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The widespread implementation of algorithmic technologies in organizations prompts questions about how algorithms may reshape organizational control. We use Edwards’ (1979) perspective of “contested terrain,” wherein managers implement production technologies to maximize the value of labor and workers resist, to synthesize the interdisciplinary research on algorithms at work. We find that algorithmic control in the workplace operates through six main mechanisms, which we call the “6 Rs”—employers can use algorithms to direct workers by restricting and recommending, evaluate workers by recording and rating, and discipline workers by replacing and rewarding. We also discuss several key insights regarding algorithmic control. First, labor process theory helps to highlight potential problems with the largely positive view of algorithms at work. Second, the technical capabilities of algorithmic systems facilitate a form of rational control that is distinct from the technical and bureaucratic control used by employers for the past century. Third, employers’ use of algorithms is sparking the development of new algorithmic occupations. Finally, workers are individually and collectively resisting algorithmic control through a set of emerging tactics we call algoactivism. These insights sketch the contested terrain of algorithmic control and map critical areas for future research.
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New genres and obsolete expertise in the new textiles economy
This paper examines the role of distinctions between genres in conflicts over expertise in an American textile mill. Riverway is a struggling 150-year-old New England textile mill where members of a diverse workforce focus on producing high quality fabric in a context that demands daily adaptive expertise. Based on fieldwork from 2015–19, we examine how Riverway workers interacted with documentation systems at the mill. They engaged with managers and coworkers around new forms of technology and shifting valuations about skill and expertise, and, in the process, made sense of their roles as workers in a declining industry where their skills and forms of expertise were nearly obsolete. Through analysis of conflicts in the mill, we examine how members of the mill's community of practice made sense of a changing genre ecology of tools for communicating, recording information, communicating asynchronously, and asserting expertise. We show how technologies for making fabric and communicating about fabric production became symbols of valuations tangentially linked to production. These technologies became lightning rods for debates about expertise, skill, and knowledge, and for everyday distinctions that workers and managers made about the value of their work during a time of economic change marked by mill closures.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1654944
- PAR ID:
- 10376749
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of Cultural Economy
- ISSN:
- 1753-0350
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 1 to 19
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1080/17530350.2022.2087719
