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Work, control and computation: Rethinking the legacy of neo-institutionalism

Institutions and Ideology

ISBN: 978-1-84855-866-3, eISBN: 978-1-84855-867-0

Publication date: 12 August 2009

Abstract

This chapter claims technology to be a principal mode of regulation in formal organizations alongside social structure and culture. Such a claim breaks with the conventional neo-institutional outlook that considers technology outside the object of institutional analysis of organizations. The distinctive regulative logic of computational technology is manifested in the increasing entanglement of domain-specific practices and their underlying cognitive and normative order with the decontextualized principles and methods that have traditionally been deployed in the management and control of work operations. Such entanglement and the effects it generates reflect the reshuffling of the regulative reach of technology, social structure and culture under the pressures exercised by the dynamics of current technological change and the impressive involvement of computational systems and artefacts in human affairs.

Citation

Kallinikos, J. and Hasselbladh, H. (2009), "Work, control and computation: Rethinking the legacy of neo-institutionalism", Meyer, R.E., Sahlin, K., Ventresca, M.J. and Walgenbach, P. (Ed.) Institutions and Ideology (Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Vol. 27), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 257-282. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0733-558X(2009)0000027010

Publisher

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Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2009, Emerald Group Publishing Limited