Bus 651 Work, Organisation and Management

1. Bus 651 Work, Organisation and Management Technology

2. Defining Technology • In context of the workplace: ‘…the means by which an organisation transforms inputs into outputs, including the techniques and process used to transform labour, knowledge, capital and raw materials into finished goods and services’ (Anderson and Kyprianou, 1994)

3. Technology and the Workplace • Technology shapes the way work is performed, workplace relations. • Technology can provide us with new opportunities • Job transformation, new source of employment etc. • Technology is also a source of anxiety, job loss and conflict. • Technology and its impact have generated much debate: Students should consider our pervious weeks discussion of up-skilling and de-skilling and link it to the points raised on the next slide.

4. Technology and the Workplace cont: with a focus on ITC • Technological determinism’ - Type of organisation corresponds to the (product or service) production technologies used (Woodward, 1965) • Concept of post-industrialist ‘knowledge economy’(Reich, 1991) • Argued that ICT revolution emerged • Some saw benefits – new jobs and skills • Others feared redundancies • Non-conflict elements of technological change over-emphasised. A social and historical process

5. ITC as an example of how technology impacts on work and organisations • Removes the barriers of time and space • Outsourcing • Working remotely • Work life balance concerns

6. Email • The internet and impact on organisations; • Conflict • Resources • Litigation • Security concerns • Productivity

7. Thompson (2003) maintains ‘Issues of tracking computer usage or drug use for example, have overlap with wider concerns of civil liberties and citizenship, though whether employee perceive such practices as threat, opportunity or simply as an inevitable part of a new wage-effort bargaining will depend on the particular dynamics of organisational and social settings.’

8. As the above discussion demonstrates advances in technology are enabling employers to collect and store information on not only employees’ performance at work but also their private lives. • This lecture will explore how technology facilitates workplace surveillance and the ramifications for employers and employees

9. What is Electronic Surveillance • Electronic monitoring in call centres is used for what Boxall and Purcell term ‘worker surveillance’. Typically, monitoring entails: • the automatic measurement of call length against prescribed time, calls waiting to be answered, the abandoned call rate, the time taken to ‘wrap up’, and call availability (the time the customer service representative is actively on duty) (Boxall and Purcell, 2003: 110).

10. Debates about Surveillance • The implications of electronic monitoring/surveillance have been widely debated • Garson, in The Electronic Sweatshop, contends that, although surveillance is not new, the development of the capacity to monitor work electronically has vastly enhanced managerial power. She maintains that, unlike human supervision, ‘electronic monitoring doesn’t interfere with the workflow. Statistics are collected unobtrusively, seemingly as a by-product of the work’ (Garson, 1988).

11. Debates about surveillance continued • Not all commentators share Garson’s view that surveillance isdetrimental to workers. In TheElectronic Eye, Lyon argues that in a post-Fordist era, although surveillance has increased, often its primary objective is to control the process and not the workers, and that ‘the surveillance consequences of new technology are often unintended’ (1994).

12. Electronic Panopticons? • Sewell and Wilkinson’s article, ‘Someone To Watch Over Me’ (1992), has triggered much of the surveillance debate by transposing Foucault’s panopticon metaphor to the modern workplace. They describe an ‘Electronic Panopticon, where a disembodied eye can overcome the constraints of architecture and space to bring its disciplinary gaze to bear at the very heart of the labour process’ (1992: 283), and argue that:

13. Panopticon continued • ‘The Panopticon embodies, in an architectural form, a mechanism through which power relations can be enacted – it provides a means by which direct surveillance can be undertaken for supervisory purposes to reinforce the asymmetry of power between the gaoler or the employer and employee’ (Sewell and Wilkinson,1992: 274).

14. Challenges to the Panopticon • McKinlay and Taylor assert that, although it is highly appealing to wholeheartedly transplant Foucault’s panopticon to the labour process, doing so overestimates the extent of management control. • Thompson and Ackroyd support this view: By treating the workplace as an extension of disciplinary practices and the factory, hospital and other organisations as paler versions of carceral institutions, the specific character of employment relations in a capitalist society is lost (1995: 625).  • They also question the assumption that disobedience has disappeared from the workplace as a result of management-instigated innovation (1995: 617-618).

15. Worker response • Bain and Taylor assert that Fernie and Metcalf have been too selective in their use of Foucault’s work and that their model is too simplistic and undervalues the potential for worker struggle (2000). • David Holman’s survey of 557 call centre workers found that, although the effect of stress on performance is debatable: excessive monitoring may, over the long term, make employees more depressed and less active. In addition, higher levels of anxiety brought about by excessive monitoring may cause people to devote their cognitive resources to dealing with their anxiety, rather than focus on providing a quality customer service (2000).

16. Panopticon continued • Fernie and Metcalf draw on Foucault’s panopticon to describe work in call centres and argue that the visibility of workers has rendered the “supervisor’s power […] perfect - via the computer monitoring screen – and therefore its actual use unnecessary” (1999).

17. Case study of the printing industry • The nature of the industry • Blue collar skilled. • Highly unionised • Technological change • Deskilling • The impact of technological change • Resistance to technological change • Whapping – A case study of technological change, conflict and employer militancy. • Unemployment