ABSTRACT
To do justice to the subtlety and the complexities of the phenomena which it studies, sociology has to take account of the interplay which occurs in social life between initiative and constraint. Structural patterns were emphasised in earlier chapters on the nature of industrialised societies, on organisations and on occupations. The accounts given of these tendencies towards a patterning in work life were not, however, ones which reified these structures, giving them a concrete existence over and above the human efforts which create them. These structural tendencies are seen, rather, as the outcomes of various human processes of initiative, power-seeking, negotiation and conflict.
