11/18/2008 Talk Worker Autonomy Draft One

The Network-Organized Labor Process: Control and Autonomy in Web Production Work

Amanda Kidd Damarin, Ph.D. School of History, Technology, and Society Georgia Institute of Technology 221 Bobby Dodd Way Atlanta, GA 30332-0225 USA tel: 404-894-7445 [email protected]

February 18, 2010

Full paper submitted to the International Labour Process Conference, Rutgers University, New Jersey March 2010

Abstract This paper suggests that control over work in postindustrial settings is not adequately grasped by extant hierarchical and occupational models. As an alternative, it proposes that work activities, as well as workers’ experiences of constraint and autonomy, are shaped by socio-technical networks; these include extra-organizational, extra-occupational relationships to human actors, technological systems, production conventions, and typified sources of labor demand. The impact of these relationships is illustrated with data from interviews with website production works (n=60). Findings suggest that each type of relationship can be a source of constraint on work activities, although some also provide workers with opportunities for autonomous discretion. The constraining effects of these relations, coupled with the weakness of organizational and occupational control in the web production field, is taken as initial evidence that socio-technical networks may operate as mechanisms of labor control. In the discussion, it is suggested that because control is decentralized and often impersonal, it is experienced as a set of realities to be accommodated rather than social forces that might be questioned. Workers bring this control to bear upon themselves, resulting most of the time in apparently spontaneous consent to demands which are ultimately, though not obviously, those of capital. Networks, both social and socio-technical, are widely understood as media of power; webs of relationships can give actors information, visibility, and influence, or expose them to isolation, dependence, and manipulation (Burt 1992; Callon and Latour 1981; Granovetter 1985;

Lin 2001). These capacities are recognized in research on industries and firms, which has examined how network configurations impact businesses’ market positions, innovative capacities, and adaptability, and even identified a distinct networked organizational form

(Podolny and Page 1998; Powell 1990; Saxenian 1994; Uzzi 1997; White 2002). Below the level of the firm, there is a substantial literature on how interpersonal networks and, sometimes, technical ones mediate labor market mobility and stratification (Fountain 2005; Granovetter

1974; Lin 1999; Mouw 2003). By contrast, the impact of networks on the labor process, and particularly workplace power relations, has not been systematically examined—despite research showing that interpersonal ties contribute to workers’ skill acquisition (Anderson-Gough, Grey, and Robson, 2006; Grabher 2004) and to monitoring of work (Barker 1993; Evans, Kunda, and

Barley 2004; Leidner 1993; Osnowitz 2006), and that technical networks can coordinate work, transform workers’ relationships, and subject them to pressures emanating from geographically or socially distant locales (Castells 2000; Cetina and Bruegger 2002; O’Mahony and Barley

1999; O’Riain 2000).

This paper aims to better understand how socio-technical networks impact the labor process by focusing on their implications for workers’ experiences of autonomy and constraint in everyday work activities, particularly in postindustrial settings. In doing so, it treats networks as mechanisms of labor control, different from but comparable to other mechanisms such as bureaucratic hierarchies and occupational groups. To illustrate the role of networks, examples are drawn from an interview-based study of website production work.

1 Conceptualizing Labor Control

Labor control and autonomy have become difficult to define, especially in postindustrial work such as the website production to be examined here. This was not always the case; in past critiques of industrial and bureaucratic labor, worker autonomy was understood as the ability to plan, design, choose, influence, or otherwise use discretion and judgment in performing work tasks, and it was threatened primarily by managerial control, exercised through commands, organizational structuring, or mechanization (Braverman 1974, Crozier 1964, Edwards 1979).

This vision was complicated by Burawoy’s (1979) observation that workers can become complicit in their own domination, which destroyed the assumption that subjects and objects of control could be neatly identified with management and labor. Relatedly, control is now understood to take both regulative and productive forms (Foucault 1977): it includes mechanisms that direct and constrain workers from above, but also cultural practices and norms that generate spontaneous pursuit of managerial goals from below (Kunda 1992). Recent studies have also shown that workers impose control on each other, often through the social ties and institutions of their occupational groups (Osnowitz 2006, Willis 1990)—previously understood as loci of worker autonomy and solidarity. Matters become more complicated in research on postindustrial, “flexible” workplaces, which often feature low organizational hierarchies, self- directed work teams, and a lack of direct supervision. Some argue that labor autonomy is fully realized: workers enjoy the “possibility for self-realizing action” and become “authors of their own work” (Cetina and Bruegger 2002, p. 174; Powell 2001, p. 57). Skeptics counter that such claims neglect the effects of norms, surveillance, risk, and other less-obtrusive forms of control

(Smith 2001). Thus, there is no clear consensus on how control operates or what autonomy looks like in postindustrial settings.

2 This paper cannot fully resolve such ambiguities, but does aim to contribute empirically and conceptually to our understanding of postindustrial labor control and autonomy. Worker autonomy is understood as the capacity to exercise discretion and judgment in carrying out tasks, while control and constraint are threats to that discretion, regardless of source. It is assumed that all work is subject to some control—as much is implied by the notion of skill, which is both a resource for performing work and a set a rules about how it can be done. All work also involves at least minimal discretion: even when subject to rigid machine pacing or subtle normative controls, workers are still left with some decisions to make. Further, it is assumed that between the illusory poles of absolute freedom and constraint, there are meaningful differences not only in levels but also in sources, forms, and experiences of control and autonomy. Just because the postindustrial worker does not have a supervisor at her back does not mean she can perform tasks just as she sees fit. Indeed, her work may be shaped by forces and demands unknown to her industrial, bureaucratic, or professional peers—for example, pressures to negotiate conflicting standards or constantly adopt new skills rather than conforming to a stable set of rules (Girard and Stark 2002; Kotamraju 2002). Finally, the paper conceptualizes socio-technical networks as an important mechanism of labor control—and avenue for worker autonomy—in website production and, by extension, similarly structured lines of postindustrial work. To explain why, I briefly describe the two most commonly discussed labor control mechanisms, organizational hierarchies and occupational groups, and their limitations for understanding postindustrial work.

Hierarchical control, associated with industrial factories and white-collar bureaucracies, is concentrated at the top of the pyramidal organizations; owners, managers, and experts determine the activities of lower-level employees. Actual mechanisms of control may include

“simple” personal commands, “bureaucratic” rules and divisions, “technical” monitoring and

3 pacing of labor, or the “normative” production of spontaneous compliance (Crozier, 1964;

Edwards, 1979; Head, 2003; Jackall, 1988; Kunda 1992, Noble 1999). As noted above, worker autonomy in hierarchical settings is typically construed as independence from managerial authority (however exercised) and is understood to be quite limited, often confined to subversion or resistance (Burawoy 1979; Vallas 2006) rather than active discretion over tasks. Occupational control, by contrast, is associated with the professions and crafts; it is held by occupational institutions and groups (professional associations, unions, informal communities) and wielded both by and over their members, who often have relatively fleeting ties to particular employers.

Control mechanisms include training in occupational skills, socialization into occupational norms, certification and licensure, and reputational pressures (Abbott 1988, Freidson 1986,

Osnowitz 2006, Van Maanen and Barley 1984); technology is less a control mechanism than an object of control struggles between worker groups (e.g., Novek 2002, Vallas 2006).

Occupational control is thought to afford workers at least some autonomy (Braverman 1979,

Blauner 1964). First, they gain expertise by adopting skills and norms. Though these are set by occupational elites or traditions, workers may have input through participation in occupational groups. Further, as work is often dispersed across projects, it has an improvisational character that calls for worker discretion (Freidson 1986).

These two forms of control have been seen as alternatives and opposites at least since

Marx’s (1976) distinction between the social (occupational) and technical (hierarchical) divisions of labor (e.g., Barley and Tolbert 1991, Wallace 1995). This opposition is evident in discussions of postindustrial work: where the decline of hierarchies is not credited with producing unbounded worker freedom, it is often though to lead automatically to increases in occupational control (Leicht and Fennell 1997, Tolbert 1996). However, empirical research on postindustrial

4 labor suggests that relevant controls are hardly limited to organizational hierarchies and occupational groups. Postindustrial firms often exhibit “network forms of organization,” in which hierarchical coordination is replaced by inter-organizational ties to suppliers, partners, and clients (Podolny and Page 1998; Powell 1990, 2001; Saxenian 1994); in addition, many relevant lines of work employ networked information and communications technologies (Castells 2000,

Cetina and Bruegger 2002, Head 2003, O’Mahony and Barley 1999). As a result, workers are embedded in relationships to extra-organizational, extra-occupational actors and tools that have the capacity to shape their activities.

First, there are interpersonal ties to human actors outside workers’ immediate organizational and occupational locales, such as service recipients. Clients, especially “powerful, sophisticated, and well-organized” ones, often manipulate professional labor processes through direct intervention or by indirect pressure, such as threats to take business elsewhere (Freidson

1986, pp. 218-219). Retail customers can “direct, evaluate, and reward or punish” service workers through informal interactions (e.g., verbal abuse) or formal feedback systems (Leidner

1993, pp. 133). In addition to service recipients, suppliers and partners can shape work activities: collaborators from foreign occupations may attempt to monopolize tasks and rewards

(Abbott 1988), while suppliers and partners in other firms can alter performance by drawing on relationships of mutual obligation (Uzzi 1997).

Second, postindustrial work may be structured by technologies other than the intra-firm production machinery emphasized in extant literature. In particular, it is today shaped by telecommunications networks which span multiple organizations and are used to distribute as well as produce goods and services (O’Mahony and Barley 1999). Like other technological systems, these networks create interdependencies between their elements—if one component

5 joins the system, changes, or departs, other components are also affected (Hughes 1987). They can alter qualities of relationships—for instance, by turning vocal interactions into textual ones, or closing spatial and temporal distances (Cetina and Bruegger 2002). Additionally, technological networks operate only to the extent that different components are compatible; thus, they require standards, which both enable work by facilitating coordination and constrain it by limiting innovation (Garud, Jain, and Kumaraswamy, 2002). Thus, these systems can expose workers to sources of influence, forms of relatedness, and rules for work performance which that are neither organizational nor occupational in origin and scope.

Further, technological networks are not the only source of standards. As Becker (1982) has shown, artistic work is governed by conventional styles, formats, and symbols which enable cooperative links among artists and others who facilitate their work. Like technological standards, conventions both sustain and constrain work. As they ensure that work is useful and meaningful to others, conventions allow artists to create without direct oversight, but this is because they are controls themselves: actors who eschew them risk damage to their reputations, careers, and incomes (Biggart and Beamish 2003). Further, though many conventions emerge from firms or occupational communities, others originate outside these contexts. For instance, rules governing artistic production are shaped by commercial transactions among distributors, manufacturers, gatekeepers, and other components of larger culture industries (Becker 1982).

More generally, conventions have been credited with coordinating entire regional economies

(Storper 1997).

Finally, even without direct contacts, technological links, or shared conventions, extra- organizational and extra-occupational actors can shape labor when workers attempt to take account of their demands. This has not been examined in extant literature, but as I will show

6 below, web workers often attune their activities to the perceived wants and needs of clients, employers, or users in general. Drawing on Berger and Luckman (1966), I refer to these generalized actors as “typified others.” Workers’ engagement with them resembles the postsocial relationships that Cetina and Bruegger (2002) have found between currency traders and markets: both workers and traders relate to non-human constructions as external, temporally unfolding life forms with lacks that correspond to their own wants. (Indeed, web workers too construct “the market”—for labor, not currency—as a typified other.) Workers may be encouraged to take account of typified others by employers or occupational norms, but the typifications themselves—the perceptions of lack, want, and need—derive from varied sources such as past experiences, media, and discussion with colleagues.

Thus, in addition to organizations or occupations, work may also be shaped by socio- technical networks consisting of relationships to persons, technologies, conventions, and typifications. Further, such networks are likely to be prominent in postindustrial settings, where production often involves inter-organizational and inter-occupational collaboration as well as intensive use of information and communication technologies. Here I use data on website production to examine how labor activities are affected by each of these relationships, asking whether workers experienced their effects as constraints, as avenues for the exercise of autonomous judgment, or both. If socio-technical relationships do impact work and are sometimes felt as constraints, this will be taken as initial evidence that they can operate as a mechanism of labor control—one that is comparable to hierarchical and occupational forms, though also distinct in that sources of control are decentralized and distributed rather than gathered into coherent managerial hierarchies or occupational groups. The implications of this decentralization will be addressed in the discussion.

7 Methods, Data, and Case

Data comes from a study of New York City web production work during its early years,

1993-2003. Research, carried out in 2002-2003, centered on the collection of sixty web workers’ employment histories, which were used to construct a detailed picture of web jobs and labor markets as they developed over time. Participants were recruited mostly through advertising on web industry listservs and networking at industry events1; they include individuals who entered the industry at different temporal points, worked in a variety of firms and freelance positions, held diverse production roles, and achieved quite different levels of career success. Employment histories were collected using participant resumes, questionnaires, and in-depth interviews. With the exception of some background information,2 the data presented below is drawn from the interviews. These aimed at gathering the details of participants’ pre-web work experiences, pathways into web production, and each of their web jobs, employers, and job-changes, as well as their evaluations of their careers and the web industry in general. The interviews were in- depth (two- to four-hours) and semi-structured; participants were asked to begin narrating their careers and then periodically interrupted to collect needed information. As a result of this format, interview transcripts contained large numbers of stories about particular jobs and projects. These stories, as well as workers’ responses to general questions about their careers

(e.g., what difficulties they had faced, whether they wished they had done anything differently, their future plans), are the source of the present data. To understand control over web production labor, they were examined for reports of workers being unable to carry out work in the way they wished or thought best, and for explanations as to why such hindrances occurred. To locate

1 Random sampling of workers was simply not plausible in this case because the industry contains no comprehensive lists of participants that might serve as sampling frames. 2 Background information draws on the work histories and also on supplementary data from sixteen additional interviews with web workers and other industry participants, field observations and informal interviews at 43 new media industry events (June 2000 to October 2002), and industry media.

8 instances of autonomous discretion and judgment, they were also examined for expressions of satisfaction or pride at having accomplished tasks successfully and/or in a particular way. This is admittedly a “make do” approach: interviews did not include direct questions about labor control as this line of inquiry emerged during subsequent analysis. However, the use of expressions of hindrance and accomplishment as indicators of labor control is broadly consistent with sociological understandings of how control is experienced by workers.

Web production makes a good case for examining the general hypothesis developed above because it exemplifies postindustrial, network-organized, technology-rich labor. It exhibits employment flexibility, as shown by workers’ relatively rapid movement among different jobs, firms,3 and forms of employment (e.g., permanent, freelance). Most of their positions fell into one of several broad categories: single-handed freelance work on small websites; freelance work on larger websites in collaboration with other freelancers or firms; permanent positions in web agencies, which provide web production services to client firms; and permanent positions working on the website of an employer, which could be a dotcom (a firm using the web as a medium for commerce) or any of a variety of other organizations (universities, banks, small businesses, etc.), and could involve many web co-workers or none. Most of these jobs involved at least some project-based work, typically creating or updating a custom website. With some exceptions (e.g., single-handed freelancing), projects were carried out by teams including web workers in various functional roles (design, information architecture, content production, coding, programming, project management) and, often, other participants such as client representatives or suppliers. Task flexibility ensued from the work’s project orientation, workers’ ability to

3 The web workers I spoke to changed jobs about every 11 months and changed employers (including self- employment) about every 1.42 years.

9 switch or combine roles as they moved among teams, and rapid change in technologies, production goals, and skills.

Web work was deeply embedded in technical, social, and organizational networks. In addition to producing a networked technology (websites), workers used the web and internet as media of communication with one another, employers, and clients. Through collaboration, they also built extensive social networks which they used to acquire information about new technologies, trends, and jobs. Further, production of large websites often involved inter- organizational networks of collaborative and outsourcing ties among client firms, multiple web agencies, specialized technology providers, and others. Finally, many web employers were part of New York’s “new media” industry, a regional cluster of firms focused on the development of commercial applications for the web and other interactive technologies. The industry’s own media (magazines, websites, listservs) and numerous events (panel discussions, networking forums, website launch parties) contributed to the development of relationships among web workers, firms, clients, investors, and educational, nonprofit, and public sector organizations

(Indergaard 2004). Overall, New York web work possessed many characteristics generally associated with postindustrial production, including prominent social and technical networks.

Control and Autonomy in Web Work

Before examining how these networks contributed to constraint and autonomy in web production work, some attention must be given to the roles of hierarchical and occupational control. Data from this study suggest that hierarchical control was limited and inconsistent. It is true that the management of some large web agencies, dotcoms, and media websites imposed divisions of labor and, to a lesser degree, formal processes for website development. Further,

10 production in non-web firms was sometimes folded into existing structures, such as those of journalism or information technology work. However, top-down structuring was by no means the rule. Many new media firms (agencies, dotcoms) thought looser arrangements would enhance creativity and innovation (Ross 2003), while non-web firms, uncertain about how to handle the new technology, often placed web workers in their own departments and left them to organize their own activities. Where structures were imposed, their impact on workers was mixed. Divisions of labor were often broad and flat, specifying departmental distinctions but leaving room for self-organization within the units where work was performed. Personal supervision was also variable: workers’ stories include as many comments on its absence as on its obtrusiveness. Further, the hierarchies and divisions that were established were often short- lived, as “permanently beta” web organizations continually shifted their structures to pursue new technologies and strategies or to accommodate capital funders (Neff and Stark 2004, Girard and

Stark 2002). Finally, much web work was performed on a freelance basis, distant from the physical milieu and organizational structures of employer organizations. Given these considerations, it appears that while hierarchical control was present in some work settings, it was not a dominant in web production as a whole.

The same can be said of occupational control. It is true that web workers often described their activities as a “profession” or “craft” and viewed themselves as highly skilled. In addition, the New York web world included organizations that resembled professional associations, such as the World Wide Web Artists’ Consortium, a Webgrrls chapter, and the New York New Media

Association. However, while these organizations did provide training in web skills, news about industry trends, and forums for exchange of job information, they never codified web expertise, their few attempts at skill certification were largely ignored, and they never tried to limit

11 membership or competition among web workers. As a result, hiring qualifications were loose and idiosyncratic, emphasizing “fit” with the employer firm and, later, experience rather than standard skills and credentials established by occupational groups. Web production also failed to develop clearly-marked work jurisdictions. Workers referred to distinct work roles (e.g., design, coding, content), but these were often blended in particular jobs and workers moved among them. Further, jobs often combined web production with other work such as print design or non- web software development. As a result, workers became multi-skilled, but lacked definite task domains they could call their own. Thus web production never developed the organizational basis, standards and certifications, or boundaries that are hallmarks of occupational control.

The relative weakness of occupational and hierarchical control over website production work could lead to the conclusion that workers were fully autonomous. This, however, would ignore their embeddness in socio-technical networks and the effects of the interpersonal relations, technological systems, conventions, and typified others suggested above. Here, I examine these in turn, illustrating their consequences for constraint and autonomy with excerpts from interviewees’ comments on their jobs and careers.

Interpersonal Ties

Interpersonal relationships are central to organizational hierarchies and occupational groups, but here the goal is to examine relations that extend outside those systems, which I will refer to as “external” ties. Among web workers, the most frequently mentioned external ties were to representatives of client firms; suppliers and collaborators were cited less often. Clients were not only from external organizations, but also typically not web workers themselves.

12 Though they did not figure in all web work, they were a salient feature of many positions and most workers encountered them at least once in their careers.

Many web workers seemed to relish client work. Their comments suggest that while employers often had established websites and web plans, clients sought new sites or site elements for which their goals were fairly diffuse. Stacy, a designer, reported that many clients provide only vague “needs” and “objectives,” leaving it to web workers to “interpret” and

“translate” them into concrete production plans. According to Brian, an information architect, this situation could reverse ordinary authority relations: “We’re being hired to solve a problem.

If they could do it in-house they wouldn’t hire you ... Therefore the person that maybe has authority over you structurally [i.e., a high-ranking client rep]4 may not be the expert in what needs to be done …” Kwang, a web generalist,5 noted a similar reversal in describing a freelance web job for a small print design agency: the agency owner “contracted [a website] out to me and

I worked with her. Although it was her project, she kind of put me a little bit above her, since it was a web project … she would give me the design, and interestingly enough, I had the say-so on whether it was a go or not—which is weird, because it’s still her project, she’s the one giving me the paycheck.” Finally, the client tie is compared favorably to the employment relationship by

Glen, a programmer who had experienced both:

… as a consultant you get much more respect from your clients than you do as an

employee. I can go into a job as a consultant and I can say exactly the same thing that an

employee will say, and I will get more respect than the employee will, because I’m being

hired as a knowledge expert. The employee is there with all the employee baggage.

4 This interpretation is derived from the larger discussion from which the quote was excerpted. 5 A “generalist” performs many web production roles at once, e.g. design, coding, and information architecture.

13 In short, external ties to clients appear to afford workers more authority and autonomy than do relationships to employers.

However, this autonomy is strongly conditioned by a second feature of client relations: they are market-mediated ties in which workers must sell their own services or those of their agencies. Client demands for alternative design proposals or last-minute changes had to be attended to, and workers’ interactions with clients were always infused with informal salesmanship aimed at keeping them “happy.” Thus, Brian concluded his above statement about expertise with a coda on self-effacement: “you have to make it seem like it was their idea sometimes … Like, ‘we took all your great ideas and this [site] is what it is because of your good ideas.’ You have to diplomatically sell work.” Others complained about the need to “please,”

“understand,” “educate,” “be patient with,” “hand-hold,” and “schmooze” clients, particularly those they saw as “idiots” who “nitpick,” don’t do their “homework,” want to “be treated like they’re the only client,” and “threaten to take [their] business elsewhere on a daily basis .”6

Workers’ external relations to clients clearly involve somewhat contradictory mixtures of authority and subordination.

The impact of clients on web workers’ tasks did not constitute organizational or occupational control, but rather resulted from the embeddedness of web work in market- mediated, inter-organizational relationships. Nonetheless, external ties are hardly distinctive to postindustrial work; client relationships with similar qualities have been noted in research on occupationally controlled labor such as professional services (e.g., Freidson 1986). Thus, while external ties to clients and others are prominent in web work, they do not themselves distinguish its mechanisms of control from other forms.

6 Comments are from Brian, Stacy, and several other previously unquoted interviewees.

14 Technological Networks

Research on the role of technology in labor control has often focused on production technologies implemented by management to rationalize and control workers’ activities. Some degree of rationalization was also found in web production, for example in the use of programmed site “templates” to reduce the cost and discretion of non-programmer labor.

However, this is only one of many ways in which web technology affected production work. The objects of workers’ efforts, websites, are components of digital networks which shape their activities by linking them to new technologies, altering existing relationships, and forcing them to adopt technological compatibility standards.

First, the web connects a variety of digital technologies. While it may not be true that

“everything will be digital” (Negroponte cite), it does seem that every digital thing is potentially subject to “convergence,” or mutual interconnection, appropriation, and imitation. As a result, it is not unusual for web workers to also create applications for CD-Roms, wireless devices, or digital television. For some, connections to varied technologies provided opportunities for independent judgment. David, a generalist, described work on his employer’s template-driven website as fairly routine (he “just ma[d]e it look nice”), but things changed “when we had new tools,” such as the website’s wireless section: “that was entirely my own thing, I was responsible for the layout entirely … it was my discretion.” New technologies could also be a source of constraint. Discussing a CD-Rom project, agency-based designer Larry complained that the client representative “decided kind of at the last minute—because he had seen something on an international flight—[that] since you had to speak into a microphone, he wanted to make it into an animated character, a ‘Mr. Microphone’ that would talk …” The already-vast project and the difficult client relationship contributed to Larry’s sense that this was an arbitrary and untenable

15 demand which he nonetheless had to fulfill. However, without the potential for connection and borrowing among the many digital objects that increasingly pervade our world, clients could not make such demands—and web workers’ complaints about project “scope creep” or “creeping featuritis,” and ensuing stress, long hours, and missed deadlines, would be far less common.

In addition to creating new links, the web also shaped work by altering the qualities of existing connections. This was particularly evident among workers in traditional media companies (e.g., print journalism, television) that had adopted the web and were struggling with the implications of interactive, real-time relations to audiences. Sid, an experienced journalist who first encountered the web while working as editor at a trade magazine, suggested that real- time links created pressure to deliver news immediately:

Previously we’d expect maybe two or three stories from [reporters] that [they]

would file by the end of the week and would appear in Monday’s magazine …

After the web came along, in addition to that, if news broke … we’d say ‘write

this up for the web,’ and they would bang it out that afternoon … It was just a

bunch of extra work for no extra compensation. Plus it stole stories. Before the

web, stories could happen in the middle of the week, but no one would find out

about them until we published it on Monday morning. But with the web there,

we’ve got competition from [a similar magazine website] … You’ve got to

publish it that evening on the web. So it was a big headache.

Thus, the web’s real-time capacity resulted in the intensification of journalistic labor— but Sid also suggested that it changed the quality of reporting. He discussed coverage of a highly publicized, racially charged police brutality trial:

16 We had our reporter [at the trial] do two stories, basically one, they’re guilty, and

two, they’re innocent. And it was quite a moment … we’re standing in a big

crowd watching TV monitors in our office … As soon as they had the guilty

verdict … someone punched a button and our website was updated within

seconds with a new story saying “they are guilty, blah blah blah.” At a newspaper

you could never have done that. We would have six extra hours to call experts,

and put it in context and stuff like that, and say what it really meant.

He continued, claiming that the web “made journalism move faster,” but because of this, the “subtleties don’t get brought out on the web, which is a shame.” Overall, Sid’s comments imply that by changing temporal relations between media producers and consumers, the web created time competition that reduced journalistic quality standards.

Finally, the efficacy of websites as communications media rests on their compatibility with the rest of the technologies that comprise the web. But this network is a bricolage of browsers, coding and programming languages, and software applications—users’ interests in sticking with systems they know and commercial interests in income from existing technologies keep incompatible standards in place. Thus, web workers were often charged with making websites work across different technological systems. Ian, a coder, complained that he had to build his employer’s large dotcom site not only in HTML, the language accessible to most users, but also in “Rainman,” the language required for easy access by America OnLine (AOL) members. He saw Rainman as “idiotic” and a “pain in the ass” but did not fault his employer for making him use it—presumably, he understood it as necessary if the dotcom was to connect with the large audiences its business model demanded. Others see “compatibility testing,” or ensuring that sites function on multiple browsers, as a similarly necessary but tedious task. Designer

17 Martha saw adoption of “web standards,” a new practice aimed at reducing incompatibility problems, as something she had to do “if I’m going to continue with the web” and not become

“obsolete.” That sense of necessity is the essence of how compatibility standards constrain work activities. As with the effects of new types and qualities of relationships, this constraint stems from the embeddedness of labor in technological networks, and unfolds largely outside the reach of organizational or occupational controls.

Conventions

In addition to technical standards, work involves social conventions which enable collaboration among workers and intelligibility to users. Though buffeted by change, web production possessed conventions such as rules for page layout or navigation. However, paid web work is rarely done for its own sake; websites are built to accomplish goals defined by organizations in other industries. Workers thus contend with the conventions of those industries as well as their own more native rules. Further, while conformity with industry conventions is presumably desired by employers and clients, interview transcripts contain remarkably few stories about their being communicated interpersonally, e.g. of a client explaining how a music industry website ought to look. Industry conventions thus appear to operate impersonally, and are analytically separable from ties to clients or employers.

That they are impersonal does not keep such conventions from being experienced by workers as limitations. This was particularly the case with “design guidelines” created by specific firms: Tom, an agency designer, noted that he and his colleagues often tried to avoid clients with guidelines since such “constraints” made work too “systematic” and “structured.”

Others identified work involving updates to already-designed websites or brands and work for

18 clients with conservative advertising strategies as “not very interesting or creative” (Shannon).

However, when workers discussed the conventions of whole industries rather than particular firms, they described them as both constraints and opportunities to exercise expertise. This is reflected in the words of Anne, an agency-based information architect who had worked on a number of financial websites:

Financials are extremely highly regulated … [sites are] very structured … Columns of

numbers are columns of numbers, you can’t move them around … There’s also usually

color limitations: most every financial site wants green or blue or gray … They will

usually have an entire design guidelines book ... By the time you get done with that and

the functionality that you have to have … and the information … it’s challenging.

Here, a combination of strict but diverse conventions leads to “challenge,” and Anne describes her efforts as a sort of virtuoso performance. This high valuation on variety was expressed somewhat differently by another agency-based information architect, Steve, who enjoyed moving among different sets of conventions as he shifted from one project to the next: “One thing I love about my job is I get to learn all these different industries … I like the fact that I can be working on a pharmaceutical site and learning all this stuff about high cholesterol, then … jump into the freight industry … It’s amazing how you can be in one industry and cross-pollinate that knowledge and information to another industry.” Agency designer Tom also emphasized that work on diverse projects, including some highly “structured” ones, made him “well- rounded.” Thus, like relations to clients and technological systems, conventions appear to be a double-edged sword. If they are too narrow and closely specified, they limit workers’ ability to engage in creative, “interesting” labor, but if they are more general and heterogeneous, they allow for challenge, learning, and “cross-pollination” of knowledge.

19 Typified Others

Typified others are workers’ generalized representations of various actors who influence their work and their desires and demands. Though not discussed in extant research, they likely play a role in all types of labor, and may be components of hierarchical and occupational control.

Here, however, the focus is on typifications that are not formulated by management or occupational groups, but rather emerge through workers’ accumulated job experiences, communications, and exposure to media.

One example comes from designer Martha and illustrates how web workers’ activities can be influenced by both typified others and conventions. The typification is of “clients,” particularly commercial clients seeking to use the web as an advertising medium, and the convention is “branding,” which Martha described as making every form of advertising

(billboards, magazines) look similar “so that the public sees it as part of the whole.” Branding is a longstanding practice in advertising (Schudson, 1984), and was first applied to the web around

1995, when commercial sites were proliferating rapidly. It was at this point that Martha moved from a print graphic design job in an advertising firm to her first web position, as Art Director in the online division of a large magazine publisher where she oversaw design of advertisers’ web promotions. Though intrigued by the web, she was concerned at the time that it consisted largely of “crazy websites,” “look[ed] like crap,” and “wasn’t taken as seriously … as other advertising.” The problem, she thought, was that web workers—her co-workers in particular— were “kids out of school” who saw the web as an experimental medium rather than orienting their activities to the sorts of client typifications she had learned in her print advertising days. In her words,

20 People weren’t getting that … there’s a whole world of design for these clients, that

they’re used to getting a certain level through advertising … To [my co-workers], it was

like you took neon green and made lines, whatever came out was this website for Toyota.

No, you take the Toyota brand and find a way to put that online … They were still

coming up with these cool, amazing ideas for this mansion that you enter on the web, and

it’s the Toyota mansion! … It was just this lack of understanding that the web isn’t just

this place to do goofy graphics. It’s a place you have to brand for the client.

As Martha moved on from this employer, her typification of clients and their branding needs helped her find new jobs: she said that her knowledge “ended up putting me in really high demand, [as clients were] like, ‘Thank you! Finally, someone who gets [it].’” Further, her vision was shared by others, particularly the advertising and branding firms that created their own web departments, and eventually it prevailed in web production as a whole. Workers learned to accept, if sometimes grudgingly, branding conventions such as adherence to the highly circumscribed “design guidelines” discussed in the previous section, and that their freedom to create “cool, amazing ideas” was limited to relatively scarce jobs making websites for cultural organizations or firms advertising style goods. Thus, though far from common in the early days of web production, typifications of clients and their needs ultimately transformed web work.

In this example, the typified other is a fairly specific type of commercial client; other workers’ typifications referred to far more general actors such as “everyone” or “the market.” In either case, typifications represented demands for particular types of web labor. This can be seen in the words of Susan, a freelance web coder struggling to find work during the industry downturn, as she described the challenges of “staying on top of technology”:

21 I’ve basically remained specialized as HTML … I’ve been really reluctant to learn Flash

[animation] because I really don’t appreciate it, even though almost everybody … now

has to have it … So I wonder if I’ve kind of booted myself out by not learning Flash … I

do question some of the decisions I’ve made …

Here, “everybody” and what everybody “has to have” comprise a typification of clients-in- general and their needs. Judging from information elsewhere in her interview, Susan’s perception derives from interaction with her existing clients, extensive perusal of help-wanted ads, and perhaps conversations with her husband, who had also been involved in website production for many years. She clearly believes that she should have attuned her skills to meet the typified client’s demands, but there is also a note of uncertainty about what those demands are; Susan

“questions” and “wonders.” Uncertainty is also reflected in the sense of good fortune that Lucy, creative director of a small web agency, expressed in reflecting on a recent shift in her approach to design:

I’m less interested in just the look and feel of something because I’m much more

interested in the overall concept and the user experience. And I think that that’s actually

something that’s much more useful in this marketplace and in the future. No one cares

about how something looks anymore. Everyone cares how it works.

Here, “everyone” and the “marketplace” refer to potential clients for Lucy’s agency and, as she was thinking of leaving her job, potential alternate employers or freelance clients. “This” marketplace is the market of the industry downturn, when the interview took place, but coupled with Lucy’s comments on what “everyone cares” about, it also points to the labor market impact of a general web production trend (also noted by other interviewees) away from emphasis on visual design and towards emphasis on usability and information architecture. Lucy’s

22 ambivalence towards this shift, reflected in her curt tone as she discussed what “no one” and

“everyone” cares about, was shaped by her background as a long-time designer and former oil painter with a fine arts education. In moving from “look and feel” to “user experience,” Lucy had sensed she had correctly attuned her skills to the changing desires of the typified other, but in doing so she had also participated in the devaluation of a prized skill-set.

Typified others, whether they represent specific types of clients or “everyone” in general, are socially constructed generalizations about agents and qualities of labor demand. As such, they require attention: workers believe that if they correctly respond to typified others they will be rewarded with ongoing work, while failure will endanger their employment prospects—and, in Martha’s case, the very viability of the web as a commercial medium. Thus, these abstractions can powerfully shape web workers’ activities.

Discussion and Conclusions

This paper began with the suggestion that mechanisms of labor control are not limited to organizational hierarchies and occupational groups; work activities are also shaped by extra- organizational, extra-occupational networks of relationships to human actors, technologies, conventions, and typifications. To substantiate this claim, it examined website production workers’ experiences with such relationships. Findings suggest that some relations operate both as constraints on workers and as opportunities for them to use autonomous judgment. Client ties placed workers in a mixed role of subordination and authority; connections to diverse technologies could yield new demands or arenas for discretion; compliance with industry conventions could provide limitations or challenge. Other relationships were more decisively constraining: workers believed that failure to comply with the pressures and standards of technological systems and typified market actors would lead to unemployment. The constraints

23 that emerged from all these relationships, coupled with the general weakness of hierarchies and occupations in the web production field, provide support for the notion that socio-technical networks can be mechanisms of labor control.

This control differs from other forms in that its agents are not gathered in employer firms or occupational associations, but rather dispersed across the networks in which labor is embedded—in the web case, they included all of workers’ potential employers and clients and their industries and customers, as well as technology manufacturers, suppliers, and even end- users. These agents’ demands and standards did not amount to a coherent system of control; instead, disparate control effects emerged from their efforts to do other things, like advertise a product or maintain a subscriber base. As control over web labor was decentralized and, except in the case of clients, depersonalized, workers had few stable, palpable persons or objects to which they could attribute the forces that constrained and enabled their activities. Accordingly, though they criticized and praised clients, they saw most other relations that shaped their work as bedrock realities to be accommodated rather than social forces they might complain about or resist. Further, workers seemed to feel that it was up to them, as individuals, to correctly divine the demands and standards of these relationships—often, neither occupational institutions nor managers guided them. Thus, socio-technical ties exerted a sort of disciplinary pressure, in

Foucault’s sense: they were sets of demands that workers brought upon themselves, yielding apparently spontaneous consent. Occasionally this consent broke down. In addition to Ian’s comments about the “idiocy” of Rainman, Gloria criticized big web agencies for “pushing technology on people,” and Lucy assailed the marketing profession for turning the web from an

“interesting” place to one where commerce is “screaming at you” “every time you turn a corner.”

Major technology players such as Microsoft and Cisco periodically draw even more colorful

24 diatribes on internet forums frequented by web and IT workers. Since these entities do exert control over work, such commentaries represent a form of resistance that labor process researchers might heed. Still, without action the commentaries remain mere, if not always hidden, transcripts. Concrete action against powerful players in socio-technical networks is scarce, and with reason—we have few models for resistance to labor control issuing from sources other than employers.

However, this paper is only a first attempt to understand how socio-technical networks can operate as mechanisms of labor control; it requires confirmation and extension through further research. The present study is limited in that it focuses only on a single case and was not originally designed to examine control and autonomy in depth; it could be usefully followed up with further studies of labor control in other postindustrial settings, especially if potential sources of control are not assumed to be limited to managerial or occupational agents. In addition, this paper has focused on the impact of different types of social and technical relationships; a next step is to examine the structure of these relationships and whether workers’ positioning has consequences for experiences of control. Finally, it should be noted that the labor control described here is largely driven by capital; much of it stems from relations to for-profit firms. A last conclusion is that capitalist control and resistance to it do not always operate in the ways we have come to expect; thus, there is a need for further research which clarifies the sometimes mysterious workings of capital in the postindustrial, wired, network-organized world.

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