Week 2a: Technology and Work Flashcards
What is technological determinism?
- The idea that technology itself determines social and economic arrangements
- Has a certain autonomy
- Consequences can be shaped by human forces
What perceptions do people have about technology and unemployment?
- Fears of new technologies replacing jobs
- tech makes new jobs but makes others obsolete
- technology may reflect and reinforce inequalities (de-skilling)
What is a luddite?
The idea of someone who is technologically phobic
What are the 3 components of a skill?
Complexity
Diversity
Autonomy
What is the deskilling argument?
- Reduces skill levels by degrading work
- Reduces autonomy by disenfranchising work - less decision making
- Reduces Wages
What is the upgrading/en-skilling argument?
- tech enhances skill levels by automating boring work
- enhances autonomy
- enhances wages by getting to do more challenging work
What is the mixed effects position?
- tech has negative and positive effects on work
○ Polarization of skills
○ Non-mutually exclusive processes
○ Technology simplifies some parts of the job, but makes others more complex - People with manual labour are going to lose out; their work gets boring, alienated and simple
What are the problems with the data and theory behind the tech & work debate?
Not a lot of empirical work in different organization
What are the larger implications behind the tech & work debate?
social consequences and class interests
Marx - higher up’s are gaining more from the workers
What is there to consider behind the worker’s experience?
Tech is effecting the meaning people take from their work
Wear and tear
Health consequences and broader issues
Explain the proletarianization of clerical work
downgrading work because it uses machines
follows the deskilling argument
clerical work used to be desirable until 1900s
What is a pink ghetto?
offices with lots of women
What technologies influenced the proletarianization of clerical work?
The typewriter and the telephone led an influx of women into the labour market - Preference for young women; Easy to train/move around/high turnover; Little education or skill - low pay
What contributions did Fredrick Winslow Taylor make?
Taylorism - scientific management in the workplace to do actions in the most productive/less straining way possible
What is soldiering?
everyone producing at the same pace; deliberately rationing product
