New Technology @ Work

Paul Boreham, Rachel Parker, Paul Thompson, Richard Hall

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2007
• ISBN:
  9781134491926
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

New computer and communications technologies have acted as the catalyst for a revolution in the way goods are produced and services delivered, leading to profound changes in the way work is organized and the way jobs are designed. This important book examines the nature, setting and impact of new technologies on work, organization and management.

Conventional debates about new technology often invoke optimistic visions of enhanced democracy, rising skills and economic abundance; others predict darker scenarios such as the destruction of jobs through labour-eliminating devices. This book proposes an alternative perspective, arguing that technology can be powerful, but in and of itself has no independent causal powers. It considers the impact of new technologies on manufacturing, clerical, administrative and call centre employment, in both managerial and professional arenas, and introduces the growing phenomena of telework. The book also assesses the important political and economic forces that restrict or facilitate the flow of new technologies on national and global levels.

New Technology @ Work is an illuminating and thought-provoking text that will prove invaluable to all serious students of business, management and technology.

1
Introduction: New Technology @ Work

We are constantly told that we are living through a period of unprecedented technological change, with new products and systems such as the Internet transforming the way in which we communicate, work, do business, even make friends and meet partners. Many of these changes, including iconic products such as the iPod, are experienced mainly in the sphere of consumption. This is a book about new technology at work, yet the gap is not as large as it might seem. After all, iPods have to be made in factories and sold by service workers in shops. More broadly, many contemporary information and communication technologies (ICTs) straddle workplace, home and civil society, even if their uses differ across the specific locations.

Most of the chapters in this book seek to examine the nature, settings and impacts of new technologies on work, organization and management. What we want to do in the first part of this opening chapter is to discuss and understand more broadly the nature and limits to the power of technology. Whilst Chapter 2 examines in greater depth the various theories of technology and society, here we take a preliminary look at some of the themes of such theorizing and how they are represented in popular contemporary discourses such as those in business literatures. Such discourses tend to invest huge significance in the powers of technology. This includes driving and triggering change (the power of) and shaping the character of the change (the power to). Sometimes these views are called technological determinism – the idea that technology determines the pace and content of social change. Within such frameworks some commentators invoke optimistic visions of enhanced democracy, rising skills and economic abundance; others prefer darker scenarios of the destruction of jobs through labour-eliminating devices and the decline of privacy through total surveillance. As will become obvious in subsequent chapters, most social scientists do not endorse the more apocalyptic visions and are more sceptical about the impacts of technology. But the idea of all-powerful technologies is deeply rooted in popular discourses and, as we shall see below, has had some support within different branches of social science.

The legacy of technological determinism

In the 1950s and 1960s technology did not have the prominence it does today and was not associated with the kind of controversies and contending visions that can be found in contemporary debates. Technology was seen as a neutral force unconnected to social designs and relations – its evolution inevitable and its effects benign. One of the most widespread theories of the 1950s was the ‘logic of industrialism’. All societies that follow the industrialization path are shaped by universal technological and economic imperatives that result in common characteristics such as hierarchical large scale organizations, urbanization, and the increasing role of government in society. Managers, civil servants and other experts were seen as part of a technocratic elite that would run the private and public sector in the wider interest of all. Whilst such notions have more to do with the machinery of governance than machines at work, these images of technocratic expertise reinforced the idea of a neutral, benign technological development. As the first stirrings of a post-industrial future became apparent with the rise of scientific-technical industries and labour, the labels for the society changed, but the technocratic images persisted.

At a more micro workplace level, the influence of technological determinism was more apparent. Most research focussed on the plant and how the technical and social or human organization fitted together, as this was the best basis for efficiency and work satisfaction. Within such plant sociology, the emphasis was increasingly put on the power of technology in general, and the currently dominant form of mass production in particular. One of the best known studies, Walker and Guest’s Man on the Assembly Line (1952), referred to mass production as ‘a code of law governing … behaviour and way of life in the factory’ (1952:2). Workers had to adjust to the ‘commanding machinery’ of mass production.

The assembly line and mass production also played a prominent role in the influential studies of Blauner (1964), but as part of a quartet that included craft, machine-tending and continuous process. He saw the work process and work satisfaction as determined mainly by structural differentiation related to changing technologies. The distinctive feature of his argument is that technologies were developing in an inverted U curve that began with craft relations, hit a low point for work satisfaction with mass production, but would return to relations of greater autonomy and skill as technologies such as continuous process in chemicals and brewing began to be automated. This optimism about the trajectory of technology and automation was common to a lot of (post-) industrial sociology and social theory in this period (Kumar 1978).

Technological determinism could also be seen in the allied discipline of organization theory. Woodward’s (1958) survey-based studies of firms found that styles of management and formal work organization were determined primarily by technology. For example, the span of control lengthened as technological complexity increased. As with industrial sociology, a space was still seen for varying managerial practice within technological constraints, but the technology itself was left unexamined and unproblematic.

Such arguments had begun to diminish as social change and new theories changed the way we looked at technology. Braverman (1974) and what became known as labour process theory (Thompson 1989) were particularly influential in this. His argument was that Taylorist methods – measuring, fragmenting and standardizing work – had remained at the core of managerial practice in the twentieth century. These methods gave capital powerful tools to deskill expensive craft labour and control new work processes. But it was when Taylorism was combined with scientific technical advances such as mechanization that such changes were most far reaching. New forms of machinery offer capital the opportunity to extend by mechanical means what had previously been attempted primarily by means of organization and discipline.

From this viewpoint, science and technology are not neutral productive forces, but are imprinted with social relations of ownership and control in the capitalist labour process. To return to our previous idea of technology embodying two types of power, Braverman brings together the idea that technology has the power to trigger change, but that change is conditioned by the power of capital to fashion the work process to its own ends. It is not technological determinism because different conceptions of machinery embody alternative designs and uses reflected in particular forms of management and organization.

This perspective allowed Braverman and his followers to critique the dominant view of automation as qualitatively different from mechanization. There is a continuum between the two, precisely because technological developments are incorporated into the same underlying Taylorist methods of organizing the labour process. When Braverman was writing Labor and Monopoly Capital the first wave of what became known as new technology based on the microprocessor was just beginning. The design capacities of the microchip were seen as an ideal vehicle for managerial shaping of work arrangements, whether further removing skills or increasing electronic surveillance. In the 1970s, the microchip was extending the technological reach of management into office and white-collar sectors that had been previously less touched by deskilling and direct controls. Illustrations were given through the examination of the impact of computer aided design on the work of draughtsmen and of word processing on secretaries. Even computer programming could be industrialized and sub-divided through standardized programs and packages (Kraft 1979). We will look at this in detail in Chapters 4 and 5.

We are not concerned here with the precise or detailed effects examined in later chapters, nor with the qualifications, constraints and variations to such trends made clear by Braverman and labour process theorists. What is important is the conceptual point – the perspective broke with determinism by uncovering the link between managerial motives and technological change. The microchip showed that systems could be designed for different purposes – the technology contains possibilities for different types of skill and work organization.

Such emphases were somewhat lost in wider popular discourses on new technology and the microchip. Picking up on a mixture of the real (e.g. ATM machines replacing bank tellers) and the imaginary (the automated factory) this ‘third industrial revolution’, as it was often referred to, was projected by many commentators as likely to lead to the collapse or end of work (Jenkins and Sherman 1979; Rifkin 1995). The World Centre for Computer Sciences and Human Resources predicted that, by the end of the 1980s, 50 million people would be without work because of ICTs (Braham 1985). Clearly the doom-laden scenarios didn’t come to pass. Whilst one could rehearse the predictable economic and political factors that intervened, the important point for our purposes is that what some saw as a technological imperative, with a clear set of consequences and effects, had been allowed to set much of the terms of debate. At the beginning of such a cycle, hype and over-sold predictions associated with a technoeconomic paradigm are characteristic features. That was to be reproduced with a vengeance as we moved to a new paradigm.

ICTs, the Internet and the ‘new economy’

The idea of an information age had been around for a considerable time in post-industrial discourses and in the minds of popular business writers and ‘futurists’ such as Toffler (1970), who conceived of it as a revolution equivalent to its agricultural and industrial forerunners. Such arguments were given much greater force by the emergence of a new generation of ICT, notably the Internet. Suddenly we were all heading rapidly down the information superhighway to a new economy and new society where, as Webster observes, it is believed that ‘Work will be transformed, education upturned, corporate structures revitalized, democracy itself re-assessed – all because of the “information revolution”’ (2002:4).

For our purposes, the most interesting projections were those that envisaged new employment systems and business models. Much of this focussed on electronic networks, where ICT would facilitate flexibility and communication processes that would replace hierarchies, command and control, by flatter organizations, collaboration and collegiality. Another popular commentator, Rifkin (2000) sees an age of access displacing market capitalism, where a hyper-speed network economy renders the ownership of physical capital redundant and intellectual capital the primary resource. Liberated from real world borders and their geographic anchor in material production, informational products and services can thus float free of physical space and the traditional business cycle of boom and bust. The rapid expansion and success of dotcom and other ‘new economy’ firms in the late 1990s merely served to confirm this set of beliefs.

Such arguments are not confined to the populist end of the spectrum. The most influential and detailed contemporary account of technology-influenced social change is provided by Castells (1996, 2001). Summarizing his view of the general trends, he refers to ‘The new economy, spearheaded by e-business, is not an on-line economy, but an economy powered by information technology, dependent on self-programmable labor, and organized around computer networks’ (2001:99). Castells is not a simple technological determinist. Aside from clearly stating that technological systems are social products, he distinguishes between an informational mode of development (based on ICT innovations) and the capitalist mode of production. Under the combination of the two – informational capitalism – whilst the market economy still exists, ICT has profoundly altered its operation, and information has become ‘the fundamental source of productivity and power’ (1996:21). In turn this has enabled markets to make a great leap forward. As Jessop observes, ‘Castells argues that capitalism has finally become pervasive because the new infrastructure provided by ICTs has enabled the capitalist mode of production to overcome the limits of time and space and become truly global’ (2003:5). The Internet embodies the capacity of an electronically networked society to allow companies and individuals alike to coordinate complex and decentralized activities across time and space.

Castells also outlines a changed conception of trends in work and employment. An increasing number of jobs will be based on informational occupations such as those in software engineering, biotechnology and advertising. Highly educated and qualified, such labour is also self-programmable – capable, not only of exercising intellective skills in the jobs, but of retraining and renewing their knowledge in portfolio careers. Self-programmable labour can only flourish in the new flat, networked organizations, leaving behind the old rigid hierarchies. He does acknowledge that there is a significant residue of ‘generic’ labour – people who lack the access to the kind of skills and knowledge to secure a place in informational capitalism. Able only to execute orders, their marginality makes them vulnerable to replacement by machines or cheaper routine employees in developing countries.

Rather than simply being a new technology ‘booster’, Castells, in common with most social scientists, is thus able to present a more complex picture that sees unevenness, gainers and losers across individuals, groups and nations. The theme of divergent realities is reflected in other literatures that focus on the impact of ICT on the workplace. Amongst the most influential has been Zuboff’s (1988) conception of informated labour that draws on her detailed case studies in manufacturing and service settings. She lays out two alternative futures for work and power within a common trend towards the age of the smart machine. Information technology contains a duality that allows companies to automate or informate. While the former will reproduce or deepen the old hierarchical relations and Tayloristic work design, the latter will allow employees to understand and manipulate information, imbuing work with more comprehensive meaning. The informated workplace holds up a mirror to the worker so that his or her actions are rendered visible and precise. But whilst that provides an opportunity for surveillance, management recognized the greater need for ‘intellective skills’ and critical judgement, and therefore for positive motivation and enhanced cognitive abilities that will flow from less control and more mutual learning and collegial relationships.

Whilst the literature on technological transformations at work throws up more nightmarish scenarios of electronic surveillance (Sewell 1998), if we examine the writings of popular business writers, social scientists such as Castells and those in between like Zuboff, we find that though the labels sometimes change – information age, digital economy, knowledge economy – the power of new ICTs is the persistent feature. This is expressed through three projected kinds of change:

• society-wide notions of a new economy or new business models based on e-commerce;

• new networked, dispersed and decentralized organizational forms;

• new forms of work and employment relations, from autonomous labour to a growing army of freelancers and e-lancers.

An evaluation of many of these claims forms the basis of later chapters. For example Chapters 2, 3 and 4 examine some of the arguments about autonomy and control at work, Chapter 5 looks at corporate structures and organizational forms and Chapter 6 examines the extent and character of employment relations involving teleworkers. Leaving that level of detail until later chapters, we want to make some comments on the more general themes of technology and social transformation.

ICTs undeniably make a difference, and sometimes a decisive one. Massively enhanced capacity for storage and circulation has increased ...

Table of contents

• Contents
• Figures
• Tables
• Preface
• Acronyms
• 1 Introduction: New Technology @ Work
• 2 Organizational change
• 3 Manufacturing management
• 4 Technological innovation and clerical work
• 5 New information and communication technologies, and the organization of managerial and professional work
• 6 New forms of work organization and the technological revolution
• 7 New technologies and new patterns of institutional relationships in the global economy
• 8 The evolution and development of national technological systems
• 9 New technology and the future of work
• References
• Index