Ida Russakoff Hoos
Entering Cohort: 1954
Retired Researcher and Writer
Ida Hoos's address:
UC Berkeley was an important step in the way sociology influenced my career. My undergraduate years at Radcliffe, under the wonderful inspiration of Gordon Allport, had already provided the template to guide me. thus, 5 years out of Radcliffe, I founded and ws director of a then-unique social service organization, Jewish Vocational Service, which is still flourishing and is still a major force in occupational guidance, trainng, and placement in the Boston area. With many branches and myriad activities, it is recognized for its service to the entire community.
Marriage to Sidney S. Hoos, on leave from UC Berkeley to the War Department OQMG (?) in Washington, put a temporary end to my work in Boston along with my part-time graduate program at Harvard. My main focus was Fannie Farmer and Dr. Spock, with Kuchen and Kinder all-important, while our two daughters grew up and Sid kept the armed forces in the far-flung theatres of war supplied. After the war, we returned to Berkeley, Sid much honored for his service and greatly advanced on the academic ladder.
A sabbatical at Harvard for Sid meant a refresher at the Pierian Spring for me. A return to ivy-clad Emerson Hall inspired me to desert Girl Scout cookie sales. Gordon Allport exhorted me: You just mustn?t stay graduated.? Herb Blumer smoothed all the administrative hurdles. My thesis, ?Implications of Electronic Data-Processing for the Clerical labor Force?, became a book, Automation in the Office, published by Public Affairs Press and was translated into German. I wrote and delivered the series ?Office Automation in America? for the Voice of America. My sister commented that if only I had titled my work ?Sex and Automation?, it would have attracted more attention!
With our two daughters now 12 and 16, we took our first sabbatical abroad, this time a year (for Sid) under the joint sponsorship of the Ford Foundation, the Italian government, and UC. Our year in Naples was a high point. When we returned to Berkeley in September 1961 I was considering another PhD?in Romance Languages, just for the fun of it?but but the Institute of Industrial Relations, under Art Ross and Peg Gordon, invited me to join their research program, ?Unemployment and the American Economy? and, always interested in adjustment to technological change, I designed a study of retraining programs. My book, Retraining the Work Force was published by the UC Press and ran through two editions.
Technological advance was evident on every front. Not only the more mechanical aspects of handling data but the very process of managerial thinking were becoming subject to new concepts and theories. The ?dominant paradigm? embraced only the quantitative. What you could not count did not count. The social and human aspects were systematically avoided in the rush to be ?scientific.?
Dissertation: Automation in the Office: A Social Survey of Occupational and Organizational Changes