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Irec 2012 challenges for public and private sector industrial relations and unions in times of crisis and austerity_ver1.2
1. Intra organisational relationships in
times of austerity – End culmination in
historic trend?
Joint conferences IREC 2012/ESA RN 17
Challenges for Public and Private Sector Industrial
Relations and Unions in times of crisis and Austerity
Lisbon, 4-7th September 2012
Dr. Oliver Krone & Prof. Jari
Stenvall
2. Agenda
Research Questions and aims of presentation
Overarching character of IS
Biopolitics
RE for IS development
Summary
Austerity in the System Dr. Oliver Krone & Prof. Jari Stenvall 2
IREC 2012/ ESA RN 17
3. Research Questions and aims of
presentation I
Can we learn something when examining IS
design with a theoretical perspective of
biopolitics?
How did work condensation and increasing
informationalisation in the public and private
sector affect micro- structuring of work in IS
design?
Is austerity confined to wage economics, or
does it go deeper into work structuring?
Austerity in the System Dr. Oliver Krone & Prof. Jari Stenvall
IREC 2012/ ESA RN 17
4. Overarching character of IS I
IS have become ubiquitous in the public and
private sector
They structure and define the workflow in many
different ways
More and more they have become integral part
in the communication of organisations
Utilisation of IS is less and less oriented to the
standard function of Online Transaction
processing (OLTP), but more and more future
oriented
Austerity in the System Dr. Oliver Krone & Prof. Jari Stenvall 4
IREC 2012/ ESA RN 17
5. Overarching character of IS II
IS are employed with the intention of increasing
span of control, while simultaneously attempting
overcoming reliance on staff
IS – understood in broad terms as ICT – have in
times led to a shift of the roles between ICT and
humans/staff
⇒ staff has become an annex, or getting to stage
of “cyborg” (Harraway in Dillon/Reid)
⇒ Information captured with IS is used controlling
and evaluating performance of employees
Austerity in the System Dr. Oliver Krone & Prof. Jari Stenvall 5
IREC 2012/ ESA RN 17
6. Biopolitics I
„Making life“ is the one core notion of biopolitics
Includes the idea of „valuable“ life that ought to be
protected and nourished
Encapsulates rights of the „sovereign“ to dispell when
Individuals are not complying to and with „natural“
given rules of individual behaviour and relations to
other
Under conditions of liberal-market oriented
societies “making life” originates in individual
optimisation
Austerity in the System Dr. Oliver Krone & Prof. Jari Stenvall 6
IREC 2012/ ESA RN 17
7. Biopolitics II
Describes in modern guise a form of governance
that relies on community based control
Often uses as expression of its „tacit“ character
technological expert knowledge
Behaviour is evaluated by others and staff itself in
line with role-models of a given work community
Diverse knowledge's and work communities are an
expression of different arena in which biopolitics is
acting
Austerity in the System Dr. Oliver Krone & Prof. Jari Stenvall 7
IREC 2012/ ESA RN 17
8. RE for IS design - I
RE for IS is a process that defines processes and
outcomes to be achieved in order to ensure good
quality of a software tool
Is characterised by role duplications and different
interests of different parties/stakeholders
Is highly communicative interactive, but faced by
differences of technological knowledge that
participants have
Is an organisational activities in which the different
sets of technological knowledge compete
Austerity in the System Dr. Oliver Krone & Prof. Jari Stenvall
IREC 2012/ ESA RN 17
9. RE for IS design - II
RE forces staff to rely on their departmental
community as reference for behaviour
Community based references of behaviour are
identical to “professionalism”, and how the
professional is supposed to behave
Individual behaviour is not assessed primarily in
congruence to achieving project aim, but
In line with the expectation act professional as bearer
of a technological knowledge
Austerity in the System Dr. Oliver Krone & Prof. Jari Stenvall
IREC 2012/ ESA RN 17
10. RE for IS - III
- Shades of professionalism
IS staff is held to
Be Rational and efficiency oriented
Prefer clear cut rules (right or wrong)
Be Highly sceptical on the human capacity to act rational
and thus
Avoiding as much as possible human interventions into
running of software
Be rather individualistic and monetary oriented, while
simultaneously seeking individually economic profit
Austerity in the System Dr. Oliver Krone & Prof. Jari Stenvall
IREC 2012/ ESA RN 17
11. RE for IS - IV
- Details of the work
RE for IS is characterised by a number stressors that
are to be carried as part of the “professional
package”
Stressors are mutually reinforcing, and can induce
negative stress that might induce different forms of ill-
being
Austerity in the System Dr. Oliver Krone & Prof. Jari Stenvall
IREC 2012/ ESA RN 17
12. Stressors in IS –
A cursory overview
Stressors identified are
pace of work and considerable overtimes
problems of communication and work overload
due to cooperation
highly intellectual demanding tasks
fast obsolescence of knowledge
need for intrinsic work motivation
the service character of SD project work
professional character of work with corresponding
work structures
Austerity in the System Dr. Oliver Krone & Prof. Jari Stenvall
IREC 2012/ ESA RN 17
13. Summary
Austerity relies for IS design in three main aspects:
The professional work ethic and its basis for assessment
The highly restrictive options for project specific and fitting behaviour at the
customer site
The professional character of work and the formal detailed structuring of
work induce add-on stress to employees working in that field
We suggest that over time professional work ethics in
combination with minute detailed work description are to
become standard
The current prevalence in Germany of “examining” work
relations in terms of their impact on psychological well-being is
in times short sighted, as it does not consider the underlying
structural changes
We suggest examining more and other fields of occupation with
the lens of biopolitics, as we observe that in different areas of
job-life biopolitics has taken a hold
Austerity in the System Dr. Oliver Krone & Prof. Jari Stenvall
IREC 2012/ ESA RN 17