The Future of Work in IS
The quality of informational work
- is informational work necessarily more satisfying than other types of work?
Blom, Melin & Robert (2001):
- information workers have the most mentally stressed work of all, most time pressures, most often too much work
Richard Sennett: The corrosion of character : the personal consequences of work in the new capitalism (1998)
- informational workers have mobile, non-routine jobs
- they enjoy their work; but they have also feelings of insecurity and loss of control over their lives
Castells (1996):
1) The actual operating unit becomes the business
project, enacted by a network
2) Flat hiearchy
3) Management by teams
4) Evaluation of results by customer satisfaction
5) Fees are based on what the results by the team are
6) The maximation of contacts with customers
7) Information, education and re-education of the
workforce in all levels (life-long learning)
The effect of automation and information technology on work?
Jeremy Rifkin: The End of Work (1995)
New employment in IS (Schaff 1982):
1) Creatives
2) Organizational workers
3) Social workers
4) Maintenance and technical staff
5) Leisure activities
Digital democracy vs. digital divide
How the new ICT affects democracy?
Contending perspectives (promises vs. threats):
- e.g. Masuda (1980): the promise of a new type of participatory democracy through new ICT
- e.g. Schiller (1996): the new ICT make worse the already present inequalities of advanced capitalistic societies
Features and potentialities of ICT with regard to democracy:
(Hague & Loader 1999):
- interactivity
- global network
- free speech
- free association
- construction and dissemination of information
- challenge to professional and official perspectives
Problems:
- the “digital divide”: unequality of access and the lack of resources
- the new ICT is not by its nature more democratic; the impact of new ICT is always based on social forces
- the rise of new forms of ICT does not even out social and economic unequalities