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1 – 10 of 19This chapter addresses research on worker skill, technology, and control over the labor process by focusing on routine immaterial labor or knowledge work. Based on participant…
Abstract
This chapter addresses research on worker skill, technology, and control over the labor process by focusing on routine immaterial labor or knowledge work. Based on participant observation conducted among analytics workers at a digital publishing network, I find that analytics workers appear paradoxically autonomous and empowered by management while being bound by ever-evolving, calculative cloud-based information and communication technologies (ICTs). Workers appear free to “be creative,” while ever-evolving ICTs exert unpredictable control over work. Based on this finding, I argue that sociology’s tendency to take organizational boundaries and technological stability for granted hampers analyses of contemporary forms of work. Thus, sociologists of work must extend outward – beyond communities of practice, labor markets, and the state – to include the ever-evolving, infrastructural, socio-technical networks in which work and organizations are embedded. Additionally, research on the experience of immaterial labor suggests that ICTs afford pleasurably immersive experiences that bind workers to organizations and their fields. Complicating this emerging body of research, I find workers acutely frustrated by these unpredictable, ever-evolving, cloud-based ICTs.
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Michael Louis McIntyre, Tarah Hodgkinson and Tullio Caputo
This study aims to provide information concerning practices for creating strategic plans in municipal policing organizations and their use in practice.
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to provide information concerning practices for creating strategic plans in municipal policing organizations and their use in practice.
Design/methodology/approach
This study surveyed a sample of Canadian police services, including four of the ten largest services in Canada, to investigate their planning practices and the study’s findings to the results of a content analysis of strategic plans reported by Rogers et al. (2020). This study did not conduct content analysis and therefore relied on the findings of Rogers et al. (2020).
Findings
Some respondents indicated they do not apply some practices generally considered advisable. Other respondents indicated they undertake a practice even though doing so is not evident from a review of the associated strategic plans.
Research limitations/implications
This study is based entirely on self-reported survey data. The study did not interview respondents to find out why they responded as they did.
Practical implications
This study points to specific improvements municipal policing organizations could adopt which offer the prospect of creating better strategic plans and better strategic planning outcomes.
Social implications
Policing organizations are important institutions in society. As a regular part of their activities, they interact with a broad cross-section of the society within which they operate. This paper presents ideas concerning how policing organizations can improve how they adapt themselves to their social environment to improve those interactions.
Originality/value
No other study collects self-reported data on how police services conduct strategic planning and use strategic plans at this level of detail.
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Michael R. Ford and Douglas M. Ihrke
The purpose of this paper is to determine the differing ways in which nonprofit charter and traditional public school board members define the concept of accountability in the…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to determine the differing ways in which nonprofit charter and traditional public school board members define the concept of accountability in the school or schools they oversee. The findings speak to the governing consequences of shifting oversight of public education from democratically elected bodies to unelected nonprofit governing boards.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors use originally collected survey data from democratically elected school board members and nonprofit charter school board members in Minnesota to test for differences in how these two populations view accountability. Open-ended survey questions are coded according to a previously used accountability typology.
Findings
The authors find that charter school board members are more likely than traditional public school board members to define accountability through high stakes testing as opposed to staff professionalization and bureaucratic systems.
Originality/value
The results speak to the link between board governance structure and accountability in the public education sector, providing new understanding on the way in which non-elected charter school board members view their accountability function.
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Howard A. Frank and Douglas R. Fink
In light of the increasing convergence between public and private sector accounting models, should local governments be required to adopt requirements similar to the…
Abstract
In light of the increasing convergence between public and private sector accounting models, should local governments be required to adopt requirements similar to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX)? Survey results from 42.2% of municipal finance officers from Ohio and Florida suggest they embrace in concept the enhanced accountability resulting from adopting principal officer certification (POC) and the independent audit committee (IAC) for larger cities. However, like their counterparts in the private sector, they have reservations regarding the benefits of implementation relative to costs. Theories of innovation diffusion and planned behavior provided a theoretical framework for multivariate analysis. The contradictions in our findings may relate to respondents’ reservations regarding the private sector financial reporting model that is becoming increasingly prevalent in public financial management.