21st Century Workplace Midterm

Marxist School

labor time is reduced to commodity which produces middling results under a system that values low costs and high returns for goods

• commodity fetishism is one result

• quantity over quality

ex. customer service, pushing customers through sales to meet a quota

Interactionist

workers find identity in their work, which provides structure to their labor and life; workers will sort themselves into the humble or the “proud” (whether people want to distance themselves from their job or align their private and work lives)

ex. creating a shared work culture (such as bringing a cake in for someone’s birthday)

• we spend most of our lives at work, so it is understandable that many people talk about it, share it on social media, their coworkers are also their friends, etc.

Institutionalist

you can’t separate work and personal because the boundary between the workplace and the wider social world is highly deceptive - the institutions of work are making claims on social life; might be subconsciously embedded

ex. young lawyers often do extra work that is not part of their written contract in exchange for a later benefit (Suits)

• expect to see more social problems (drug use, divorce, suicide) with jobs that have high expectations of extra work (banking, law, engineering, etc)

• they have agency, but there a hidden rules and behaviors 

Feminist

views work beyond paid employment to include unpaid, domestic, and relational labor; overall it demonstrates how gendered structures shape the value attributed to the work that women do

ex. stay at home moms, influencers portraying motherhood, behaviors at work that are mom-like (giving advice, candy on their desk)

“The Hustle”

Ideology that accompanies capitalism:

it’s better to have multiple sources of income, your life will benefit - get a more jobs even if you already have a job!

“you should be working more!”

problems: you spend too much time on work and less on leisure, family, etc.

explanation for that problem: “you have the wrong mentality, it’s about the future!”

Corporate Ladder

Ideology that accompanies capitalism:

there is always the possibility to move up, depending on how much effort you put in (meritocracy: system where people are selected based on their abilities) - you should try and trust (that promotion will be based on effort)

problems: you aren’t getting promoted

explanation for that problem: you need to try harder, emulate the ones at the top

You are your own “company”

Ideology that accompanies capitalism:

you’re in charge of your own employability; you should put time and effort into yourself (experience, skills, and marketing)

explanation for problems that may arise: you shouldn’t expect others to help or invest in you; you need to make sure that you will get yourself there

The New Spirit of Capitalism (Reading)

Research Q: how has capitalism changed over time, and how does it reflect the new working trends?

“Spirit of Capitalism”: ideology that justifies peoples commitment to capitalism, and which renders this commitment attractive

• 90s - things became more individualized (the worker is responsible for the outcome rather than the system being responsible for the outcome)

Scientific Management (Taylorism)

To solve the problem of worker “inefficiency” (time and motion used not towards maximum output), we need managers who use:

1. surveillance

2. data collection and analysis of what efficiency is

3. communicate this to the workers, and they will work together with managers to increase output (this is an assumption)

• teaches worker how to be most efficient, but worker’s body is not considered when using that strategy of efficiency

Alienation (Marx)

The separation between a worker and his product, the process and therefore his species being—his species-being, meaning the ability to produce freely and universally. Humans are naturally creative, but capitalism reduces this to orient it towards survival, “machine line”. The “social relationship” to the thing produced is destroyed

Gilbreth Method

finding the most efficient method of doing a certain task to increase productivity (brick laying video)

Metric Gaming

workers are using their time and creativity to game the surveillance management put on them, instead of actually using that time for more productivity (making more product)

• using mouse jiggler

• going on to canvas for a certain amount of time every day because the professor is watching

Traditional Means of Production

Input (labor, raw materials, infrastructure) → Outputs (goods and services)

Service Triangle

Capitalists/Firms give money to workers

Workers provide service to customers

Customer’s money goes to capitalists/firm

Emotional Labor

Workers alter their emotional state to alter the customer’s emotional state

ex. flight attendants, Disney characters

Deskilling

Component of Labor Control:

the removal or reduction of skills required for a job; skills end up more widely distributed and consolidated in groups → specialization (you don’t know how to assemble the whole chair, only one section of the chair)

how does it solve problem of labor control?

• skill and creativity is removed = no power at work

• skill is no longer a scarce input to the system of production

ex.

• AI

• Mechanized production of silverware vs craft making

Symbolic and Normative Control

Component of Labor Control:

employers create group shared values (norms: come from either written policies or employer communication); symbolic values are encouraged through the work culture (can be anyone at work or in the environment)

how does it solve problem of labor control?

• provides guidelines for workers (unwritten) backed by threat of ostracization (requires surveillance)

ex. 

• Chick-fil-a “my pleasure” over “your welcome”

• law professors teaching in suits (normative and symbolic)

“Colonizing” the worker’s identity

Component of Labor Control:

employers looking for and appropriating marketable elements of worker identity and encouraging those 

how does it solve problem of labor control?

• gets the worker to double down on the aspects of identity (requires surveillance)

ex. flight attendant personality, really “shredded” trainers are likely to get more clients

Surveillance

Component of Labor Control:

Foucault’s power and knowledge (panopticon, workers will self-regulate, even if they are currently being watched, because there is fear that they are being watched)

• productive power (workers doing things b/c they they are being watched)

how does it solve problem of labor control?

• schools are preparing the body for capitalist systems, creating a worker who will follow the rules, self-discipline/regulate

ex. schools, hospitals

Service vs Knowledge Work

• service requires more emotional labor

• surveillance is everywhere in service work (customers, bosses, coworkers, etcm)

Manual Labor

physical labor, time and effort, physical excursion is the time and labor

ex. slaughterhouse (self-established hierarchy based on race and job description), GM Linden auto production factory (staying to try and climb the ladder for more desirable jobs)

Knowledge Work

the thing that is being contributed to the system of production is the capacity of the mind

• requires specialized training, often through a form of education

ex. 

• Hubspot (Interactionist, Institutionalist)

• Amazon (Institutionalist, can be interactionist, “hustle culture”)

• Hackathons

Service Work

• can involve emotional labor (not always)

• human interaction

• service triangle

ex.

• models at nightclubs “working” for promoters (aesthetic labor, don’t have to have wages to have labor),

• Shoppers are recruited to be retail workers because their appearance attracts shoppers (aesthetic labor, the ones who actually need the job are back of house, treated worse, make less, etc)

• Call centers (undertrained, high turnover rate, burnout)

• EMTs (low-paid, poverty governance, traumatic events causing burnout or numbness, part of a system of moving and controlling bodies)

1860+

Tech: Large factory machines, coal

Form of production: Industrialization/Fordism (assembly lines)

Organizational Type: large corporations that are “vertically integrated”

Labor Type: Manual (body is input)

how is worker effort produced? surveillance, “scientific management”, deskilling

Point of Production: inputs → production → outputs

1970+

• capital is moving out (going out of the country to much cheaper countries like Vietnam or China)

• goods are moving (coming back to Western countries)

• labor is not moving, so where do the workers go when factories leave → service

Tech: “containerization”

Form of production: Triangle

Organizational Type: “Service work”

Labor Type: Emotional, aesthetic labor

how is worker effort produced? surveillance, power/knowledge

Point of Production: workers → production → customers

2000s+

Tech: “Knowledge economy”

Form of production: microtransistor (70s) → PC → Blackberry → smartphone (Internet 1996, “dot com boom”)

Organizational Type: “Flexible” (network of firms)

Labor Type: “Knowledge work”

how is worker effort produced? drive to learn, “build your resume”, networking, high worker mobility, surveillance, work culture