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Topic8workercontrol.pptxWork in a Global Society
Topic 8 – Worker Control and Surveillance in the Workplace
This Week
Why management needs to control workers?
Changing forms of control through time
Different forms of control
New forms of control
Does management need to control workers?
Labour Process Theory
Braverman (1974) Labor and Monopoly Capital
Indeterminacy of labour ie the conversion of labour power (the potential for work) into labour (actual work effort) in order for the accumulation of capital to taker place
System of management are used to reduce the indeterminacy gap between labour power and actual labour
Outcome is the control imperative
But capital must also seek some degree of creativity and cooperation from labour
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Labour Process Theory
Outcome is the control imperative
Management/capital must organise the conditions where labour operates to its advantage
But workers have their own interests for job security, higher rewards and satisfying work
Put crudely to encourage people to work there needs to be put in place systems of management control
But capital must also seek some degree of creativity and cooperation from labour
Changing Methods of Control
Simple or personal control – employer in small business exercising simple control
Technical control – control over pace and use of technology (20th/21st century) (Topic 4)
Bureaucratic control – impersonal rules rather than personal authority (20th/21st century)
Segmented labour markets – a response to economic crisis and divide and rule strategy particularly about gender and race (we can think here about the debates over flexibility (topic 6) and skilled and unskilled migration (topic 7) (Edwards, 1979)
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Elements of Control
Edwards (1979) – three elements in a system of control
Direction and specification of work tasks
Evaluation, monitoring and assessment of performance
Discipline and reward to elicit co-operation and compliance
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Fordism and Control
Fordism = the use of standardised parts and production to produce mass products
Pioneered by Henry Ford in Detroit (Topic 3)
A revolutionary high-volume, low cost strategy
Fordism, through the assembly line, introduces a technology aimed at pacing and controlling the action of workers (Topic 4)
Suited to low trust, coercion, limited worker responsibility and a directed and regulated working environment (Smith, 2016)
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Taylorism and Control
Frederick Taylor – Aimed to eliminate worker control of output by devising the ‘one best way of working’
Four principles
Develop a science for each element of work
Scientific selection and training of workers
Cooperation between management and workers to ensure the work is done scientifically
Equal division of work and responsibility between management and workers, each side doing what they are best fitted for
Linked with Fordism
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Bureaucratisation
Fordism saw the growth of bureaucratic collar work – they were needed to design the work and measure and monitor it
Max Weber (1864-1920) Bureaucratic control a form of rationalisation and implicit in capitalist societies
Functional specialisation – jobs systematically ordered
Routinised – repetitive
Subject to centralised managerial control
Outcome is formalised rules and standard operating systems (Reed, 2011)
Surveillance as a Form of Control
Surveillance increasing and becoming the dominant form of control but surveillance appears to contradict internalised control?
Surveillance is less about the mechanisms and more about the effect
Surveillance in the modern workplace is
Remote
Depersonalised
Well integrated
Unobtrusive
Types of Surveillance
Types of surveillance
Email scanning
Data entry
Phone call recording, timing
Video surveillance
Location monitoring
Surveillance is unobtrusive and perceived to be objective which gives it legitimacy
RMIT has 300 CCTV cameras
RMIT University©
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The Call Centre
The new assembly line – the technology records when a call is finished and drops a new call in within an specified time
Key strokes are measured
Toilet breaks are measured
Calls are recorded
The supervisor can unobtrusively listen into calls
Workers are promoted/disciplined as a result of these measurements
New Forms of Control
Move from compliance (Fordism/Taylorism) to engagement as a form of control (but compliance still prevalent eg fast food, service industry)
Move from externalised to internalised forms of control
Internalised Control – does not rely on rewards or sanctions or rule following It relies on cultural controls and the acceptance of corporate values, peer enforcement (team working)
Human Resource Management central to this – often administered through units named organisational design or development
Through their corporate culture organisations aim to generate emotions and commitment and link personal with corporate identity
RMIT’s Behavioural Capability Framework
RMIT’s Behavioural Capability Framework has been designed and implemented to
support RMIT’s values through actions of how staff work day-to-day
clearly describe behavioural capabilities for all job levels at RMIT
provide an opportunity to clarify the behavioural capability expectations required to fulfil a specific role and what development activities will assist to improve performance against these behavioural capabilities
provide an objective basis for feedback and performance conversations against defined behavioural capabilities focussing on ‘how’ the work is achieved, in balance with ‘what’ is achieved within the role
Here is RMIT’s version
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How is Control Maintained?
Some key HRM practices that do this
Recruitment eg psychometric testing
Development programmes eg mentoring
Performance management – used to fix accountabilities but also to judge employee attitudes, behaviours and values and signal what the organisation deems acceptable – individualised and competitive
HRM as totalitarian ‘capable of mobilising the collective psychology of individuals to commit to the organisation and its ‘grand vision’’ (Abbott, 2015: 211)
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Corporate Culture
A person becomes a loyal reflection of the company
Willmott (1993) uses 1984 analogy to argue this reveals authoritarian tendencies
Corporate culturism relies of ‘Doublethink’
Adherence to one set of values
Prohibits alternative viewpoints
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Double Think
Corporate culture sold as freedom from repressive Fordist controls
But it actually increases monitoring
Companies bid for the hand and the heart
Challenges met with the iron fist in the velvet glove
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Moral Economy
Moral economy – Idea from Karl Polanyi
Analyses the relationship between economic practices, communities and people
Pre-market societies – land and labour formed part of the organic structure of society
Capitalist societies – market forces subsume communities, people and their labour power
Moral economy argues that people have economic and psychological needs that are dependent on others and have moral understandings and evaluations of work
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Conclusion
Control multi-faceted and has changed through time
Technology increasingly involved eg surveillance
In an economy that is increasingly service based, cultural controls increasingly used.
But in many industries Fordism/Taylorism still used and can coexist with cultural controls
But is there a different way? Polanyi and the idea of the moral economy suggests there may be
We can also think about cooperatives (topic 2) and urban agriculture (topic 3) as alternatives
Concepts and Questions
Concepts
Labour Process Theory
Fordism
Taylorism
Bureaucratic control
Corporate culture
Moral economy
Concepts and Questions
Questions
How have mechanisation and information technology been used to control workers?
Has management’s use of surveillance reshaped workplace control?
Has employee engagement replaced more traditional forms of control in the modern workplace?
Is managerial control necessary in an organisation?
References
Abbott, K (2015) ‘Hard Times and the ‘Fact’ and ‘Fancy’ of Modern Labour Management, The Macrotheme Review, 47(7): 53-61.
Reed, M (2011) ‘Control in contemporary work organisations’, in Blyton, P, Heery, E and Turnbull, P (eds) Reassessing the Employment Relationship, Houndmills: Palgrave
Thompson, P and McHugh, D (2009) Organisations: A Critical Approach, Basingstoke: Palgrave
Smith, C (2016) ‘Rediscovery of the Labour Porcess’, in Edgell, S, Gottfried, H and Granter, E (eds) The SAGE Handbook of Work and Employment, SAGE: Los Angeles
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