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
amanda.damarin@hts.gatech.edu
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, selfdirected 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, extraorganizational 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 sociotechnical 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 indepth (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 selfemployment) 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 interorganizational 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 shortlived, 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 nonweb 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
5
This interpretation is derived from the larger discussion from which the quote was excerpted.
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 marketmediated, 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.
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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 realtime 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 “wellrounded.” 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-ingeneral 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 extraorganizational, 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 endusers. 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.
25
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