shape of formal organizations of employees has not increased to offset the declines in political, civic, and religious organizational activity that we noted in earlier chapters. Perhaps, however, a more subtle shift has occurred between residence-based and workplace-based networks, a shift from locational communities to vocational communities. Since more of us are working outside the home today than a generation ago, perhaps we have simply transferred more of our friendships, more of our civic discussions, and more of our community ties from the front porch to the water cooler.14

  When sociologist Alan Wolfe spoke with several hundred middle-class suburbanites around the country in 1995–96, he encountered a number of people who expressed this thesis. Jeremy Toole of Cobb County, Georgia, estimated that “these days people get about 90 percent of their social connections from the workplace.” Diana Hamilton of Sand Springs, Oklahoma, ruminated that “I think people’s lives revolve around their work. They make their friends at work, they do their community service through work.” And Elizabeth Tyler of Brookline, Massachusetts, added, “I feel very much like I belong to a community of work … to a community with my own office, with my own company, within my own industry.”15

  In one sense, such a trend might not be surprising. The Industrial Revolution itself began the process of separating place of work from place of residence, and more and more of our time was spent in factories and offices awa
y from home. By the end of the twentieth century more Americans were in the labor force than ever before—67 percent in 1997, compared with 59 percent in 1950.16 Professionals and blue-collar workers alike are putting in long hours together, eating lunch and dinner together, traveling together, arriving early, and staying late. What is more, people are divorcing more often, marrying later (if at all), and living alone in unprecedented numbers. Work is where the hearth is, then, for many solitary souls. Even for the minority of Americans who live with spouse and children, argues sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild, the workplace increasingly serves as a sanctuary from the stresses of marriage, children, and housework.17 “As more Americans spend more of their time ‘at work,’” hypothesizes one thoughtful observer, “work gradually becomes less of a one-dimensional activity and assumes more of the concerns and activities of both private (family) and public (social and political) life.”18

  Changes in the character of work, not just its quantity, might mean that it could account for a greater fraction of our social interaction. After a solitary day’s plowing, a farmer might welcome a church social or a Grange meeting, but many of us nowadays work in large, complex organizations, and attending yet another meeting in the evening is the last thing on our minds. Moreover, in the 1980s and 1990s “total quality management,” “quality circles,” and “team building” became all the rage in management circles. Books with titles like The Search for Meaning in the Workplace, Creating Community Anywhere, and Business as a Calling urged executives to “establish within the firm a sense of community and respect for the dignity of persons.”19 Many firms put such ideas into practice; by 1992 one survey found that 55 percent of all business establishments had teams (41 percent for a majority of their core workers) and that 41 percent had “quality circles.” Architects specializing in office design began to configure the workplace to bolster employees’ sense of connectedness, creating spaces with such evocative labels as “watering holes,” “conversation pits,” and “campfires” where employees come to warm their hands. Sociologist Hochschild concludes that these “new management techniques so pervasive in corporate life have helped transform the workplace into a more appreciative, personal sort of social world.”20

  The modern workplace thus encourages regular collaborative contacts among peers—ideal conditions, one might think, for social capital creation. Many people form rewarding friendships at work, feel a sense of community among co-workers, and enjoy norms of mutual help and reciprocity on the job. According to several surveys in the 1990s by the Families and Work Institute, nine out of ten employees agree that “I look forward to being with the people I work with each day” and that “I feel I’m really part of the group of people I work with.” Several studies of friendship and support networks have found that about half of all workers have at least one close personal tie at work. According to a 1997 survey that asked people to enumerate all their conversations on a given day, just over half took place in the workplace. When just working adults were considered, that fraction jumped to more than two-thirds.21 Clearly many of us have close personal connections at work. From a broader societal perspective, an added benefit of workplace-based connections is that the work-place is much more diverse, racially and even politically, than most other social settings.22

  Before concluding, however, that the line at the copying machine has replaced the back fence as the locus for social capital in contemporary America, we need to consider three additional factors. First, I know of no evidence whatever that socializing in the workplace, however common, has actually increased over the last several decades. Indeed, of all the domains of social and community connectedness surveyed in this book, systematic long-term evidence on workplace-based connections has proven the most difficult to find. Many of us today have friends at work, but it is unclear whether we are more likely to have friends at work than our parents did. (Some indirect evidence discussed later in this section actually suggests a trend in the opposite direction.)23

  Second, social connectedness in the workplace might be described as a glass half-empty, not merely as a glass half-full. Most studies of personal networks find that co-workers account for less than 10 percent of our friends. Workplace ties tend to be casual and enjoyable, but not intimate and deeply supportive. In the most careful study, when people were asked to list their closest friends, less than half of all full-time workers put even one co-worker on the list. On average, neighbors were more likely to appear on the list than coworkers. When people were asked to whom they would turn to discuss “important matters,” less than half of all full-time workers listed even a single co-worker. In short, though most of us who work outside the home have acquaintances among our workmates, for only a small minority of us does the workplace account for most of our close personal ties. Americans’ most important personal networks are not centered mainly in the workplace.24

  Third, several important trends in the American workplace over the last decade or two have been quite damaging to social ties there. The nature of the implicit employment contract governing many Americans’ work lives was transformed during the 1980s and 1990s by downsizing, “right sizing,” “reengineering,” and other economic restructuring. During the 1980s layoffs and job uncertainty grew primarily because of the business cycle, but during the 1990s restructuring came to be a regular tool of management, even during prosperous times. In fact, one study found that even in the boom year of 1993–94 nearly half of all firms laid off workers. And these were big cuts, averaging 10 percent of each company’s workforce. The old employment contract was not in writing—it didn’t have to be—but it was the central organizing principle of employee-management relations and was understood by all. World War II veterans joining IBM were instructed to consult with their wives before taking the job, because “once you came aboard you were a member of the corporate family for life.”25

  A half century later increased competition in the global marketplace, improved information technology, greater focus on short-term financial returns, and new management techniques have combined to make virtually all jobs more “contingent.” Perhaps the most telling statistic is this: One of the fastest-growing industries in the 1980s was “outplacement” services. These firms’ revenues grew from just $35 million in 1980 to a whopping $350 million in 1989. As management scholar Peter Cappelli sums up more than a decade of research on changing employment practices, particularly among white-collar workers, “The old employment system of secure, lifetime jobs with predictable advancement and stable pay is dead.”26

  One consequence of these changes has been increased employee anxiety, but there have been winners as well as losers. More independence from the firm, flatter hierarchies, less paternalism, and more reward for merit and creativity rather than seniority and loyalty have been good for many firms and their employees. Even when corporate morale and employee commitment have been badly damaged, as they typically are, research often finds that corporate productivity has improved. My purpose here is to evaluate not the economic consequences of these changes, but rather their impact on trust and social connectedness in the workplace.27 On that score, the balance sheet is negative.

  In hundreds of interviews with white-collar workers in firms undergoing restructuring—some ultimately successfully, some not—Charles Heckscher found that the most common reaction to the changed social contract was to “put your head down,” focusing more and more narrowly on one’s own job. Even workers whose jobs were spared often experienced what is called “survivor shock.” While some employees relished the independence and greater opportunity afforded to individuals under the new system, most middle managers even in successful firms agreed with the view expressed by one: “We’re all alone out here. It’s been very stressful.” Said another, “The reorganization disrupted the network of relationships among people at all levels.” Relationships with peers became more distant. “Rather than turning on each other, most people drifted apart, becoming more isolated and wanting to be left alone.”
28

  In addition to the effects of the changed employment contract on social capital in the workplace, the change is not good for involvement in the broader community. As Peter Cappelli points out,

  Much of contemporary American society has been built on stable employment relationships characterized by predictable career advancement and steady growth in wages. Long-term individual investments such as home ownership and college educations for children, community ties and the stability they bring, and quality of life outside of work have all been enhanced by reducing risk and uncertainty on the job.29

  All that tends to be undermined by the new deal at work.

  The workplace remains a significant recruiting ground for volunteers, and an overwhelming majority (92 percent) of corporate executives say they encourage their employees to become involved in community service. On the other hand, according to the most comprehensive national survey of volunteers, the fraction recruited by someone at work slipped from 15 percent in 1991 to 12 percent in 1999.30 No doubt firms and work-based volunteer recruiters have good intentions, but so far, at least, the workplace remains far less important than churches and other civic organizations as recruitment networks for volunteerism. Whether recent efforts to increase workplace-based volunteering have made a visible impact on the aggregate level of volunteering in the society will become clearer in chapter 7.

  Not all employees in America have been affected by these changes in the implicit employment contract. Blue-collar workers have long faced the job insecurity that has recently hit middle management. Nevertheless, over the last three decades job stability at all educational levels in the American workforce has declined. Fewer and fewer of us remain very long in the same job or even in the same company. In fact, although job instability remains higher among blue-collar workers, it has increased much more rapidly among white-collar workers, who account for a growing fraction of the workforce and who have traditionally contributed disproportionately to civic life. This trend toward “job churning” is concentrated among men, who previously had been in more stable jobs, but women continue to have much lower job tenure than men, primarily because they are more likely to move in and out of the labor market. Moreover, what economists call “the returns to tenure” (that is, the wage and salary benefits from seniority) have fallen, as more and more of our income depends on what we’ve done recently and less and less on how long we’ve been in our job. One consequence of performance-based pay and performance-based job security is to increase, if only implicitly, the degree of competition among peers. Teamwork stops feeling so amicable when you are subtly competing with your teammates for your livelihood.31