Christian Heath and Graham Button
Editorial Introduction . . . remarkably little writing in the sociology of work begins with the work itself (except descriptively, not analytically) but focuses on the division of labour, on work roles, role relationships, careers, and the like. A concerted analytic examination of work itself ought to provide a needed corrective to more traditional approaches, which, however effective, still leave important issues untouched or unresolved. Strauss (1985: xi) In recent years we have witnessed the emergence of a growing corpus of sociological studies concerned with work, technology and interaction in organizational environments. They include studies of air traf c control, emergency dispatch centres, software engineering, architectural practice, control rooms on rapid urban transport networks, international telecommunication centres, nancial institutions, newsrooms, construction sites, law rms and hospitals. These studies address the social and interactional organization of workplace activities, and the ways in which tools and technologies, such as paper documents, complex multimedia systems, formal speci cations and the like, feature in work and collaboration. There is a longstanding interest in sociology of the workplace and the shop- oor, however, not since the pioneering initiatives of E. C. Hughes and his colleagues has such a wide-ranging attempt been made to develop empirically and observationally grounded analysis of the interactional and organizational character of work. As yet though, this research, which is commonly known as ‘workplace studies’, remains relatively unknown within sociology and there has been little attempt to chart its bearing upon contemporary issues and developments within the discipline. In this, a special issue on workplace studies, we bring together a diverse range of papers to encompass the scope of the substantive and analytic issues addressed in this growing body of sociological research. The papers amount to a collection of studies which examine such diverse settings as call centres, print manufacture, scienti c communities, architectural practice, control centres, banks, and university administration. They address the ways in which work is ordered and organized in the activities and interactions of the participants and examine how tools and technologies are used as practical matters in the accomplishment of the work of the setting. In this latter regard, tools and technologies range from documents through to complex surveillance systems, from protocols and formal British Journal of Sociology Vol. No. 53 Issue No. 2 ( June 2002) pp. 157–161 © 2002 London School of Economics and Political Science ISSN 0007-1315 print/1468-4446 online Published by Routledge Journals, Taylor & Francis Ltd on behalf of the LSE DOI: 10.1080/00071310220133278
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speci cations, through to prototypes. In different ways the studies are not only concerned with the social organization of work and the workplace, and the relationship between work and organizations, but also with rethinking the distinction between the technical and social. The papers also display an interest, which is characteristic of workplace studies in general, in placing socially organized practice and practicality at the heart of the analytic agenda, and in re ecting upon some of the key sociological concepts and ideas which have informed our understanding of work, organizations and technology. Also included in the special issue is a paper which adopts a rather diffent approach in a wide-raning discussion of meaning and satisfaction at work. The relative absence of these workplace studies from contemporary developments and debates within sociology is surprising. It derives perhaps from the curious provenance of this research. Within sociology there are various elds that have been concerned with technology and the work place. Social studies of science has had an interest in the social construction of technology; within the sociology of work, there has been an interest in socio-technical systems; labour process theory has been concerned with the use of technology in the organization of social relationships in the workplace, and contemporar y sociological theor y emphasizes, often bleakly, the role of informational and communicational technology in society. However, the new interest shown by the genre of workplace studies which are represented here in how systems feature in interaction in organizational settings, derives, in the main, though not in all instances, not so much from the arguments that have taken place in these other elds of sociological research but rather from recent debates in the cognitive and computer sciences and in particular the critique of plan based, goal oriented, mental models of human-computer interaction. Given this provenance, workplace studies have primarily addressed concepts and ideas, debates and developments, in areas such as CSCW (Computer Supported Co-operative Work) and HCI (Human-Computer Interaction) rather than those from within sociology, although sociology has provided the methodological and theoretical background that informs the studies. The aim of this special issue therefore, along with related initiatives (for example Luff et al. 2000), is to provide a more general sociological readership with instances of these workplace studies and to suggest ways in which they bear upon contemporar y issues and debates within sociology. It is perhaps worthwhile raising a number of issues here concerning organizational theor y and research, the sociology of work, and sociological interests in technology. With their analytic focus and their predominantly empirical contribution, workplace studies are of relevance to developments in contemporary organizational theor y and research. For example, despite the wide-ranging recognition that globalization and market changes are generating new organizational forms, which require exible co-operation both within and between ‘ rms’, there is, as yet, little analysis of the ways in
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which these different collaborative arrangements emerge, coalesce, and subside in particular circumstances. Whilst workplace studies are principally concerned with forms of co-operation within particular organizations, and in many cases speci c departments within those organizations, it can be seen how a deeper understanding of organizational interaction and communication, contributes to these more ‘overarching’ sociological concerns. The relevance of recent studies of work and interaction to organizational theory in this way has been articulated by DiMaggio and Powell (1991) in their attempt to chart a distinctive course through the increasingly relativistic debates found within (post)modern organizational theor y (see also Ackroyd 1992, and Reid and Hughes 1992). Unfortunately however, the ‘new institutionalism’ provides few examples of the ways in which we can begin to readdress key concepts and ideas within organizational theory and as Silverman (1997) suggests their programmatic recommendations remain somewhat problematic. In contrast, workplace studies are providing empirically grounded analyses of organizational conduct. These analyses bear upon long-standing concerns in sociology, for example, the division of labour and its associated roles, rules and responsibilities. Notwithstanding the recognition that divisions of labour are themselves dependent on ‘informal’ arrangements and local culture, the idea that order in the workplace is dependent upon roles, rules and various formal prescriptions still permeates organizational theor y. An overarching theme of the papers presented in this special issue, concerns the ways in formal prescriptions, ranging from protocols to information technologies, feature in the practicalities of workplace activities, and how they are dependent upon a body of practice for their application and intelligibility within particular circumstances. In turn these formal prescriptions often presuppose specialized forms of task or activity, which are undertaken by speci c categories of personnel in organizations. Until recently, task has largely been conceived either cognitively, as deriving from specialized bodies of information and reasoning which enable the implementation of specialized skills or reasoning, or as the product of the internalization of socially organized competencies, dispositions and expectations. The studies presented here provide a rather different sense of task. They point to the ongoing, concerted accomplishment of particular activities, and the ways in which they are shaped with regard to the practical circumstances at hand and the contingencies, which inevitably arise. Whilst complementing recent developments concerned with talk and discourse in organizational life, we can see how workplace studies seek to encompass the range of practical resources that people bring bear in the accomplishment of their work and the diverse range of interactional forms which feature in their organizational conduct. Workplace studies not only suggest a different way of re ecting upon issues within organizational research they also suggest a different way of re ecting upon issues in the sociology of work. As the above quotation from Anslem Strauss suggests, it is often the case that the sociological
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examinations of work are about anything but the work. For example, the sociology of work is permeated by concerns, which are general in nature, and which can, in principle, be invoked for any type of work or workplace. Moving beyond the more classical concerns of the sociology of work such as the division of labour, the predominate themes in the sociology of work today concern social relationships at work involved in the labour process, gender, race, and ethnicity. This means that concepts such as ‘labour’, ‘capital’, ‘con ict’, ‘resistance’, ‘marginalization’, ‘patriarchy’, ‘differentiation’, ‘discrimination’ and the like are articulated across a range of different work situations. The articulation of work and the workplace through these abstract and theoretically accountable concepts means that the actual work itself is at best only of tangential concern. Thus, just what makes up a body of work, the methods and practices through which work is constituted and is differentiated from other types of work remains unexamined. For example, in their work activities air traf c controllers display a body of methods and practices that they use to produce an orderly progression of aircraft through the skies in such a way that safety and turn around time is optimized. They display these methods and practices in their own actions, and in their interactions with others they co-operate with such as each other, pilots and ground personnel. Descriptions of, for example, the gender composition of controllers, or their role in the labour process, does not, however, provide access to their actual job of work of producing the ordered airways. Air traf c controllers may or may not be involved in the processes of, say, globalization, irrespective of that claim, however, there is something they are doing which in a sense comes rst, the work that can then be re-described through particular sociological theories of work. Workplace studies thus provide a way for the sociology of work to move beyond its theor y driven interest in work by making work amenable for analysis. Workplace studies, are also seeking to provide a distinctive approach to understanding the use of tools and technologies in ever yday organizational environments. On the one hand, they stand in marked contrast to cognitive, individualistic, de-contextualized models of system use found in HCI and related research, on the other hand their methodological and analytic concerns re ect little of the more conventional theorizing in the social sciences concerned with informational technologies and ‘the knowledge society’ associated with post-modern sociology. Their empirically grounded focus on the ways in which tools and technologies feature in organizational conduct provide ways in which we can begin to understand how technical and social systems gain their sense and signi cance within the practical circumstances in which they are used, and in particular how they feature, for the participants themselves in the course of ever yday action and activities. These studies are concerned with understanding tools and technologies in action, and revealing how the seemingly mundane and practical use of computer, protocol formal speci cation and the like, is dependent upon a complex body of social organizational practice through which the
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participants’ accomplish their organizational conduct. Considering technologies in use, therefore has consequences for our understanding of concepts such as the ‘user’, ‘information’, ‘communication’ and the like, concepts which pervade the analysis of technology and organizations. In various ways the papers presented here are preoccupied with explicating the practices in and through which individuals produce and co-ordinate their activities with each other and with demonstrating how various tools, technologies and the like are used within the practical accomplishment of the participants’ work. (Date accepted: Februar y 2002)
Christian Heath King’s College, London and Graham Button Xerox Research Centre Europe Cambridge
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ackroyd, S. 1992 ‘Paradigms lost: paradigms regained’, in M. Reed and M. Hughes (eds) Rethinking Organisation: New Directions In Organization Theory and Analysis, London, Sage. Powell, W. W. and DiMaggio, P. J. (eds) 1991 The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis, Chicago, University of Chicago Press. Reed, M. and Hughes M. (eds) 1992 Rethinking Organisation: New Directions In
Organization Theory and Analysis, London, Sage. Silverman, D. 1997 ‘Studying Organisational Interaction: Ethnomethodology’s Contributions to the “How Institutionalism?” ’, Administrative Theor y and Praxis 19(2): 1. Strauss, A. (1985) ‘Work and the division of labour’, The Sociological Quarterly 26(1): 1–19.
