The New Knowledge Workers ppt

Outline of the research project HIGH- TECH COMPANIES This book describes the organizational practices in the knowledge worker workplace and focuses on employees in the high- tech industr

The New Knowledge Workers

NEW HORIZONS IN MANAGEMENT

Series Editor: Cary L Cooper, CBE, Distinguished Professor of Organizational Psychology and

Health, Lancaster University, UK

This important series makes a signifi cant contribution to the development of management thought This fi eld has expanded dramatically in recent years and the series provides an invaluable forum for the publication of high quality work in management science, human resource management, organizational behaviour, marketing, management information systems, operations management, business ethics, strategic management and international management.

The main emphasis of the series is on the development and application of new original ideas International in its approach, it will include some of the best theoretical and empirical work from both well-established researchers and the new generation of scholars.

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Women on Corporate Boards of Directors

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Handbook of Managerial Behavior and Occupational Health

Edited by Alexander-Stamatios G Antoniou, Cary L Cooper, George P Chrousos, Charles

D Spielberger and Michael William Eysenck

Workplace Psychological Health

Current Research and Practice

Paula Brough, Michael O’Driscoll, Thomas Kalliath, Cary L Cooper and Steven A.Y Poelmans

Research Companion to Corruption in Organizations

Edited by Ronald J Burke and Cary L Cooper

Self-Management and Leadership Development

Edited by Ronald J Burke and Mitchell G Rothstein

Handbook of Employee Engagement

Perspectives, Issues, Research and Practice

Edited by Simon Albrecht

Human Resource Management in Small Business

Achieving Peak Performance

Edited by Cary L Cooper and Ronald J Burke

Research Handbook in Comparative Employment Relations

Edited by Michael Barry and Adrian Wilkinson

Psychological Ownership and the Organizational Context

Theory, Research Evidence and Application

John L Pierce and Iiro Jussila

Handbook of Stress in the Occupations

Edited by Janice Langan-Fox and Cary L Cooper

The New Knowledge Workers

Dariusz Jemielniak

The New Knowledge Workers

Dariusz Jemielniak

Kozminski University, Poland

NEW HORIZONS IN MANAGEMENT

Edward Elgar

Cheltenham, UK • Northampton, MA, USA

© Dariusz Jemielniak 2012

All rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical or photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher

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Printed and bound by MPG Books Group, UK

v

Contents

The meaning of the “knowledge- intensive company” 16

Characteristics of the organizations under study 51

vi The new knowledge workers

vii

Acknowledgements

This book would not have been possible without encouragement and help from many people and organizations I am particularly grateful to Patricia Craig, Neil Fligstein and Davydd J Greenwood, who believed in this project and invited me for research visits, allowing me to gather the

fi eld material used in the study A friendly environment magically created

by Bruce Petschek made writing the book up a pure pleasure So did the constant support from Joanna Jemielniak Institutional help from Cornell University (Department of Anthropology and Mario Einaudi Center), Harvard University (Center for European Studies) and the University of California, Berkeley (Institute for Research on Labor and Employment) opened many doors that would otherwise have remained shut Two sab-batical leaves, generously given by Kozminski University, gave me a rare luxury of focusing mainly on research I am also grateful to Davydd J Greenwood, Jerzy Kociatkiewicz, Paweł Krzyworzeka, Dominika Latusek and Anna Woźniak, for their remarks, comments and suggestions for revi-sions of the early drafts of the book Also, the presented study and publi-cation were possible thanks to fi nancing from a research grant in 2007–09 from the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education

The results of the research were originally presented in Polish in a

monograph Praca oparta na wiedzy in 2008 (Warsaw: Wydawnictwa

Akademickie i Profesjonalne) The current book is a revised and updated version of that publication

1

1 Outline of the research project

HIGH- TECH COMPANIES

This book describes the organizational practices in the knowledge worker workplace and focuses on employees in the high- tech industry, or, to be exact, the IT industry (in some cases engineers developing the latest hard-ware, but mostly programmers) Even though it uses the word “work” more often than “labor”, in line with other publications on the subject (this careful avoidance in the literature is most interesting and could be

a topic of a separate study in itself), it describes broadly the current letarianization of knowledge- intensive professions, using the example of software engineers

pro-The programming industry, quite surprisingly, is rather diffi cult to defi ne It encompasses both companies that off er sophisticated solutions (i.e complex IT systems to target specifi c problems of organizations) and also other companies developing ready- made software to be sold on the mass market or quasi- mass market, usually without the possibility of modifi cations

The degree of innovation in the programming market can also vary widely Some companies focus on technological breakthroughs and the development of new solutions, but, there are also others that do repeti-tive implementations of ready- made IT systems, using commonly known tools, or off er simple IT services, specializing in cost- eff ectiveness, sales and marketing (particularly in the server- hosting market)

The typical division of the IT industry into hardware, software and services is very often blurred – many manufacturers of the latest equip-ment will also develop software and implement solutions; software pro-ducers successfully enter the hardware and services market; and service companies will off er software and hardware under their own brand names

This confusion is increased by the lack of a consistent, coherent and precise business terminology It can be diffi cult to fi nd clear criteria to clas-sify companies specifi cally within the high- tech industry According to the

Dictionary of Finance and Investment Terms, “high- tech stock” is simply

(Downes and Goodman, 2006)

2 The new knowledge workers

“Stock of companies involved in high- technology fi elds (computers, net related businesses, semiconductors, biotechnology, robotics, electronics) Successful high- tech stocks have above- average earnings growth and therefore typically very volatile stock prices.”

inter-In this sense, the industry is very broad in its scope On other hand, the AeA1 defi nition, compiled in 2002 for use in statistical analysis, covers only three areas of the basic operation In AeA’s own words (AeA, 2002),

it includes “high- tech manufacturing, communications services”, and ware and computer- related services It does not include broad categories

soft-if the high- tech portion does not represent a clear majority Also, AeA’s defi nition does not include many “related” industries, such as biotechnol-ogy, engineering services, and research and testing services

Krzysztof Klincewicz (2006), in his analysis of the lack of precise gies, points out that in the literature there are three distinctive approaches

typolo-to defi ning the high- tech industry It is based on:

● the analysis of the social potential, in which the major criterion is the quantitative ratio of the employed engineers and scientists to the rest

man-THE HIGH- TECH INDUSTRY IN POLAND AND THE US

This book is the result of a qualitative research project lasting several years but includes also some basic quantitative information relating to high- tech industry in Poland and the US that should better present a general picture of the studied industry Such data constitute the back-ground that infl uences the employment situation and the human relations

Outline of the research project 3

and organizational practices within high- tech companies Such tive data are not however a key element in the study here presented, as it focuses primarily on the social aspects of knowledge- intensive work Most

quantita-of the fi eld data are drawn from the years just before the fi nancial crisis quantita-of

2008, since 2009–11 may not have been fully representative

According to the IT market research agency DiS (Anam, 2008), 100

of the top Polish companies spent over US$2 billion on IT in 2007; fi ve years earlier (2002) that fi gure was US$1.5 billion The value of the IT industry was estimated by DiS in 2007 to be nearly US$8 billion Similarly, according to analysts at PMR Ltd the value of the industry amounted to US$8 billion in 2007 and was estimated to exceed US$7 billion in 2008 (PMR, 2008) In 2007, even though the currency crisis in the US blurred the picture, growth was signifi cant, reaching between 11 and 20 per cent (Frydrychowicz, 2008) 2009 was the fi rst year in the last 20 that the value of the Polish IT market decreased by roughly 10 per cent (Maciejewski, 2010).The shortage of IT specialists in Poland was estimated at about 10 000

in 2008, and according to the infopraca.pl website, 10 per cent of the total job ads were for IT specialists (QPracy.pl, 2008), 30 per cent of them pro-grammers (Figure 1.1) Both in Poland and worldwide, IT specialists are among the best- paid of professionals, together with managers, fi nanciers

and marketing specialists (ComputerWorld, 2008).

Database

3%

Hardware10%

Consulting13%Quality control3%

Programming/

Analysis30%

4 The new knowledge workers

A parallel situation exists in the US: salaries in the new- technology sector are higher by 87 per cent than the general company average (TechAmerica’s Education Foundation, 2008) American new technol-ogy industry employed 1.6 per cent more people in 2007 than in 2006 (TechAmerica’s Education Foundation, 2008), and the largest increase took place in the programming sector, with 82 000 new employees The number of high- tech employees amounted to 5.9 million in total (with

no major change in 2008) These employment dynamics decreased in

2006 (Table 1.1), but still remained high Unemployment in the high- tech industry in the US was low and did not exceed 2 per cent in 2007 The year 2009 brought a signifi cant decline of 245 600 jobs, but the 4 per cent decline was still lower than the 5 per cent in the private sector as a whole (TechAmerica’s Education Foundation, 2010)

In 2008, in the software services industry in particular, there was an increase of 86 200 posts In 2009, after fi ve consecutive years of growth, there was a decline of 20 700 jobs It should be noted, though, that the fourth quarter of 2009 revealed a 10 100 in employment growth in this industry, signaling a possible change from the downturn (TechAmerica’s Education Foundation, 2010)

Before the crisis, venture capital investments in the industry in 2007 in the US increased by 6 per cent and amounted to almost US$17 billion (TechAmerica’s Education Foundation, 2008) High- tech companies’ investment in R&D, according to the same report, also rose by 6 per cent over the previous year and amounted to US$74.9 billion in 2006

The shortage of IT specialists in the US was one of the main reasons behind the increase on the limit of H- 1B visas (for temporary, non- immigrant workers) made by the American Congress in 1999–2003 –

195 000 at the peak (Goodsell, 2007) Though the limit has gone down since 2004, it remains at 65 000 annually

It is thus clear that in both Poland and the US, high- tech industry is large and important, and that it operates under conditions of a constant need for highly qualifi ed labor The last circumstance produces a most interest-ing situation: programmers in many companies, both in Poland and in the US, have potentially, thanks to these conditions, a most favorable

Table 1.1 Numbers of new jobs in high- tech in the US

Source: TechAmerica’s Education Foundation (2008, 2010).

Outline of the research project 5professional and organizational position – making their workplace a very interesting subject for qualitative analysis, since they are among the few who can challenge managerial domination.

THE RESEARCH AREA

The general research area of this book is the knowledge worker workplace

in high- tech companies; specifi cally, it is a case study of Poland and the US

Through a qualitative analysis of conceptual terms used by the social actors in the studied companies (as already mentioned, a precise descrip-tion of the research methods is off ered separately in Chapter 5), this book addresses a question: to what extent does work organization among knowledge workers have a democratic character? Even though manage-rial literature often points to, and even recommends, an egalitarian and democratic approach to that group of employees (Amar, 2002; Horibe, 1999; Newell et al., 2002), other research fi ndings attest that the reality

of work in high- tech companies, and in the high- tech workplace in ticular, is quite diff erent (Hochschild, 1997; Kunda, 1992; Perlow, 2003) That contradiction is the rationale for this project which aims to describe the workplace of knowledge workers in high- tech companies in detail and demonstrate its practical conditions on the basis of research “grounded”

par-in fi eld studies (Glaser and Strauss, 1967) This book approaches the task not by the use of some preconceptualized theoretical model, but through the study of these social phenomena, which are particularly important

in the eyes of the population studied The project focuses on perceptions

of formalities and hierarchies, IT project schedules, the issue of trust in the high- tech workplace, and selected aspects of HRM and employee motivation

The comparative analysis of the workplace in Polish and American companies does make a lot of sense The US is the birthplace of IT and unquestionably a leader still in many high- tech areas, including program-ming American universities are at the top of computer science depart-ments’ rankings, especially when measured by graduates’ salaries Find the majority of the computers worldwide are equipped with software (both applications and whole operational systems) developed in the US

Poles, on the other hand, frequently win prestigious international programming competitions (including for example the TopCoder com-petition, the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest, the Google Code Jam, the Microsoft Imagine Cup and the like); and the University of Warsaw has led the TopCoder.com3 rank for several years,

6 The new knowledge workers

and as of now (June 2011) is outranked only by Tsingua University and Tokyo University Two other Polish universities have positions higher than the highest- ranked American one (currently MIT, although Carnegie Mellon for several years was higher) Polish programmers’ aptitude and skills are unquestionable For example, in the 2008 TopCoder edition, of the 49 participants, eight were Poles (PAIiIZ, 2008) Entry to this contest

is restricted to beginners and the competition is one of the most prestigious

in the world; its results have indeed greatly infl uenced Google’s decision

to open a research center in Poland (Bielewicz et al., 2006) There are about 150 other research centers in Poland, apart from Google’s, and they were established by for example Credit Suisse, General Electric, IBM, Motorola, Intel and Siemens The total investment value of these centers was estimated at €5 billion in 2006 (Nowaczyk, 2008) Also, in 2010 pres-tigious student internships at Microsoft in Redmont were dominated by Poles – as much as one- third of all intern are from Polish computer science departments.4

Despite this phenomenon, Polish companies currently can hardly

be considered as leading any of the IT markets worldwide Individual players enjoy local successes, and some international recognition – the development of such fi rms as Comarch, Sygnity and ADB is impressive, and the international expansion of Young Digital Planet or Gadu- Gadu obviously gives hope for change Some companies slowly grow into rec-ognition, for example Techland in 2009 was ranked at number 58 in the

UK in the Develop 100 ranking of game producers, selling more games than for example a former star of this industry, Blizzard Entertainment Also, Asseco (the biggest Polish IT company) is gradually going up the European rankings: for example in 2008 it was ranked number fi ve in the

“Top 100 European Software Vendors” (by Truffl e Capital), with enues of €430 million and as of now (June 2011) holds eighth position in the ranking, with 2009 revenues of 702 million euros

rev-Still, at present, there is an obvious disparity between the success of individual programmers in Poland, and Polish IT companies en masse Also, no single off - the- shelf computer program originating in Poland has become a blockbuster

According to some authors, improvement is only a matter of time On

18 October 2006 two representatives of venture capital funds in Poland (Tomasz Czechowicz from MCI and Dariusz Wiatr from Hexagon Capital) made a public bet on whether by the end of 2008 a glo-bally successful high- tech company would be established in the country (Domaszewicz, 2006) The chosen criteria were interesting: a presence either among the three popular European brands or within the top three European companies with respect to number of clients or market share

Outline of the research project 7Possibly because of the global crisis the positive scenario did not come about What makes matters worse for Polish companies in the long run, though, is that there are relatively few IT solutions developed in the Polish market that are also off ered internationally The success of Polish high- tech giants still relies mainly either on the sale of Western solutions with only small modifi cations, or else on copying these solutions and/or adjust-ing them to local conditions.

Even the biggest success of a Polish IT fi rm is only recent, i.e the game The Witcher, and it is not overwhelming CD Projekt produced the game, and within the fi rst three months sold 600 000 copies The game is dis-tributed worldwide, and won awards in the industry magazines in 2007 (inter alia “Best PC RPG” by IGN, “PC RPG of the Year” by GameSpy,

“Editor’s Award” by PC Gamer, and others) Despite that success, in

absolute terms, the game still lags behind the worldwide bestsellers The

Witcher II is in production, but even if it is more successful than the fi rst

version it will not dramatically change the picture

One should be aware that in the computer entertainment industry, the market leaders are those fi rms that can produce not one best- selling title annually but a handful of them In the year The Witcher premièred, CD Projekt’s gross profi t amounted to US$3 million Over a similar period, the market leader Electronic Arts made a gross profi t of US$1.8 billion This is not to deny the success of CD Projekt of course, but at present it

is diffi cult to say it is competing with the market leader in the computer games market Moreover, other producers from both central and eastern Europe can show similar, if not bigger, achievements, for example, Croteam from Croatia (publisher of the Serious Sam game series) Still, with the Witcher 2 première in 2011 and very favorable reviews, there is

a chance that CD Projekt will make sure Polish IT companies have had niche successes – other examples being Ivo Software (a multipurpose speech synthesis system) and Psiloc (cellphone software) There are also others, more eff ective in getting outsourcing orders – a good example here is Rinf from Wrocław, the company established by a few former

BP programmers, who now get contracts from Nokia, Siemens, Asseco

or Comarch and have even opened a branch offi ce in Silicon Valley Nevertheless, global success is still missing, for many reasons The fi rst of these is the lack of a “business angel” type of fi nancing, and the relatively small saturation by venture capital funds, while the second is the aver-sion of those entrepreneurs who have succeeded when investing their own capital in other ventures In comparison, the German European Founders fund was established following the success of the Samwers brothers, who developed Jamba! (a big player in the cellphone software application development market) and have so far successfully invested in services as

8 The new knowledge workers

popular as, for example, LinkedIn.com, Facebook.com iLove.com, and the Polish Naszaklasa.pl

Behind the failure of Polish companies to achieve a big break globally there lie also the disastrously poor support given by the government to the use of IT in the economy, the weak development of internet access and its high costs,5 a small basic market and the poor command of English among Poles, to mention just a few factors Luck has also played an important role

On the other hand, the success of neighbors from our region is striking

A team of programmers from Estonia was capable of developing Skype – the most popular program for oral conversations on the internet, bought

at the price of US$2.6 billion by eBay in 2005 then sold to Microsoft for US$8.5 billion in 2011 A team of Russian programmers created one of the most popular families of antivirus software used for broadly defi ned securities (Kaspersky); a Czech company produced AVG, one of fi ve most popular antivirus programs; a team of programmers from Moldova originated The Bat!, a commercial email client alternative to Microsoft Outlook These are just a few of the many examples

It is not the purpose of this book to analyze the reasons for the lack

of success of Polish off - the- shelf software producers, even if they are just organizational ones However, the phenomenon does make Polish high- tech companies look like an interesting research subject Consequently, the analysis of the Polish software producers’ workplace, its organiza-tional practices and the perceptions of the employees is potentially impor-tant, especially in comparison with American companies Study of both the similarities and the diff erences among knowledge- intensive organiza-tions in both countries can play a part in furthering understanding of their specifi cs, and in producing a clear, precise analysis of the changes occur-ring in the workplace of knowledge worker worldwide

For the purpose of this eff ort, the American portion of the research relies mostly on East Cost organizations and is accompanied by a series of interviews in diff erent companies in similar locations, plus also a Silicon Valley start- up.6 Interestingly, the Silicon Valley start- up turned out to be the most diffi cult to gain access to, and I was not able to conduct observa-tions there – thus the material from this company is quite limited and relies

on only six interviews

Still, Silicon Valley was not chosen as a main research area for this study for other reasons also Numerous publications prove that the region is an exceptional social phenomenon (Saxenian, 1994), with a very specifi c work culture and management (English- Lueck, 2002) and with a habitat not seen elsewhere so far, that favor is the development

of IT companies (Lee et al., 2000) Thanks to a cluster type of company

Outline of the research project 9development in that region (quite important for knowledge- intensive organizational development – see for example Nogalski and Grzybowski, 2007; Nogalski and Kowalczyk, 2008), and also to the active operations

of a few of the most prestigious technical universities in the world, by collaborating closely with the largest latest- technology corporations an exceptional organizational environment and workplace for knowledge workers has been created (Bresnahan and Gambardella, 2004), with its own specifi c life cycle and development processes (Huggins and Izushi, 2007) Silicon Valley has also one of the highest concentrations of knowl-edge workers in the US: out of every 1000 employees in the private sector there, 286 work for high- tech companies (TechAmerica’s Education Foundation, 2008)

Even though wide generalizations are not the purpose of this book, and the six organizations studied are not claimed to be the most representative

of the whole industry, the uniqueness of Silicon Valley makes it especially diffi cult to use in international comparisons

The whole research project was carried out over fi ve years (2004–08), in two Polish7 companies based in Warsaw (PLOneos and PLSantos) and in three American companies (USVisualprog, USHuncor and USVird) The visits to the US took place in 2004–05, while the author was a Fulbright visiting scholar at Cornell University, Ithaca (NY), and in 2007–08, during

a semester visiting research stay at Harvard University and a semester iting research stay at the University of California, Berkeley

vis-The analysis is based on long- term, non- participant observations at PLOneos (four months) and USVisualprog (fi ve months), and on inter-views conducted at those fi rms Research done in PLSantos, USHuncor and USVird was of a supplemental nature and was based on interviews with programmers and managers In total 89 interviews were con-ducted Auxiliary quantitative research was done during the observations, through a chronometric analysis of behavioral patterns at the workplace

in PLOneos and USVisualprog and through mini- surveys

The main part of the analysis focuses on knowledge- intensive places’ similarities to one another, irrespective of country, size or region Individualities and diff erences are described less often and then are clearly emphasized Organizational actors are not perceived as “dopes of their culture” and their nationality and national culture background is treated more as a discursive resource they draw from than as a fi xed given- identity label (Barinaga, 2007)

work-Whenever in the text “both organizations” are mentioned, the ence is to PLOneos and USVisualprog In turn, whenever the term “all

refer-of the studied organizations” is used, the research fi ndings apply to both the research material gathered during observations and the interviews

10 The new knowledge workers

completed in all fi ve companies The organizations studied are described

in detail in Chapter 5, in the section “The Research Problem”

As the subject of this book is work in knowledge- intensive companies and organizational relations at the knowledge workers’ workplace, it

is necessary to discuss that basic terminology The next three chapters, Chapters 2, 3, and 4, describe the work- related issues, the knowledge companies, and the term “knowledge workers” in the context of the soci-ology and management literature on employees Chapter 5 describes the research methods and the methodological assumptions for this project The Chapter 6 refers to the contemporary bureaucracy and starts the pres-entation of the research fi ndings Chapters 7, 8 and 9 cover the topics of trust in IT projects, and of the selectively chosen (as being important for the interlocutors) elements of HRM and motivation in knowledge work Chapter 10, the last, summarizes the project through an interpretation of ideological control and the position of observed management practices in the classic dichotomy of the Theory X and Theory Y approaches

2 A more detailed description of the companies studied, as well as a section on research methods, are included in Chapter 5.

3 Available at: http://www.topcoder.com/stat?c=school_avg_rating (accessed 16 May 2010).

4 As reported on http://www.emetro.pl/emetro/1,82493,7848960,Co_trzeci_praktykant_w_ Microsoft_pochodzi_z_Polski.html (accessed 15 June 2010).

5 In the Global Information Technology 2010–2011 rankings of “Networked Readiness”,

compiled by the World Economic Forum in cooperation with INSEAD, Poland was

at 62, just below South Africa, and above Trinidad and Tobago Among all European countries, Poland outstripped only Greece, Romania, Bulgaria and Slovakia The higher positions in the rankings were occupied for example by Colombia, Vietnam and Oman – hardly regarded, at least in Poland, as being signifi cantly more developed countries The full ranking is available on the internet at: http://www.weforum.org (accessed July 2010)

6 A more detailed description of the organizations analyzed is given in the Chapter 5.

7 The names of all the studied companies are fi ctitious, as are the interlocutors’ yms Some details insignifi cant for the analysis have been changed, to disallow compa- nies’ identifi cation, in line with the rules of the ethics of anthropology (Madison, 2005).

11

2 Work

THE HISTORY OF THE MEANING OF WORK

The precise classifi cation of activities as “work” is relatively diffi cult

In modern times, without discussion, the use of the term assumes paid activity Even though the literature attempts to increase the scope of that concept (for example by bringing up the issue of housework or chores done by children as being work as well, or by referring also to purely voluntary activities), the lack of market and contractual assessments of such activities results in a distortion of the meaning and in problems with defi ning the activity (Knights and Willmott, 1999) Hence, only when an activity is valuated can it be unanimously classifi ed as work, and that is the meaning used here

Social perception of work is very much dependent on culture Historically,

in Western culture, work used to be seen often in negative terms For the ancient Greeks, work meant a curse, which should be avoided at all cost

by using slaves Even though farmers were treated with respect, work for money was perceived as unworthy of free men (and perceived as a specifi c form of slavery) Ancient philosophers like Plato, Socrates and Aristotle believed that manual work had a disastrous eff ect upon one’s spirit and body and made one incapable of serious philosophical discussion, and even more so of taking any public service post (Applebaum, 1995) Work was also treated with suspicion in the Roman Republic even though free citizens often held various paid jobs, and there was also a system of public work for the poor (Temin, 2004)

The Hebrews, on the other hand, believed that work was nothing to be ashamed of – they even described sacred activities as “the work of God” Many of the biblical Jewish leaders are described in scenes where they

do manual work However, even for the Hebrews, work was an obvious nuisance, though necessary for redemption (Knights and Willmott, 1999).Early Christianity took the same stand, emphasizing additionally the purifying eff ect of work The common practice in the monasteries was the cycle of prayer–rest–work The last was even treated as a variation of prayer, through activities That role also served for the Christian theo-rists; for example, according to Saint Augustine, work was a necessary

12 The new knowledge workers

means for forging one’s character and a way to gain salvation (Benz, 1966) Yet work remained still just a type of mortifi cation, a light kind

of body torture helping to clarify the spirit In line with that philosophy,

in the Middle Ages the professions possessing a creative character (i.e., that developed something new) were appreciated A farmer, a bricklayer,

a tailor or a cobbler by nature of their activities followed God’s work, whereas a merchant or a banker who did not create anything did not deserve similar respect Poverty was seen as a virtue as well (Le Goff , 1994)

The contemporary good perception of fi nancial success in Western culture only developed along with the Protestant movement Luther introduced the issue of “calling” into the work discourse and argued that everyone should aim to do the tasks that they have been created to do He dismissed the idea of work as dignifying suff ering, pointing to its creative and positive aspect Calvin, on the other hand, assumed that fi nancial success was the visible manifestation of the God’s blessing He broke with the Christian attachment to poverty He perceived a merchant profession

as worthy of just as much respect as the manufacturing professions, or even more Individually accomplished success started to be linked to the virtues of spirit – the character of the work itself lost its meaning, and more importance was given to its economic eff ect Although attributing

a direct link between salvation and material success to Protestant ogy would be an oversimplifi cation, the Protestant “capitalist spirit” has survived and resulted in the modern, positive picture of work (M Weber, 2001), and its full integration into the capitalist system

ideol-During the Enlightenment period, Thomas Hobbes in his acclaimed

Leviathan expressed the belief that everyone should work; in that way the

social contract was fulfi lled and citizens’ rights were justifi ed (Hobbes, 2008) Voltaire expressed his opinions in the same spirit, stating that work made life tolerable, and resembled a garden, in which everyone had their own way of gardening (Voltaire, 2005)

The contemporary understanding of work arrived with the Industrial Revolution In fact, it was studies of the phenomenon that laid the foundation of the new scientifi c discipline known today as sociology: all three of its “founding fathers”, namely Weber, Durkeim and Marx, devoted an important part of their work to this issue Weber analyzed, inter alia, those loose dependencies between Protestant ethics and the social perception of work mentioned earlier On the other hand, con-sideration for professional specialization and social fairness, i.e organic solidarity in contemporary societies, were all- important in Durkeim’s publications (Merton, 1994) Thanks to the development of civiliza-tion and dependencies between people, everybody could be fi tted to an

Work 13occupation and fairly paid proportionally to their aptitude – on condi-tion, however, that they respected both the economic and the moral order (Durkheim, 1999).

Similarly, work was a central subject of Marx’s writings He noticed that even though real work distribution and cooperation increases economic eff ectiveness in general, simultaneously it leads to the alienation of manual workers from the goods they produce Moreover, according to Marx, the bourgeois system would lead inevitably to the exploitation of the manual workers (Marx, 1992) Every capitalist had to aim to maximize the value

of output over the basic productivity of the employed they people (which was equal to the cost of their employment) Separation of the means of production from their ownership resulted in an excess exploitation of workers, “surplus value” The next step, according to Marx, should be the attempt to eliminate the class system and any diff erences between the bourgeoisie and the working class employed by them For Marx, work was undisputedly and unequivocally a positive activity, and was the basic diff erentiator of humans from the animals

THE CONTEMPORARY APPROACH TO WORK

The issue of work has been the subject of modern authors as well, like Hannan Arendt (1958) She showed that work was a main type of human activity She was worried in particular about technological progress, at least the part in which technology leads to objectifi cation and deskilling of manual workers, and hence to the disappearance of basic human qualities

in the profi t race

One of the contemporary thinkers who took a stand on the issue of

work was Pope John Paul II He devoted the separate encyclical Laborem exercens (1981) to that issue, expressing his conviction, on behalf of the

whole Catholic Church, that “work is a basic dimension of humans being

on Earth” He described technological progress unequivocally as positive, pointing however to the possible dangers it implied for work (less jobs, objectifi cation of manual workers, etc.) He very clearly objected to the treatment of human work as a dispensable good The criticism of the

capitalist economic system in Laborem exercens is very similar to Marx’s

observations John Paul II also advocated the solidarity of workers, who should be the subject, not the object, of the work process Though (given the nature of the encyclical nature of the document) he does not attempt a thorough sociological analysis of the reasons behind society’s objectifi ca-tion of workers, typical in terms of (as he describes it) “rigid capitalism”,

he is categorically against it He noticed that proletarian rebellion was a

14 The new knowledge workers

completely justifi ed “reaction against the system of injustice and harm that cried to heaven for vengeance”

Without exaggeration, it can be noted that the issue of human work

in society has been the subject of study and consideration for centuries Starting with the nineteenth century and the Luddite movement (which was so strong enough in 1811 and 1812 to have regular battles with the British army), a discussion began regarding to what extent the social nature of work has changed, fi rst under the infl uence of mechanization and now with the development of IT (Jones, 2006) The scenarios advo-cated range from the positive and utopian to the extremely pessimistic (Gorz, 1985; Zuboff , 1988)

Nevertheless, in modern times work for the majority is undisputedly the most important type of activity throughout one’s lifetime Jeremy Rifkin

in this context cites the observations of Thomas T Cottle, observations of

a clinical psychologist and sociologist who has done wide- ranging research

on the unemployed (Rifkin, 1995, p 195) Cottle observed that cal symptoms presented by the hardcore unemployed are similar to those

pathologi-of dying patients In their minds, productive work is so strongly linked

to life itself that when they are cut off from that employment they show typical signs of dying In this light, it is by no means surprising that almost three- quarters of Americans state they would continue working even if they had enough money to live on at their expected level for the rest of their lives (Sweet and Meiksins, 2008)

Since the mid twentieth century work has started to be seen as a tainty, an element of human life that is important not only for its economic reasons but also for more general fulfi llment Without a doubt, the change

cer-of gender roles that women successfully initiated, in part because many men were called up to serve in the armed forces during World War II (from which many did not return), resulted in a general belief that all people have the right to their own professional fulfi llment (Charles and Grusky, 2004) Thus, the number of social roles in which unemployment would be con-sidered as justifi ed and acceptable was distinctly limited Also, with the coming of the Industrial Revolution, housework and caring for the family stopped being perceived as work; though in the previous agrarian culture

fi eld work and housework blended, factory work clearly separated those roles, in terms of both space and time (Sweet and Meiksins, 2008)

Even though the work phenomenon, as mentioned, has been a subject

of serious scientifi c studies for a long time, there have been signifi cant changes in the social organization of work in recent years Above all, the IT revolution has led to a reshuffl ing of the hierarchies of individual professions Also, the increase in the signifi cance of knowledge as the basic source for competitive advantage has resulted both in the rise of

Work 15the number of knowledge- intensive companies and in a more profound increase in the professional status of knowledge workers Both processes,

at least potentially, have infl uenced changes in structure and the tion of power within many organizations

distribu-Owing to such changes, the primary analysis of contemporary sions and organizational practices that involve knowledge workers in particular can be interesting and off er a modest, yet new, input into man-agement science This book is an attempt to do just this It is the result of a few years of research, done in both Poland and the US, and focuses mainly

profes-on knowledge workers within the software industry It is a respprofes-onse to the call to “go back to the roots” (S.R Barley and Kunda, 2001), and

an analysis of work as a separate phenomenon, through research which, instead of generating more theoretical concepts that are simply detached from the reality of the social actors, was conducted on real organizational practices, on the perceptions of the members of the profession and on the concepts that are important to them

16

3 Knowledge- intensive organizations

THE MEANING OF “THE KNOWLEDGE- INTENSIVE COMPANY”

The term “knowledge- intensive company” is not very precise Its origins can be traced to the tradition of economic terminology There, the division into capital- intensive and labor- intensive is the time- honored, undisput-able way of organizational classifi cation In capital- intensive companies, money plays a more important role than human work, while in labor- intensive companies it is the other way around Thus, the statement that

a company can be knowledge- intensive emphasizes the fact that in many organizations a key resource, and the primary product, is knowledge (Starbuck, 1992) – something distinctive both from capital and from the people themselves For example, in the case of Google, people play a very important role in new product development, yet for the search engine the important value comes from the developed algorithms and database attributed to the process of knowledge accumulation

Of course, we should understand that the terms “knowledge” and

“knowledge- intensive company” have an unequivocally positive sound

to them, which unfortunately tends to undermine their popular usage in management theory It is diffi cult to imagine an organization which com-municates to its stakeholders that it is not based on knowledge or that its main product is ignorance or stupidity (Jemielniak and Kociatkiewicz, 2009) The absurdity of such an idea shows that using slogans related

to knowledge and IT terminology can have a purely ideological ter (Styhre, 2003) Moreover, some companies, even if their operations have knowledge aspects within them, try to emphasize those aspects unequivocally by decreasing the weights of others A good example is the pharmaceutical industry, which for PR image reasons usually tries

charac-to emphasize their R&D character and charac-to reduce charac-to a minimum the role

of marketing, sales and production, even though these obviously still

do account for similarly important positions in their budgets (Alvesson, 2004) Obviously, high- tech organizations are hybrids of diff erent pur-poses, values and ideas, knowledge creation being just one of many com-peting (Ciesielska, 2010) Labeling organizations “knowledge- intensive

Knowledge- intensive organizations 17companies” is also an attempt to legitimize and validate them, through redefi ning organizational identity in the eyes of the stakeholders Such managerial rhetoric is a manifestation of a kind of management fashion and a natural refl ection of current social interest in the idea of an infor-mation society, knowledge management, etc (Klincewicz, 2004; Styhre and Sundgren, 2005).

However, the changes that have taken place in management and nomic practices during the last decades are hard to miss A good example

eco-is IBM, where in 1924 as much as 96 per cent of the company’s profi ts were generated by machine leasing and 4 per cent by the sale of time cards (to measure work time) Fifty years later, 80 per cent of IBM’s profi ts were still generated by equipment leasing, but 15 per cent was now generated by software sales, and 5 per cent by services Nearly a further 20 years later, services (almost entirely related to knowledge work) amounted to 30 per cent of the company’s profi ts (Cortada, 1998), and in 2009 services gener-ated 42 per cent, and software 42 per cent.1 IBM itself, which developed the fi rst PCs, has since 2005 totally withdrawn from their production, including the production of laptop computers, and has sold the relevant department to the Chinese company Lenovo (for cash and assets)

Looking at the whole global economy, although in 1978 about 80 per cent of companies’ value was their tangible assets, and only 20 per cent intangible ones, just 20 years later that ratio had reversed (Blair and Wallman, 2001)

However, this whole set of data may be partly misleading After all, assets valuation criteria have changed over the years Intangible and intellectual property rights assets, though underestimated in accounting, have long played a very signifi cant role in many companies’ business Besides, less weight was previously put on the measurement of what is now emphasized as “knowledge”, immaterial assets and the like Further, the change to a “new economy”, which in theory has relied on a decrease

in the importance of production and the increase of the importance of services, remains in reality to some extent the same old economy, based on production after all, now, owing to the elimination of legal barriers and progress in communication, taking place on a global scale The US, which

is often quoted as the standard example of the “new economy”, employs over 14 million people in the production sector, roughly as many as in

1970 (Sweet and Meiksins, 2008) In addition, a dispute over intellectual capital can be read as a language game, in search of organizational power (Jørgensen, 2006) It should however, be noted, that even though it is diffi -cult to describe the complete novelty and the economic breakthrough, the changes observed still point to an important new trend in contemporary organizations (Dobija and Rosolińska, 2009)

18 The new knowledge workers

This trend is directly related to the increased role of intellectual capital: knowledge, information and their management systems have at least in part become more important than the tangible sources of production (Dobija and Rosolinska, 2010; Stewart, 1997), and their higher values,

as well as having a larger proportional share in a company’s stock worth, are the refl ection of the increased signifi cance of these factors in the eyes

of society Offi cial Airline Guide (OAG) is a good example: the company

publishes fl ight timetables and is worth more than many of the described

airlines Similarly, TV Guide, the popular American media magazine

with TV program descriptions and timetables, was in 1989 already worth US$3billion, much more than many of the TV stations back then (Burrell, 1997)

One of the most quoted management theorists, (Peter Drucker, 1999,

p 13) states that currently the real assets controlling the means of duction are neither capital nor land nor labor power, but knowledge Consequently, he concludes that instead of capitalists and proletarians the key social class of the post- capitalist society are highly qualifi ed workers.The same opinion was expressed earlier by Alvin Toffl er (1970), writing about the move from the agrarian era through an industrial period to the

pro-IT economy The main feature of this ongoing change is the tion of the value creation method In the agrarian era the highest value was characteristically added through the work of muscles and in the industrial era by machine work, while now in the electronic era it is by intellectual work, i.e knowledge and information

transforma-The introduction of the term “knowledge- intensive company” was aimed at signaling the profound social changes occurring in the post- capitalist system – paradoxically an unexpected fulfi llment of some of the neo- Marxists’ visions (Agger, 1989), mainly in the area of the distorted separation of the owners of the means of production from the workers Some call this change a “third wave” of Industrial Revolution, some call

it “post- Fordism”, and for some it is an aspect of “the information society revolution” Occasionally the period is described as “postmodern capital-ism” Each name emphasizes a diff erent way of perceiving the ongoing phenomenon or a diff erent analytical approach (Zacher, 2001, 1999) Observers are in agreement however about the possible consequences of such change (Kumar, 2005) In particular, these include the disappearance

of typical hierarchies, to be replaced by organizational “fl atness” with a simultaneous change of managerial roles to consulting and often subservi-ent ones

Knowledge- intensive companies can of course be divided according to many diff erent criteria Lowendahl (quoted in Newell et al., 2002, p 25) suggests standardization according to Table 3.1

Knowledge- intensive organizations 19

Mats Alvesson, on the other hand, suggests an easier and clearer sion into two basic groups of knowledge- intensive companies, according

divi-to whether their focus is on (Alvesson, 2004, p 18):

● professional services (law fi rms, accounting offi ces, consulting cies, advertising agencies, investment banks etc.), or

agen-● research and development (mostly pharmaceutical and logical research centers and high- tech companies based on the work

biotechno-of hardware engineers and sbiotechno-oftware developers)

The subjects in interest in this book are those organizations that fall into the second category This is especially important, as service companies deal with immaterial goods to a larger extent (mostly through consulting)

as opposed to specifi c products, even virtual ones that exist in companies from the second category Knowledge workers in the latter companies have more contact with their clients It is diff erent in the typical high- tech and software companies, where it is managers, sales representatives and specially trained employees who assist in such contacts, or are full interme-diaries with clients Owing to the very complex social context of such rela-tions (a greater number of roles, the broader presence of managers etc.) and because companies that create specifi c products still resemble more traditional production organizations, they seemed to be a more interest-ing research subject for the topic of this book Moreover, knowledge- intensive companies in the service and consulting sector can rely more

on propaganda and on the development of “persuasion systems”, that is,

Table 3.1 Types of knowledge- intensive fi rm

Strategic concentration

Resources Examples

Client- based Relations with

clients

Individually controlled

Law and accounting consulting fi rmsSolution- based Creative solutions,

innovations

Teamwork Advertising

agencies, software companies Output- based Adjustment and

adaptation of existing solutions

Controlled by the organization

Certain large consulting fi rms

Source: (Newell et al (2002).

20 The new knowledge workers

on convincing clients about the superiority of their solutions rather than about their real expertise (Alvesson, 1993) This issue is much less visible

in companies that develop new products and solutions, which hence stitute a clearer example of real knowledge- intensive companies

con-Even though this book is based on several years of research on high- tech fi rms and on interviews with engineers (mainly programmers) at Polish and American companies, part of the fi ndings presented can be successfully generalized, through analogies, for the greater population

of knowledge workers in the R&D sector Nevertheless, whenever in this interpretation the subject of knowledge workers is mentioned, it should be taken into account that the practical part of the project has relied mainly

on software engineers

THE IT REVOLUTION

One of the fi rst writers about the eff ects of the IT revolution was Daniel Bell (1973) He predicted the dawn of the post- industrial era, in which services, and not production, would play a key role, while the highest value added would be generated by the new- technology industry The social stratifi cation would be reshuffl ed, and new elites would be formed, relying mostly on technological knowledge Similarly, a belief in dispens-ing with the traditional hierarchies was expressed by Serge Mallet (1975), who predicted the sudden arrival in the mid 1980s of a “new working class”, which would set aside procedures and fi rm hierarchies and replace them with power based on qualifi cations and knowledge

In turn, for some more skeptical futurologists, the progressive trialization process was not really a way of freeing employees from their traditional hierarchies, but rather became a necessary next step toward increasing a new type of grip over them (Zuboff , 1988) This step would

indus-be accomplished through the enhanced possibilities of precise lance and through advances in IT It would lead to the confi nes of the

surveil-“iron cage”, that is, increased supervision over procedures and deepening rational bureaucratic control (Ritzer, 1993; M Weber, 2001) For such authors, the shift in value chain from production quality to marketing and branding would result in even more social oppression and a further deep-ening of worker objectifi cation (Klein, 2000)

Usually, neither, the skeptics nor the optimists question the increasing role of specialist knowledge At most, daring predictions to a great extent eliminate traditional hierarchies and managerial roles and also reduce many traditional institutions According to one such analysis (Gephart,

2002, p 334), the advances in the new technologies:

Knowledge- intensive organizations 21Transform the nature, form, and temporal aspects of work; infl uence the struc-ture and meaning of the workplace; and impact human relations in organiza-tional settings  .  They also lead to changes in  .  power and authority [and] communication and participation.

It should be noted that this idea is not a new one Already Plato in his

dialogue The Republic had advocated governments made up of experts As

Schön notices, a dream that organizations would reach a phase in which they would be completely “meritocratic”, and that knowledge would be

as important for industry as steel used to be, is one of the big myths that have been accompanying our civilization for centuries (Schön, 1983) It is

an attempt to create a “grand narrative” (Lyotard, 1987),2 or a powerful myth about technological progress and the enlightened governance of the most competent

The complete fulfi llment of such a vision would require a tion of the essence of the power–knowledge relation, as described by Foucault According to the French philosopher, knowledge is an ability to communicate sentences that in a given environment are accepted as true (Foucault, 2000) This truth relies on discourse, and is a proposal for the listener – yet it is also fundamentally linked to power Social power barri-ers also set knowledge barriers For instance, one cannot be a criminolo-gist when there are no prisons and no law enforcement systems in place (Allen, 1999) Similarly, psychiatric diagnosis is “justifi ed” because in the discourse it is simultaneously linked to power (the actual authority to label the patient as mentally ill and to restrain them) Power–knowledge relations are, therefore, united, strengthening each other, yet without a possibility, in social reality, of being independent of each other

transforma-Moreover, together with increased power asymmetry (and vertical control, replacing control through equal peers), the experts’ role grows in signifi cance, as they are considered to be better suited for proposing justi-

fi ed solutions (Bauman, 1998) Not only are the hierarchical elements not eliminated from structures, or organizational relations democratized, by the spread of the “knowledge society”, but in fact the perversely attractive opposite hypothesis can be made: such change actually increases hierar-chies and builds more layers of structures and nuances of power This happens because the higher the esteem the experts have, the more access

to knowledge is considered a privilege and must be formalized Also, the specialists themselves are stratifi ed at diff erent levels of both competence and assigned authority (Leicht and Fennell, 2001) At best, the main shift

in the revolutionary change described would be in moving from a general knowledge to a localized, “genealogical” one (Jørgensen, 2002)

In the context of contemporary change, it does not make any sense to talk about the replacement of traditional power division by an egalitarian

22 The new knowledge workers

system based more on competence – such a claim would be far too tic However, signifi cant changes can be observed, which (though they do not lead to the fl attening of organizational structures, or to “meritocratic” organizations), do result in the shake- up of the current status quo The classic and clear division of functions between capital and labor may be distorted – in practice many specialists (and managers) have to combine both functions (Carter, 1985)

idealis-Organizational knowledge is also being redefi ned Again, it is not so much a matter of its increased or decreased value, or of its share in product development, but rather of some kind of shuffl ing of the social groups that are validated to pass on judgments seen as legitimate by the others In that sense, this shuffl ing leads to changes in organizational power, and yet it does not have to be directly linked to the power that is based on the right

to give orders It is, rather, related to the power that is the authority to make assessments and is understood not only as something we have, but also as something given to us by others (Latour, 1986), and as carrying with it the right to abstain from some submission rituals

One of the main signs of these transformations is the creation of new professions (in other words, the common acceptance of the rights of these new professions to make authoritative judgments; address the topic of

“professions” in Chapter 4) That new elite is mostly made up of edge workers (Brante, 1988, p 123):

knowl-In contrast to the old bureaucracy, their positions do not rest on legal ity, but on argument, reason, and knowledge Therefore, they stand in a politically contradictory relation to the “old guardians”, which they regard as irrational and ignorant

author-This revolution results in an obvious and inevitable organizational confl ict The rise of the IT society and the role of knowledge- intensive companies leads, in a very natural way, as indicated above, to a signifi cant social change

At the same time, in organizational and management theory, there are

a surprisingly small number of scientifi c publications that analyze this important phenomenon from the point of view of high- tech companies Although there are many publications giving advice to managers on how

to deal with subordinates in high- tech industry (Williams, 2002), as well as general DIY books on how to manage knowledge workers (Amar, 2002; Horibe, 1999), or, more broadly, on organizational and hierarchical trans-formation in the modern world, there are few studies that have focused

on employee perceptions That is the aim of critical management theory (Alvesson and Willmott, 2003; Knights and Willmott, 1999; Magala, 2009; Rehn, 2008), which so far has dealt relatively rarely with high- tech

Knowledge- intensive organizations 23employees (more often, as in the Anglo- Saxon tradition, it focuses on manual workers).

Yet the study of employee perceptions and a partial understanding of their group logic are of huge importance for a better description of the ongoing phenomenon They are, in fact, more interesting than those of the managers, since the employees actually do the work Moreover, in the case

of organizational animosities, where one of the active sides is taken by the managers, their perception of organizational dynamics is of even less value than usual – because their bias and subjectivity are increased

Taking into account the obvious contradiction of organizational roles between knowledge workers and managers, it can be expected that the result of such a study will shed new light on the ongoing changes The research method particularly useful in such types of studies is an interpretive organizational anthropology, because it allows for the use of

“the thick description” (Geertz, 1973) – that is, the opportunity to attain the perception of the organizational actors themselves, understood in the context of their activities and logic This and other methodological issues are described in more detail in Chapter 5

NOTES

1 According to the company’s Annual Report 2009, available at: http://www.ibm.com/

investor/fi nancials/fi nancial- reporting.wss (accessed 14 June 2010)

2 According to Lyotard, the term “grand narrative” or “metanarrative” is a kind of an

interpretation key, which existed in most centuries, and in modernism especially, as a universal explanation of ongoing processes One example of the grand narrative can be the Enlightenment’s conviction that the development of rationalism and science would lead to moral/ethical progress; or similarly the Marxist assumption that social liberation

is conditional on revolution According to Lyotard, the postmodernist (or rather late modernist) era is characterized by the skepticism and rejection of grand narratives, which have been replaced by a series of “small”, so far unsuccessful, pretenses to take over the

role of the grand narrative.

24

4 Knowledge workers

This book is based on the study of programmers In the literature they fall into the category of knowledge workers, professionals, engineers and white- collars All these categories are justifi ed, although each one takes account of slightly diff erent dimensions of their role, which is why these terms and categories are the subject of this chapter

In terms of broad simplifi cation, it can be assumed that, for knowledge workers, knowledge is as much the resource and means of production as

it is the result of their work (Newell et al., 2002) For them, to divide work

up into planning, scheduling and following the plan is a gross distortion This is a view which, as mentioned earlier, has appeared only recently and

is typical of the transformation process taking place in the knowledge- intensive economy

Because this category of employees is relatively new and small, most modern analysis of contemporary organizational transformation proc-esses relates to manual workers and is linked to the quite obvious observa-tion that the mechanization and computerization of production change the character of manual work for more than they do that of intellectual work Experts who deal with the latest technologies in particular are seldom the subject of these academic considerations This is mostly due

to the novelty of their profession, (which makes them seem less prone to changes) Second, a common belief is that through their link to technology and access to knowledge they enjoy a privileged status, and may indeed even seem to exist above and beyond typical organizational power play Despite appearances, however, the case is not so clear The organizational workplace in high- tech companies is subject to interesting changes – which

in addition can refl ect on the manager–employee relation in more tional fi rms

tradi-High- tech company employees (and programmers in particular) form a specifi c knowledge worker subgroup that is in the process of negotiating their organizational status and the creation of their profes-sional roles – which is also what makes them a very interesting research topic

Knowledge workers 25PROFESSIONAL ROLES

As was rightly noticed by John Van Maanen, (1977, p 8), to the same extent that people make careers, careers make people Gandhi spoke in the same spirit, saying that we become who we think we are

The notion of the professional role has diff erent meanings in various academic disciplines In organization and management theory, as well as

in sociology (but rather diff erently from what we fi nd in for example chology, where we come across the cognitive theory of roles), social roles are used mainly in two approaches:

psy-● Functional, and

● symbolic- interactive

In the functional concept, already used in the 1930s by Ralph Linton, but coherently presented later in the work of Talcott Parsons (Parsons and Shils, 1951), social roles refer to scripts of individual repetitive behaviors

An individual has a designated position within a stable social system and receives sets of expectations and standards that are related to his or her occupational, organizational, family etc role This approach was popular

in science up until the end of the 1970s Today, however, it is decreasing

in signifi cance In turn, the symbolic- interactive approach, commenced by George Mead (1934), apart from sets of social expectations and standards imposed on actors, puts emphasis on the dynamic creation of the roles, with the participation of their performers Thanks to this perspective, it is easier to analyze the informal aspects of role creation (which are at least

as important as idealistic social behavioral patterns, and sometimes even more so) The change of approach to the issue of social roles is a subject

of further analysis in the context of its infl uence on the process of sionalization (see under “Professionals”, pp 00ff ); here it should only be emphasized that this book takes the symbolic- interactive approach and further links professional and organizational roles with ad hoc created behavioral scenarios that result mostly from the socialization processes of

profes-a specifi ed group profes-and the informprofes-al interprofes-actions within thprofes-at group Hence, the subjects of special interest in this approach are all the beliefs, opinions, behaviors and rituals of the members of a given group

Of course, social roles, when so understood, are also created to a great extent as a reaction to the roles suggested by other actors In this sense, girls who have been off ered (by their teachers, parents etc.) the roles of well- behaved, polite young ladies who dislike mathematics soon start to actually take such roles seriously and comply (Rothenbuhler, 2003, p 90) Thus, roles are under the infl uence of (Kostera, 1996):

26 The new knowledge workers

● societal expectations (set for members of given groups, for example priests are expected not to overuse alcohol in public, and IT special-ists are allowed to walk around in torn trousers);

● professional group expectations (played out among professionals, as well as by each of them alone, i.e assumptions made by them “about ourselves”);

● organizational expectations (assumptions about the character of a given role expressed by the organizational representatives)

These are summarized in Figure 4.1

The acceptance of social roles (including professional ones) goes on throughout one’s lifetime; however an education plays an important role – it is a tool for communicating social expectations about a given profession That “specifi c form of modern ritual” (Collins, 1990, p 26) relies not only on the real remittance of specialist knowledge but also (and maybe mostly) on the strengthening of the professional role A few years

of education and thinking of oneself as of a future performer in a given profession can sometimes be more important than the knowledge gained from study itself This phenomenon is also related to the absorption of perceptual standards: the rules for seeing the environment For program-mers, it is important, for example, to form an “appropriate” opinion on ordinary users of computers, who are often treated with disrespect and are looked down on as those without access to the knowledge available to the

“clued- up ones” (Jemielniak, 2008c)

Professional roles naturally involve an assumption both that playing them requires special skills and preparation, and also that the actor playing them does so almost without eff ort (Goff man, 2000, p 75) In this sense, formal education has the most signifi cant symbolic value – it supports professional monopoly, but also gives the impression that the graduate is someone who, following graduation, has been created again and singled out from the others, after the most liminal (i.e transitional) experience of social transformation (Turner, 1977)

Within all three dimensions (institutional, organizational, and sional), the apparent small displays of control are also very important

profes-Institutional dimension

Figure 4.1 Factors formulating professional roles

Knowledge workers 27Though expressed in a very subtle way, through language, artifacts and rituals, they can have a huge impact Even such neutral issues as the way of formulating kitchen equipment instructions can, according to Elizabeth B Silva (2000), serve to maintain gender and power- relation roles Minor as it might seem, the change in the way those addicted to alcohol are described, from “being a drunk” to “becoming an alcoholic”, resulted in a major shift in the ways alcoholism was perceived As Richard H Brown (1998) shows, this linguistic nuance possibly led to development of help centers for addicts in hospitals and medical clinics, and to the disappearance of centers managed by the churches These observations lead to an important conclu-sion: even seemingly mundane and insignifi cant behaviors and customs, as well as the vocabulary used for describing social reality, are worth analyz-ing, as they may be symptomatic of bigger issues and cultural changes.The professional and institutional dimension of a group is mostly defi ned through socialization at the workplace Because of that, workers know who to respect, who to ignore, what is right and what is wrong (Konecki, 1992) They learn who they should be like, just as much as they unlearn the undesired identities, and the process’s organizational oblivion and “empty spaces” – i.e areas and topics avoided in everyday organizational life (Ciuk and Kostera, 2010; Kociatkiewicz and Kostera, 1999) are just as important for understanding workplace reality as organizational learning is.

A solid analysis of the processes of maintaining social roles can be achieved for example through a situational study (non- participant obser-vation) or a narrative study (an analysis of statements and interactions,

as well as organizational myths and stories) A study of the narratives constructed only by representatives of a single professional group has the advantage of directly approaching that group’s convictions (Jemielniak and Kostera, 2010) Although in statement analysis it is diffi cult to approach information on “how it really is” in the organization (a great challenge also for other research methods), it is easier to study the basic development process of professional roles: they are created through what the performing actors say and think (Boje, 1991; Feldman and Skölberg, 2004), and also through their myths and archetypes (Kostera, 2007, 2008b) That is why it is also interesting to study the prejudices and the stereotypes if they are typical for the majority of that profession’s repre-sentatives (Gill, 2003)

Professional roles are an important part of employee identity This is one reason why, according to some authors, the study of professional groups

is even more important than the study of organizations themselves (Van Maanen and Barley, 1984) For many people, position and its prestige are of signifi cant importance, which is why they are willing to make huge sacrifi ces to look their best in it, sometimes despite any obvious economic

28 The new knowledge workers

interest As Goff man observes (1961, p 63), a professional can behave in a very modest way in the street, yet put in a lot of eff ort to show off their com-petences in the social circle in which their professional activity takes place.What is interesting is that the feeling of professional pride in practice applies to all occupations without exception, regardless of society’s per-ception of the given activity There is a strong need to feel that we are doing something important and useful and for each profession to off er some kind of pride to its members Even strippers emphasize that they play an important therapeutic role, prostitutes and pimps believe that because of them there are fewer rapes and divorces, and for thieves their activity partially serves as a readjustment of unjust social diff erences (Bryan, 1966; Trice, 1993)

The variety of roles performed by workers and professionals is almost infi nite The subject of this book is knowledge workers; hence it is impor-tant to diff erentiate and specify who falls into that category and how that category fi ts the existing typologies

WHITE- COLLAR WORKERS

In the sociology of work and professions, a classic division is into manual (“blue- collar”) workers and offi ce (“white- collar”) workers Despite appearances, this division is relatively conventional and is not associated only with purely physical (or not) aspects of work Smith et al (1996), as

an example, note that secretaries are counted as white- collar workers while technicians who install phones are regarded as manual workers They notice that this division relies more on the span of control, the location of the employee and the social prestige of the occupation than on the number

of manual activities necessary for the work

In reality, it is diffi cult to explain logically why a creative, brilliant plumber is still regarded as a manual worker, and an old- fogy dentist who mechanically and routinely does the simplest procedures, undisput-edly falls into the intellectual worker category (Jemielniak, 2005) Only

by drawing attention to social status (professionalism, formal education and prestige) does it become clear that the division of work aims mostly

to diff erentiate those workers who, under some circumstances, have a right to express their opinions, from other workers who mainly have to follow orders A fi erce competition over whose work is to be recognized

as non- manual goes on all the time between various professional groups (Meiksins, 1985) According to Harry Braverman (1974), work organiza-tion on a production line is greatly determined not by its functionality but

in a symbolic way – a worker who has to work for his or her “master” in

Knowledge workers 29doing so becomes similar to the machines, and the technology is only one

of the ways of emphasizing that asymmetrical social relation

It should be noted also that the IT revolution and the development of

“the smart machines”, as Shoshana Zuboff (1988) calls them, results also (as mentioned earlier) in an increased scope of employee control Although

at the beginning of the twentieth century mechanical supervision over employees was limited to time cards stamped on entering and leaving the production site (the rest being imposed by the pace of the work and human supervisors), the contemporary scope and detailed control, thanks to IT developments, is almost infi nite Manual workers work under the supervi-sion of cameras, so their eff ectiveness is constantly monitored Moreover, unlike when there is a human supervisor present, in case of CCTV it is much more diffi cult to tell if they are being watched or not (more precisely, whether whoever sits at the other end of the cable is looking at the monitor

at that very moment or whether the camera is recording or not)

The common accessibility and low prices of the control systems result

in the degradation of occupations traditionally considered as white- collar, for example staff at a post offi ce or a bank counter Clerical professions are rapidly declassifi ed – i.e downgraded and deskilled – and in the same time there are fewer jobs for factory workers

In that sense, we can really discuss manual work only conventionally, even if it requires more real knowledge and skill than many “intellectual” activities The main distinctive feature of blue- collar work is the expecta-tion of total submission to the manager, in a spirit not far removed from Taylorism (Taylor, 1911/1998) Indeed, manual work is the one category

in which an employer’s fi rst expectation of an employee is their undisputed obedience to orders

Based on that division, the programmers studied quite obviously fell into the white- collar category The distinction, however, does not take any analysis much further; hence, it has to be supplemented with a more modern typology of professions

PROFESSIONALS

A profession is a specifi c kind of intellectual occupations The noun fessio in Midieral Latin meant the taking of church vows Later, besides

pro-priests, into the category of professionals fell doctors and lawyers, so that

“the professions” came to signify these three occupations until modern

times (Collins English Dictionary, 2007) Professionalization theory can

be a useful analytical tool to examine the processes that are taking place among intellectual workers

30 The new knowledge workers

Probably the clearest defi nition of professionalism is given by one of the well- known researchers on that issue, Eliot Freidson, who writes (2001,

p 12) that the term refers to the institutional conditions under which resentatives of the given profession, and not the consumers or the manag-ers, control the work – its access, processes and results

rep-Traditionally, professions were seen quite idealistically The process

of professionalization was perceived as addressing some social need to meet the requirements for high- quality services and their standardization – hence it was believed that professions evolve in peace, to some extent, out of the goodness of the heart (this approach is directly related to the functionalists’ understanding of the social roles mentioned earlier).The consecutive phases and necessary distinctive features of a profes-sion were distinguished, and the given job had to meet those criteria to

be considered a profession The common requirements for professions included the following criteria (Carr- Saunders and Wilson, 1933; Goode, 1957; Wilensky, 1964):

1 A body of professional knowledge based on scientifi c theory

2 A course of education (usually higher), lasting a few years and ing one to work and exhibit real competences and knowledge of the culture and customs of one’s profession

prepar-3 The clients’ welfare and social service forming an important source of work motivation

4 The work performed addressing signifi cant social needs (health care, lifesaving, solving serious confl icts, etc.)

5 The work possessing an autonomous character, with its assessment mostly in the hands of other members of the same profession

6 Membership in the profession being long- term, with a strong tion of professional community and solidarity

percep-7 A highly developed code of ethics and internal rules of conduct.The subsequent sociological literature has withdrawn from the peace-ful view of a profession It was quickly noticed that the professionaliza-tion process relies mostly on groups who battle over power, prestige and autonomy, rather than relying simply on altruism (Marks and Thompson, 2010) As was indicated in the previous subsection, the scientifi c knowl-edge of a given profession is of course socially constructed, inextricably intertwined with power and is the subject of constant inter- subjective negotiations, which infl uence the perception of the status of that given profession (Blackler, 1993)

It has been also noticed that professionalization theory is useful in the analysis of many jobs, but some of them do not necessary meet all

Knowledge workers 31the theoretical conditions Additionally, the order of accomplishing the phases in the theoretical professionalization model has proven to be very

dubious That is why Andrew D Abbott, in his highly acclaimed work The System of Professions: An Essay on the Division of Expert Labor, suggested

that it is more sensible to withdraw altogether from attempts to defi ne the necessary phases or diff erentiators of professionalization Instead, he suggested focusing on the social processes through which occupations lay claim to specifi c knowledge and operational areas as their own (Abbott, 1988)

The basic contemporary diff erentiator of a profession is, therefore, the specifi c ability to seize a defi ned “jurisdiction”, an area in which the representatives of that given profession are considered to be competent Occupations compete against each other for legitimization That rivalry may, as a side eff ect, be benefi cial for society, as it is one of the reasons why

a profession requires continuous supplemental training for its members, regardless of basic university education (Ben- David, 1971) Claims to rec-ognition of the exclusive rights to particular turfs are particularly eff ective

if society believes that those professional activities not only require edge and skills but also will signifi cantly increase both people’s security of and their wealth, especially in situations where the potential losses are great

knowl-A natural and indispensable element of the system of professions is the dispute among various occupations over assigning problems to areas of specialization (Abbott, 1988) Thus, it becomes very important to have the ability to defi ne social problems in the language appropriate for the given profession For example, depending on the manner of describing a situation, a child’s conduct can be described as “hyperactive” (a medical problem: psychiatric consultation is required and possibly a pharmaceuti-cal treatment); “rude” (the problem lies within the upbringing psychology, its solution requiring consultation with a family counselor or psychologist and maybe one or more therapeutic sessions); “sinful” (also a behavioral problem, but requiring a consultation with an priest and maybe prayer);

“unappeased” (a problem with organizing activities, suggesting the need for consultation with a sports coach or youth tutor); and so on

Professions fi ercely compete with each other over the areas in which they are competent A very good example from some countries is the debate, from the early twentieth century, between accountants and fi nanciers, which has resulted in the seizure by the fi rst group of the rights to defi ne and assess accounting standards in organizations Similar is the current process of psychoanalysts gaining independence and taking the position previously assigned to psychiatry and psychology (Leveille, 2002), or the constant confl ict between lawyers and tax advisers on the scope of their respective authorities (Felstiner, 2005)