10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17513
This contribution stems from the thematic track “Digital technologies and power relations in work and organizations. Theoretical and empirical perspectives”, held during the VIII STS Italia conference. Referring to the contributions and the discussions we had during the track sessions, we present two main themes that emerged as crucial issues: 1) the hidden dynamics of digitalized interactions in workplaces and organizations; 2) the role of algorithms and digital platforms in organizational and work practices. Not with the aim of summarizing the variety and richness of the discussions we had, with this text we want to raise the curiosity and the attention of the readers toward some of the conversations emerging from the encounters between “the digital” and “the organizational”.
application/pdf
2038-3460
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Attila Bruni
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/
Tecnoscienza – Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies
algorithms
Disentangling Digital Technologies and Power Relations in Work and Organization
Text.Serial.Journal
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12
Conference Reflections
2022-03-26
2023-06-28
2022-03-26
2023-10-23
69-78
TS
Attila Bruni
2021
10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17513
69
University of Trento
2038-3460
2
algorithms
en
78
Disentangling Digital Technologies and Power Relations in Work and Organization
https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/article/download/17513/16357
12
                                                                  Conference Reflections
                                                                                           69




Disentangling Digital Technologies and
Power Relations in Work and
Organization*

             Attila Bruni                                      Lia Tirabeni
              University of Trento                          University of Milano Bicocca



      Abstract: This contribution stems from the thematic track “Digital tech-
      nologies and power relations in work and organizations. Theoretical and
      empirical perspectives”, held during the VIII STS Italia conference. Referring
      to the contributions and the discussions we had during the track sessions,
      we present two main themes that emerged as crucial issues: 1) the hidden
      dynamics of digitalized interactions in workplaces and organizations; 2) the
      role of algorithms and digital platforms in organizational and work prac-
      tices. Not with the aim of summarizing the variety and richness of the dis-
      cussions we had, with this text we want to raise the curiosity and the at-
      tention of the readers toward some of the conversations emerging from
      the encounters between “the digital” and “the organizational”.

      Keywords: Digital technologies; work practices; organization; power;
      algorithms.

      Submitted: November 10, 2021 – Accepted: January 21, 2022

      Corresponding author: Lia Tirabeni, University of Milano Bicocca,
      Department of Sociology and Social Research, Via Bicocca degli
      Arcimboldi, 8, 20126 Milano. Email: lia.tirabeni@unimib.it




1. Introduction

   This contribution stems from the thematic track “Digital technologies
and power relations in work and organizations. Theoretical and empirical
perspectives”, held during the VIII STS Italia conference. In fact, the way
technologies may affect work and organizational dynamics represents a
longstanding debate in and out STS (i.e., Thompson 1967; Orlikowski
1992; Grint and Woolgar 1997; Karakilic 2020; De Vaujany et al. 2021).
This debate is particularly vivid nowadays, as digital technologies are

 TECNOSCIENZA
 Italian Journal of Science and Technology Studies
 12 (2) pp. 69-78 - ISSN 2038-3460
 www.tecnoscienza.net                                2019
70                                                          Tecnoscienza – 12 (2)
widespread and ubiquitous in the workplace and give opportunity to new
forms of organizational coordination and management-at-distance of dif-
ferent and dispersed organizational actors (De Vaujany et al. 2021). The
diffusion of digital systems allowing the creation of complex datasets on
employees’ performance (Trittin-Ulbrich et al. 2020), together with the
spread of digital platforms enabling a “tap” model of work and workforce
– a sort of stand-by workforce which can be ‘tapped’ anytime in order to
gain work as a commodity (Stampfl 2021) – are just two of the many exam-
ples of the new forms of articulation of organizational processes.
    The encounter of “the digital” and “the organizational” leads nowadays
to reconsider the articulation of some of the very basic concepts tradition-
ally implied to frame organizations (Plesner and Husted 2020): organiza-
tional structures turn to digital infrastructures; production implies “pro-
dusage” (a neologism for the combination of production and usage –
Bruns, 2008); knowledge management translates into processes of datafi-
cation and data management; managerial power and control can be exerted
“remotely”, but digital technologies may also offer the opportunity to
workers for collectively organizing and renegotiating power.
    In particular, during our sessions the discussion focused around two
major themes:
    1) the hidden dynamics of digitalized interactions in workplaces and
organizations;
    2) the role of algorithms and digital platforms in organizational and
work practices.
    Thanking all the participants for their engagement and contribution,
we will now briefly present the principal insights we retain from the dis-
cussions we had.


2. Hidden Dynamics of Digitalized                      Interactions          in
Workplaces and Organizations

    We are in a factory warehouse, in 2019: the employee’s workstation dis-
plays staff progress in a “funny” game on a small screen. Lights indicate
which item the worker/player needs to put into a given bin and scanning
devices track task completion. All the items are tracked so that movements
can be followed by the system and shared on the workers’ workstation
screen in a Tetris-like game. In the warehouse, workers and teams are en-
gaged into these race-like competitions to pick or stow different items, like
toys, cellphone cases, coffee machines, and so on.
    This is the main idea behind gamification: having fun while working.
But be careful, “fun” is mandatory (Mollick and Rothbard 2014). Gamifi-
cation implies the introduction of game design elements in non-gaming
contexts (e.g., the workplace) with the aim of improving work organiza-
tion, efficiency, and productivity. Nowadays, in many organizations, gami-
fication tools are employed as technologies for modifying workers’
Bruni and Tirabeni                                                            71
motivation and pushing them to better perform their tasks and correcting
their work habits “spontaneously” according to a supposed “good” rhythm
of work, without (at least apparently) any constriction, mechanism of sanc-
tion, disciplinary or corrective action. But as the Amazon case presented
by Daniele Ruggiu (University of Padua,) in our session shows, behind such
a funny and apparently “harmless” practice there are not so harmless con-
sequences. This case is a clear example of how technology may hiddenly
work for serving capitalistic interests (Coombs et al. 1992), rather than for
supporting workers and their legitimate interests in the daily work. It seems
rather that, through gamification, the worker becomes a kind of funny
hamster running on a wheel, a consideration that highlights how gamifica-
tion can be problematic from the point of view of workers’ rights (e.g., the
right to health), their self-determination and self-exploitation, and not
lastly privacy.
    In the same vein, the case presented by Klara-Aylin Wenten (Technical
University of Munich, Germany) shows how technology may induce be-
haviors and interactions. In the presented case, teamwork (apparently flat)
and coordination (apparently horizontal) are mobilized thanks to manage-
ment tools with a strong, albeit hidden, disciplinary power. Drawing on the
concept of “script” as “program of action” (Akrich 1992; Latour 1992),
Wenten examines how post-its and whiteboards may act as core objects for
performing idea generation and for managing designers, developers, and
engineers. The result is that diverse interests and ideas, instead of being
exalted by post-its and whiteboards (apparently designed for this purpose),
appear unified and standardized, while other issues get lost in the process
of translation through keywords on the post-its. The material characteris-
tics of post-its (e.g., they are made to stick on the wall) discipline employees
to stay permanently activated: a post-it may fall, thus “interpellating” (Law
2000) the participants to the session in order to be reattached to the white-
board. Again, in a hidden manner, post-its and whiteboards manage work-
ers to constantly stay committed to their daily work. In other words, on one
side these artefacts may discipline, coordinate, and control people’s work,
while on the other they may standardize and delete otherness and differ-
ence.
    In short, the discussion articulated around the ways in which organiza-
tional power and control may be incorporated in analogic and digital arti-
facts adds further evidence to the need for STS not to dismiss the dominat-
ing side of (digital) technologies simply because this could sound “deter-
ministic” but, on the contrary, to elaborate non-deterministic interpreta-
tions of the hidden power of technologies. In other words, there is a grow-
ing need for non-binary and fine-grained interpretations able to give ac-
count of the intricacies of power, digital technologies, and organizational
processes (Bruni et al. 2020; 2021).
    Since labor process theory, in fact, critical theorists focus their attention
on the more or less hidden power of technology, usually seen as a driver
for instilling managerial strategies and organizational ideologies. We may
72                                                          Tecnoscienza – 12 (2)
add that, when it comes to technology and work, a common assumption is
that technology impacts work and organizing, leaving people helpless in
the face of it. An argument that reinforces the general concern regarding
workplace surveillance and technologically raised power imbalances be-
tween employers and employees (Tække 2011; Zuboff 2019). Going back
in time, already Marx himself suggested that workers are not powerless,
rather, they have a compensatory workforce because capitalists depend on
them to do the work that provides a return on the invested capital. Also,
the very “malleability” of digital technologies may either “empower” or
“disempower” workers allowing them to act in unexpected ways: in short,
technology shapes our behaviors but, in turn, is shaped by our behaviors.
    A telling although somehow paradoxical example of this dynamic is the
case of the FairLabor app presented by Francesco Saverio Ranieri (Sapi-
enza University of Rome), which shows how a technology designed to act
as an “emancipator” tool may fail to help workers to free themselves from
their condition of exploitation. FairLabor has been developed by the Lazio
region for opposing the illegal hiring in agricultural work. It was designed
to work as a virtual placement office that allows users to register on the
booking lists for agricultural work for bypassing corporals in the practices
of labor intermediations. However, there are difficulties in enrolling users,
as they are already accustomed to the use of much more informal and
widely used app (namely, Whatsapp), which better supplies the needs of
on-time coordination and permits to maintain the illegal structure of work
intermediation. We may add that a “failure” in configuring the users
(Woolgar 1991) eventually results in a failure in enrolling them in the pro-
gram.
    The point, thus, is that humans may play an active role in the develop-
ment of a (digital) technology simply by not using it (Kline and Pinch 1996;
Kline 2003). This same point underpins the work presented by Robin Ren-
wick (Trilateral Research, UK). Here, mapping and understanding human
factors for an effective cybersecurity is the core of a project that tries to
consider the fact that management, cybersecurity departments, and general
employees can have conflicting priorities towards cybersecurity. Workers
may activate tactics that defuse technology. As we will shortly see consid-
ering the case of digital platforms, such a consideration can be applied also
to study contexts other than cybersecurity for showing how workers can
react, resist, and even “appropriate” technology (Eglash 2004) in many dif-
ferent and unexpected ways (Miele and Tirabeni 2020; Andrei et al., 2022).


3. The Role of Algorithms and Digital Platforms in Organi-
zational and Work Practices

    Digital platforms, it could be argued, are one of the major outcomes of
the encounter between “the digital” and “the organization”. The debate on
digital platforms, even if recent and still ongoing, has already witnessed two
Bruni and Tirabeni                                                         73
different interpretative waves (Bruni and Esposito 2019a). In a first wave,
digital platforms are put in connection with concepts such as “peer-to-
peer”, “digital commons”, “online cooperation”, “liberation of work”,
“horizontality”, “innovation from below”, and, foremost, “sharing econ-
omy” (Benkler 2006; Botsman and Rogers 2010; Gillespie 2010; Sundara-
rajan 2016). In other words, platforms are seen as helpful tools that con-
tribute to the pursuit of ideas of freedom and free circulation of knowledge.
This first wave dates to the early days of Web 2.0, when the possibility of
users interacting with the World Wide Web and going beyond the original
designers’ project (by customizing online spaces, uploading content, and
sharing them in a network of peers) seemed to give concrete support to
facilitating commons and commoning (Plantin et al. 2016). As Van Dijck,
Poell and de Waal (2018, p. 11) put it, it was as if “connectivity automati-
cally leads to collectivity”.
    More recently, a second wave has stressed how “many forms of digital
commoning are not purely informational but are entangled within an or-
ganizational network of concrete (non-digitalized) economic practices”
(Ossewarde and Reijers 2017, p. 612). The sharing of a car or an apartment
(such as BlaBlaCar or Airbnb), as well as the delivery of food (such as
Foodora, Just Eat, or Glovo) and/or a taxi service (such as Uber), are evi-
dently linked to a set of heterogeneous practices, often “material” (such as
driving or riding) more than “digital”. This second wave thus concentrates
on the conditions of those working behind the platform and the ways in
which platforms profit from users’ labor (Irani 2015; Jin 2015; van Doorn
2016). Platforms are now associated with words such as “precariousness”,
“fragmentation”, “individualization”, “erosion of workers’ rights” and,
most of all, “outsourcing”. In fact, even if many differences occur between
them, Airbnb, Uber, Amazon Mechanical Turk, BlaBlaCar, Foodora, or
Taskrabbit all share a form of operating “through a hyper-outsourced
model, whereby workers are outsourced, fixed capital is outsourced,
maintenance costs are outsourced, and training is outsourced” (Srnicek
2016, p. 95). Through this outsourcing-based model, platform-organiza-
tions optimize labor’s flexibility and scalability, articulating a “workforce-
as-a-service” model (Starner 2015) and creating ad hoc (labor) market-
places, apart from institutional rules and rights (van Doorn 2016).
    In the vein of this second wave, various contributions focused on the
role of algorithms and digital platforms in organizational and work prac-
tices. In particular, Gianmarco Peterlongo (University of Turin) and Fran-
cesco Bonifacio (Cattolica University, Milan) concentrate respectively on
Uber and Glovo riders to problematize the power exerted by platforms
over the workforce. In the ethnography conducted by Peterlongo in Bue-
nos Aires, the peculiar illegality of Uber's ride-hailing service has allowed
unprecedented forms of counter-use of the digital platform: subverting
some of the app’s tools, Uber drivers adopt and share tactics to circumvent
the rules of the platform, re-appropriate its digital infrastructure, and turn
the conditions of work for their own advantage. Similarly, the four-months
74                                                           Tecnoscienza – 12 (2)
enactive ethnography (Wacquant 2015) conducted in Milan by Bonifacio
focuses on the relation between Glovo riders and on-screen interfaces,
epitomized by moments when algorithms come to matter, as for the notifi-
cation of deliveries’ acceptance/refusal. Showing the heterogeneity of rid-
ers’ workforce, the research accounts for the “fabrication” (Wacquant
2005) of different types of food-delivery workers, which also lies in the
construction of a different “algorithmic imaginary” (Bucher 2018). In fact,
“thinking about what algorithms are [...] and how they function” (ibid.
p.113) affects riders’ work, embedding different meanings (precariousness,
risk, professionalism, competence, etc.) and organizational and work prac-
tices. In fact, a conspicuous part of riders’ training and skills lies in the
interpretation of algorithms computational functioning, so that the inter-
action with the algorithms becomes a site of learning and differentiation
between various ways of unfolding the job. Some of these skills are directly
referred to the algorithmic organization of work (e.g., learning how to man-
age work differently during the weekend or the week-days), while a good
portion of the required knowledge is not algorithmic based, even if funda-
mentally entangled with it (e.g., achieving a good knowledge of the city, its
traffic and its rhythms is fundamental for a rider in order to decide what
gigs to accept or the area where to work more proficiently). As showed by
Bonifacio, if part of this learning is the result of an ongoing individual pro-
cess of learning-by-doing, a specific algorithmic-related knowledge is also
collectively produced and shared in different spontaneous micro-commu-
nities of workers originated in informal moments and places (as for the
times/places when/where riders wait for gigs).
    This same relational and non-deterministic account of the role of algo-
rithms and platforms permits Fabio Esposito (Federico II University of
Naples) to question the kind of organizational model emerging from the
platform-user relationship. Focusing on Airbnb, Esposito shows how co-
ordination between its “core” (namely, the digital infrastructure) and sin-
gle operating units (i.e., the Hosts) is achieved through reciprocal adapta-
tions. Thanks to its templates and managing tools, the platform is able to
collect information about its members and impose a few standards, while
adapting to Hosts’ different local needs and arrangements. On the other
hand, Hosts adapt their spaces, habits, and time-schedules to meet the plat-
form’s standards and requests; and given the freedom they have, they find
ad hoc arrangements to perform the service required by the platform. Re-
ferring to Mintzberg (1980), the organizational model emerging from
Airbnb could thus be framed as an “adhocratic infrastructure”. In adhoc-
racies reciprocal adaptations take place through informal relations which
seems to have no need to be standardized, and power exists only as “virtual
loci” of control. This happens also in the case of Airbnb, which positions
itself as some kind of authority that simply regulates interactions between
its central core and single operating units, organizing, monitoring and
eventually sanctioning or rewarding them. In this way, the platform draws
Bruni and Tirabeni                                                             75
and maintains the sociomaterial infrastructure in which organizational
norms and standards are inscribed (Bruni and Esposito 2019b).
    As the inspiring concept of “adhocratic infrastructure” suggests, to-
gether with all the other contributions and discussions we had in our track,
further inquiring is needed in order to grasp the specific ways in which
organizing processes and power relations are performed and stabilized in
and through digital technologies.


4. Concluding Remarks

    Pointing to some of the themes around which our debate articulated,
the purpose of this text was to stimulate the curiosity and the attention of
the readers toward some of the conversations emerging from the encoun-
ters between “the digital” and “the organizational”. Focusing on the hid-
den dynamics of digitalized interactions in workplaces and organizations
and on the role of algorithms and digital platforms in organizational and
work practices, we have highlighted a number of related issues, such as the
organizational adoption of gamification processes for motivating workers;
the disciplinary power of material artifacts and digital technologies; the
failures and paradoxical effects digital technologies may have once final
users (that is, workers) enter the stage; the forms of appropriation, adapta-
tion, counter-use and even non-use workers may display in relation to the
algorithmic management of digital platforms; how digital platforms may be
framed as “adhocratic infrastructures”, where coordination is exerted
through informal relations and power exists only as “virtual loci” of con-
trol.
    Some of these issues are already at the core of the STS debate, others
are in fieri, but all together they signal the heterogeneities and complexities
of disentangling digital technologies and power relations in work and or-
ganization and deserve to be further explored.


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    *
      The present paper is the result of a totally collaborative effort by the two au-
thors, whose names appear in alphabetical order. If, however, for academic reasons
individual responsibility is to be assigned, Attila Bruni wrote paragraphs 1 and 3;
Lia Tirabeni wrote paragraph 2 and 4.
