Читать книгу Changing Contours of Work - Stephen Sweet - Страница 32

Some observers of the new economy have argued that changes in technology, organization, and markets are transforming jobs, including manufacturing jobs, into more highly skilled jobs in small, high-tech, “flexibly specialized” enterprises (Piore and Sabel 1984). The workforce envisioned for this new kind of workplace will be highly educated, multitalented, as well as exercise creativity and decision making on the job. In this vision of the new economy, managers are cautioned against “micromanaging” and are advised to form workers into teams with their own team leaders. Even low-level employees are hired as “associates,” implying that their input will be valued. Others are not convinced. They point to the experiences of low-level service sector workers and agree with the critical philosopher Slavoj Zizek, who once quipped, “The employee of the month shows that one can be a winner and a loser at the same time.” And, though acknowledging that new methods of organizing work are more common, these skeptics suggest that the reorganization of work is not just about introducing new markets or technologies, but also about developing sophisticated new methods to control workers and undermine their power in the workplace (Curry 1993, Parker 1985, Parker and Slaughter 1988). Still others question whether even well-meaning managers attempting to create more creative, flexible work arrangements have the freedom, in the context of stockholder, financial, and other pressures, to create the workplaces they would like (Stuart et al. 2013, Thompson 2003). Thus, we must also ask, are new technologies and organizational designs increasing worker autonomy, creativity, and control?

Some of the most carefully conducted studies of this question have been performed by Steven Vallas, who has examined the introduction of computer technology and worker teams in the pulp and paper industry. His findings are important because they both support and refute core predictions regarding what happens to workers in organizations that use new technologies and managerial strategies. First, consider teamwork. Some analysts see worker teams as an ideological trick, a way of getting workers to believe that they have control when they do not. Vallas found that, rather than hoodwinking workers, work teams shared grievances, developed a heightened distrust of management, and developed class solidarities. And, by virtue of being a team, they expressed complaints to management with less fear of personal reprisal (Vallas 2003a). However, Vallas also found that the expectation for shared decision-making responsibilities between workers and managers has been exaggerated. In fact, the introduction of computer-regulating systems in the paper industry tended to increase the distinction between those who had the authority to make decisions and those who did not. Older workers interpreted the new technology as an affront to the craft skills they had developed through years of experience on the job, and they expressed dismay at the new reliance on meters and printouts that provided information they already possessed (Vallas and Beck 1996).

One of the important insights from Vallas’s studies is that the new economy seems to be marked less by fundamental shifts in the amount of control workers have and more by modifications to systems of accountability. In the old economy, the assumption was that workers should have no control and that jobs and machines should be rigidly designed and managed from above. In the new economy, where commitments to Total Quality Management foster a drive to work with exacting perfection, and where the responsibility for creating this outcome is placed on the shoulders of worker teams, a new dynamic of collective pressure is introduced. Workers now have increased responsibility for production but not control over many of the decisions that shape it. These findings correspond with a number of other analyses that show that workplaces in the new economy do not operate on trust and cooperation and that workers and managers remain skeptical of each other’s intentions and motivations.

Another supposedly new dynamic is the re-creation of craft communities, which some believe are reshaping the ways work is understood and performed. For example, the success of Silicon Valley enterprises has been attributed to their operating in a regional community of similar companies that specialize in computer work (Pietrykowski 1999). In some ways, these regional centers operate in a manner similar to the craft communities of bygone eras and position workers to exert control through the development of a collective culture of standards and expectations. The work of skilled programmers in this environment is truly a team effort and requires considerable coordination of tasks that require varying levels of skill and control. In this environment, workers are often paid quite handsomely for their efforts. On the surface, it looks like a model example of optimistic predictions about what work can become.

Questions have been raised, however, about how real these “craft communities” actually are. The high-technology industry may have its share of start-ups and small, “nimble” companies, but it also is increasingly dominated by corporate giants: Apple, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Microsoft, Google, Intel, and Cisco all were among the sixty largest companies in the United States in 2014. As we discuss further later in this book, some elements of life in the Silicon Valley and other high-tech strongholds appear more enslaving than liberating. For example, high-technology workers experience both external and internal pressures to labor twelve- to fourteen-hour days and sacrifice their lives for their jobs (a reality satirized in Dave Eggers’s novel, The Circle). The project teams that form and reform within high-tech companies are subject to intense performance pressures and tight deadlines; the resulting managerial demands and coworker pressures push workers to put in long hours. The reality that one’s job may last only as long as the current project, and the hope that a show of commitment will lead one to be invited to join the next project, add to the external pressure (O’Riain 2007). But some of the pressure to work long hours is internal, as many high-tech workers embrace a sense of commitment to a culture in which the willingness to work long hours is taken for granted and normal (Harris and Junglas 2013, Shih 2004). It is paradoxical that a work environment that offers control also tightens the chains of work, resulting in workers laboring far longer hours than those preferred by most individuals.