New Technology, Job Content, and Worker Alienation: A Test of Two Rival Perspectives
Abstract
The introduction of new technologies into the advanced capitalist work process continues to provoke sharp theoretical debate. While mainstream theories predict an upgrading of work content, recent Marxist analyses argue that workplace automation tends to deepen the subordination of the worker beneath the means of production. This study aims to adjudicate between these rival perspectives. The analysis centers upon the communications industry in the United States, a highly automated “knowledge” industry rapidly undergoing the transition to competitive market conditions. Official statistics on the changing occupational structure of this industry, combined with survey data on job content, indicate the existence of an upgrading effect between 1950 and 1980. In more recent years, however, the onset of a deskilling trend is found: The more automated the workplace, the less autonomous and conceptually demanding the job tends to be. Further analysis suggests that workplace automation differentially affects the various occupational categories.
Get full access to this article
View all access and purchase options for this article.
1.
1. The Dictionary of Occupational Titles data have been much used, even though important problems of validity remain unresolved. For critical discussions of the DOT data, see Miller et al. (1980), Spenner (1983), and Hunt and Hunt (1984).
2.
2. Recent research has challenged the validity of Blauner's conclusions, even with respect to the chemical industry. See Nichols and Benyon (1977) and Halle (1984).
3.
3. For discussion of the consequences of ESS from a deskilling point of view, see Newman (1982) and Howard (1980). The case of the Test Desk Technician (an elite centraloffice craft that was largely destroyed by automation) is sometimes discussed as an example of the wider deskilling trend. The question here is whether this case does in fact represent the modal trend in the industry more broadly.
4.
4. Thus Kohl (1982: 64) refers to a growing “push for labor cost savings” throughout the industry, largely due to competitive pressures.
5.
5. The CWA is a large, national union representing more than half a million workers. It is the major union in the industry, with many more members than either the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers or the Telecommunications International Union. District 1 of the CWA encompasses workers employed in New York, New Jersey, and New England.
6.
6. Conceptual approaches toward technology that differ from that used here can be found in Amber and Amber (1962), Bright (1958), and Faunce (1965). Note that the present approach is more narrowly focused upon the equipment itself than is the case within the organization literature. For a discussion and an example, see Baron and Bielby (1982).
7.
7. Conceptual content is here understood to be a subset of the more general dimension of occupational complexity.
8.
8. For recent theoretical and empirical analysis grounded in the Marxist theory of alienation, see Archibald (1978), Torrance (1981), Archibald et al. (1981), and Vallas and Yarrow (forthcoming). See also Kanungo (1982: 36).
9.
9. Arguments to this effect can be found in Newman (1982) and Kohl (1982), both of whom are concerned with changes in skill levels within communications.
10.
10. When tests for interaction using dummy variable regressions are performed, interaction terms for the outside craft and clerical groups are highly significant, adding appreciably to the R2 for the additive equation.
11.
11. This finding is bolstered when we examine workers' responses to a series of items measuring perceived change in the workplace. These items asked whether “the more complex, skilled parts of your job have been computerized,” whether changes in technology have “reduced the discretion or judgment your job requires,” whether the work has become more “routinized,” and so forth. The percentage of outside craft workers who reported such adverse changes was in all cases lower than in any of the other four occupations. In addition, interviews of several local union officers reinforced the thrust of this conclusion. These interviews suggest that where advanced technologies are used by the outside craft force, foremen—whose production experience was based on the older systems—have little or no personal experience in its use. As a result, first-level supervisors are forced to depend on the workers' knowledge even more so than before.
12.
12. Interestingly, outside craft workers seem to make up the basis for local union leadership. Similar dynamics are reported by Herding (1972).
13.
13. Unstructured interviews of craft workers and local officers suggest that where the system is highly automated, problems of communication between inside and outside workers are often exacerbated. Thus outside craft workers are forced to spend very long periods of time waiting for information needed to complete their tasks, a fact that very likely reduces their involvement in the job itself.
14.
14. One reviewer quite rightly advises caution in the use of the term contradictory. My use of the term is meant to refer to phenomena subject to opposing influences at the same point in time. Erik Olin Wright's (1979: chap. 2) notion of contradictory class influences is roughly parallel.
15.
15. Note that the effect of worker autonomy on alienation is strongest among the two craft groups (see Table 6). This point underscores the persistence of a craft tradition among these skilled groups.
16.
16. Traditional notions of the class structure locate lower-level office employees “above” skilled manual workers. However, the present study suggests that such notions are increasingly obsolete. It is not so much that clerical work undergoes a reduction to the position of manual work, as is often claimed. Instead, the situation of clerical workers drops farther below that of skilled manual labor as computerization is pressed forward. For comparison of the position of clerical and manual workers, see Baron and Bielby (1982: 185) and Wright and Singelmann (1982).
References
ALMQUIST, M. L. and G. E. FESSLER (1979) “Switching control centers: switching system maintenance—and more.” Bell Laboratories Report (June).
ALWIN, D. F. (1976) “Assessing school effects: some identities.” Sociology of Education 49 (October): 249-303.
AMBER, G. S. and P. S. AMBER (1962) Anatomy of Automation. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
AMIN, A. T., W. HAUN, and D. MULDER (1981) “Sleuthing for troubles in ESS networks.” Bell Laboratories Report (October).
ARCHIBALD, W. P. (1978) “Using Marx's Theory of Alienation empirically.” Theory and Society 6.
ARCHIBALD, W. P., O. ADAMS, and J. GARTRELL (1981) “Propertylessness and alienation: re-opening a “shut' case,” pp. 149-175 in R. F. Geyer and D. Schweitzer (eds.) Alienation: Problems of Meaning, Theory and Method. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
BARON, J. N. and W. T. BIELBY (1982) “Workers and machines: dimensions and determinants of technical relations in the workplace.” Amer. Soc. Rev. 47 (April): 175-188.
BELL, D. (1960) “Work and its discontents,” pp. 222-265 in The End of Ideology. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.
BLAUNDER, R. (1964) Alienation and Freedom: The Factory Worker and His Industry. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
BRAVERMAN, H. (1974) Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century. New York: Monthly Review Press.
BRIGHT, J. (1958) Automation and Management. Boston: Harvard Business School.
BROOKS, T. R. (1977) The Communications Workers of America: Story of a Union. New York: Mason-Charter.
BURAWOY, M. (1983) “Between the labor process and the state: the changing face of factory regimes under advanced capitalism.” Amer. Soc. Rev. 48 (October): 587-605.
CARCHEDI, G. (1977) The Economic Identification of Social Classes. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
CHARLES, T. (1986) “New technology and the future of work: the state of current research.” Presented at the 11th World Congress of Sociology, New Delhi.
COLEMAN, J. R. (1969) “Relational analysis: the study of social organizations with survey methods,” pp. 517-527 in A. Etzioni (ed.) A Sociological Reader on Complex Organizations. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
COOLEY, M. (1980) Architect or Bee? The Human/Technology Relationship. London: Langely Technical Services.
COTGROVE, S. and C. VAMPLEW (1972) “Technology, class and politics: the case of the process workers.” Sociology 6: 169-185.
CROMPTON, R. and G. S. JONES (1984) White Collar Proletariat: Deskilling and Gender in Clerical Work. Philadelphia: Temple Univ. Press.
DYMMEL, M. D. (1979) “Technology in telecommunications: its effect on labor and skills.” Monthly Labor Rev. (January).
EDWARDS, R. C. (1979) Contested Terrain: The Transformation of the Workplace in the Twentieth Century. New York: Basic Books.
ERIKSON, K. (1986) “On work and alienation” (1985 presidential address to the American Sociological Association). Amer. Soc. Rev. 51 (1): 1-9.
FAUNCE, W. (1965) “Automation and the division of labor.” Social Problems 13 (Fall).
Federal Communications Commission (1950) Statistics of the Communications Industry. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.
Federal Communications Commission (1960-1980) Statistics of Communications Common Carriers. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.
FELDBERG, R. and E. GLENN (1983) “Technology and work degradation: effects of office automation on clerical workers,” pp. 59-78 in J. Rothschild (ed.) Machina Ex Dea. New York: Pergamon.
FORM, W. (1980) “Resolving ideological issues on the division of labor,” pp. 140-155 in H. Blalock (ed.) Sociological Theory and Research: A Critical Appraisal. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.
FORM, W. and D. B. McMILLEN (1983) “Men, women and machines.” Work and Occupations 10 (May): 147-178.
FRIEDMAN, A. (1977) Industry and Labor: Class Struggle at Work and Monopoly Capital. London: Macmillan.
GEYER, R. F. and D. SCHWEITZER [eds.] (1981) Alienation: Problems of Meaning, Theory and Method. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
GLENN, E. and R. FELDBERG (1979) “Proletarianizing clerical work: technology and organizational control in the office,” pp. 51-72 in A. Zimbalist (ed.) Case Studies on the Labor Process. New York: Monthly Review Press.
GOLDTHORPE, J. et al. (1969) The Affluent Worker in the Class Structure. London: Cambridge Univ. Press.
HACKER, S. (1979) “Sex segregation, technology and organizational change: a longitudinal study of A.T.&T.” Social Problems 26 (5).
HALLE, D. (1984) America's Working Man. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
HERDING, R. (1972) Job Control and Union Structure. Rotterdam.
HILL, S. (1983) Competition and Control at Work: The New Industrial Sociology. Cambridge: MIT Press.
HIRSCHHORN, L. (1984) Beyond Mechanization. Cambridge: MIT Press.
HODSON, R. (1985) “Working in `high-tech': issues and opportunities for the industrial sociologist.” Soc. Q. 26 (3): 351-364.
HOWARD, R. (1980) “Brave new workplace.” Working Papers for a New Society (November-December).
HULL, F., N. S. FRIEDMAN, and T. ROGERS (1982) “The effect of technology on alienation from work: testing Blauner's inverted U-curve hypothesis.” Work and Occupations 9 (February).
HUNT, T. L. and H. A. HUNT (1984) An Assessment of Data Sources to Study the Employment Effects of Technological Change. Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciences, Committee on Women's Employment and Related Social Issues.
KANUNGO, R. N. (1982) Work Alienation: An Integrative Approach. New York: Praeger.
KENDALL, P. and P. LAZARSFELD (1955) “The relation between individual and group characteristics in the American soldier,” pp. 290-296 in P. Lazarsfeld and M. Rosenberg (eds.) The Language of Social Research. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.
KOHL, G. (1982) “Changing competitive and technology environments in telecommunications,” pp. 53-76 in D. Kennedy et al. (eds.) Labor and Technology: Union Response to a Changing Environment. University Park: Pennsylvania State University, Department of Labor Studies.
KOHL, G. (n.d.) “Divestiture: the framework.” Internal memorandum, Communications Workers of America, Development and Research Department, Washington, DC.
KOHN, M. (1969) Class and Conformity: A Study in Values. Homewood, IL: Dorsey.
KOHN, M., C. SCHOOLER, et al. (1983) Work and Personality: An Inquiry into the Impact of Social Stratification. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
KRAFT, P. (1977) Programmers and Managers: The Routinization of Computer Programming in the United States. New York: Springer-Verlag.
KRAFT, P. (1979) “The industrialization of computer programming: from programming to `software production,' ” pp. 1-18 in A. Zimbalist (ed.) Case Studies on the Labor Process. New York: Monthly Review.
LEE, D. J. (1981) “Skill, craft and class: a theoretical critique and a critical case.” Sociology 15 (1).
LINCOLN, J. and G. ZEITZ (1980) “Organizational properties from aggregate data: separating individual from structural effects.” Amer. Soc. Rev. 45 (June): 391-408.
LOCKWOOD, D. (1958) The Blackcoated Worker: A Study in Class Consciousness. -London: Allen & Unwin.
LOW-BEER, J. R. (1978) Protest and Participation: The New Working Class in Italy. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.
MacKENZIE, G. (1973) The Aristocracy of Labor: Skilled Craftsmen in the Class Structure. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.
MARX, K. (1961) Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. Moscow: Foreign Languages Press.
MARX, K. (1967) Capital, Vol. I: A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production. New York: International.
MILLER, A. R., D. J. TREIMAN, P. S. CAIN, and A. A. ROOS (1980) Work, Jobs and Occupations: A Critical Review of the “Dictionary of Occupational Titles.” Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
MONTGOMERY, D. (1979) Workers' Control in America: Studies in the History of Work, Technology and Labor Struggles. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press.
NEWMAN, D. (1982) “New technology and the changing labor process in the telephone industry: the union's response.” (unpublished)
NICHOLS, T. and H. BENYON (1977) Living with Capitalism: Class Relations and the Modern Factory. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
NOBLE, D. (1977) America by Design: Science, Technology and the Rise of Corporate Capitalism. Cambridge: MIT Press.
NOBLE, D. (1978) “Social choice in machine design: the case of automatically controlled machine tools, and a challenge for labor.” Politics and Society 8 (3-4).
NOBLE, D. (1984) Forces of Production: A Social History of Industrial Automation. New York: Knopf.
RUMBERGER, R. W. (1981) “The changing skill requirements of jobs in the U.S. economy.” Industrial and Labor Relations Rev. 34: 578-591.
SALAMAN, G. (1975) “Occupations, community and consciousness,” in M. Bulmer (ed.) Working Class Images of Society. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
SALAMAN, G. (1986) Working. London: Tavistock.
SEEMAN, M. (1959) “On the meaning of alienation.” Amer. Soc. Rev. 24.
SEEMAN, M. (1975) “Alienation studies.” Annual Rev. of Sociology 1: 91-123.
SHEPARD, J. (1971) Automation and Alienation: A Study of Office and Factory Workers. Cambridge: MIT Press.
SHEPARD, J. (1977) “Technology, alienation and job satisfaction.” Annual Rev. of Sociology 3.
SPENNER, K. I. (1979) “Temporal changes in work content.” Amer. Soc. Rev. 44: 968-975.
SPENNER, K. I. (1983) “Deciphering Prometheus: temporal changes in the skill level of work.” Amer. Soc. Rev. 48: 824-837.
STARK, D. (1980) “Class struggle and the transformation of the labor process: a relational view.” Theory and Society 9 (1).
STEWART, A., K. PRANDY, and R. BLACKBURN (1984) Social Stratification and Occupations. New York: Holmes & Meier.
TANNENBAUM, A. and G. BACHMAN (1964) “Structural versus individual effects.” Amer. J. of Sociology 69 (May): 585-595.
TORRANCE, J. (1981) “Alienation and estrangement as elements of social structure,” pp. 68-96 in R. F. Geyer and D. Schweitzer (eds.) Alienation: Problems of Meaning, Theory and Method. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
U.S. Department of Labor (1978) Dictionary of Occupational Titles (4th ed.). Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.
VALLAS, S. P. (1987) “White collar proletarians? Computerization, clerks and working class consciousness.” (unpublished).
VALLAS, S. P. (forthcoming) “The labor process as a source of class consciousness.” Sociological Forum.
VALLAS, S. P. and M. P. YARROW (forthcoming) “Advanced technology and worker alienation: comments on the Blauner/Marxism debate.” Work and Occupations.
WALLACE, M. and A. L. KALLEBERG (1982) “Industrial transformation and the decline of craft: the decomposition of skill in the printing industry, 1931-1978.” Amer. Soc. Rev. 47: 307-324.
WEDDERBURN, D. and R. CROMPTON (1972) Workers' Attitudes Toward Technological Change. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.
WOOD, S. J. (1982) The De-Skilling of Labour? Skill, De-Skilling and the Labour Process. London: Hutchinson.
WRIGHT, E. O. (1979) Class, Crisis and the State. London: Verso.
WRIGHT, E. O. and J. SINGELMANN (1982) “Proletarianization and the changing American class structure,” pp. 176-209 in M. Burawoy and T. Skocpol (eds.) Marxist Inquiries: Studies of Labor, Class and States. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
ZIMBALIST, A. (1979) “Introduction,” in A. Zimbalist (ed.) Case Studies on the Labor Process. New York: Monthly Review Press.
Cite article
Cite article
Cite article
OR
Download to reference manager
If you have citation software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice
Information, rights and permissions
Information
Published In
Article first published: May 1988
Issue published: May 1988
Authors
Metrics and citations
Metrics
Article usage*
Total views and downloads: 426
*Article usage tracking started in December 2016
Articles citing this one
Receive email alerts when this article is cited
Web of Science: 24 view articles Opens in new tab
Crossref: 28
-
Influence of Workplace Technology on Job Skill in selected Food and Be...
-
Alienation Is Not ‘Bullshit’: An Empirical Critique of Graeber’s Theor...
-
ÇALIŞMA HAYATI KALİTESİ ÖLÇEĞİ ÖNERİSİ
-
Leading Future Lives: Producing Meaningful Intelligence
-
Psychological Underpinnings of the Work-Site Selection Process of Know...
-
Authenticity matters more than intelligence and personality in predict...
-
Alienation and its correlates: A meta-analysis
-
Employee alienation: relationships with careerism and career satisfact...
-
Diagnosing the techno‐relational action space
-
DRIVEN TO DRINK: MANAGERIAL CONTROL, WORK-RELATED RISK FACTORS, AND EM...
-
Automation, Job content, and Underemployment
-
COMMITMENT TO THE ORGANIZATION IN EXCHANGE FOR SUPPORT FROM THE ORGANI...
-
Impacts of Class on Hong Kong Peoplés Well-Being
-
The Effect of Occupational Growth on Labor Force Task Characteristics
-
The impact of technological change in a service organization
-
Training in CAD: an exploratory study of methods and benefits
-
Work and society: Patterns of organisational culture
-
Rising from the ashes: The deskilling debate and tobacco manufacturing
-
Implementation and Use of Expert Systems in Organizations: Perceptions...
-
Expert systems in production and operations management: research direc...
-
Women's and Men's Expectations About the Effects of New Technology at ...
-
Workers, Firms, and the Dominant Ideology: Hegemony and Consciousness ...
-
The Concept of Skill: A Critical Review
-
Skill: Meanings, Methods, and Measures
-
DESKILLING, DECOLLECTIVIZATION, AND DIESELS...
-
Computers, managers, and control at work
-
Technology and Participation in Japanese Factories...
-
The labor process as a source of class consciousness: A critical exami...
Figures and tables
Figures & Media
Tables
View Options
Get access
Access options
If you have access to journal content via a personal subscription, university, library, employer or society, select from the options below:
loading institutional access options
Alternatively, view purchase options below:
Purchase 24 hour online access to view and download content.
Access journal content via a DeepDyve subscription or find out more about this option.
