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... 1 Digital Taylorism refers to the ways that new digital technologies allow for work to be further simplified and segmented while also increasing employee monitoring and control (Parenti, 2001). Presently, advances in algorithmic programing and the internet of things are extending the reach and scope of digital Taylorism beyond more routine tasks, disrupting many middle class jobs previously thought to be beyond the reach of automation. ...
... Automation has been an invasive and ongoing reality for decades, though resulting job losses have primarily been restricted to working class jobs in manufacturing and primary sectors. The introduction of new digital technologies has also seen the intensification of work standardization, surveillance, and employee time management in a wide range of employment areas (Parenti, 2001), including in social services and healthcare (Cumella, 2008). As new digital technologies continue to develop and permeate domains beyond routine tasks (Frey & Osborne, 2013), workers across the employment hierarchy have become increasingly vulnerable to the negative impacts of new organizational methods and technological displacement. ...
... 9). Parenti (2001) surmised that the development and broad implementation of digital technologies that furthered labour standardization practices and allowed for increased surveillance and time management of workers constituted a form a 'digital Taylorism'. Today, the expression of labour arbitrage and new digital Taylorist labour practices is via algorithms, and middle class jobs are no longer immune to technological displacement. ...
New digital technologies are changing the nature and contexts of work in Canada. It is essential that education policy and practice acknowledge and respond to these changes. The impacts and implications of new and emerging technologies for work can be summarized within two paradigms: technology is replacing work through automation and digital Taylorism; and technology is changing communication, collaboration and knowledge creation. Derived from a SSHRC Knowledge Synthesis report, this article explores how nurturing uniquely human abilities by employing a threshold concept approach will help create education policy and practice that can better prepare students for the realities of the evolving knowledge-based creative economy. Highlighting the complexity and transdisciplinary nature of knowledge, The New Literacies Threshold Concepts in English Language Arts are presented as a curriculum heuristic that is well-suited to developing uniquely human abilities.
... AI-thus pigeonholing creative and intellectual jobs in a chain work process that makes these processes exportable, modifiable or replaceable (Holford, 2019). However, the association of such algorithmic work management with surveillance systems (Parenti, 2001) and the monitoring of both standardised activities and knowledge-intensive activities (Moore and Robinson, 2016) has two effects. The first is the comparison of the performances achieved by employees and structures in any part of the globe (Brown et al., 2010) due to the synchronicity of the organisation (Altenried, 2020). ...
Purpose – This study aims to explore human–machine interactions in the process of adopting artificial intelligence (AI) based on the principles of Taylorism and digital Taylorism to validate these principles in postmodern management.
Design/methodology/approach – The topic has been investigated by means of a case study based on the current experience of Carrozzeria Basile, a body shop born in Turin in 1970.
Findings – The Carrozzeria Basile’s approach is rooted in scientific management concepts, and its digital evolution is aimed at centring humans, investigating human–machine interactions and how to take advantage of both of these.
Research limitations/implications – The research contributes to both Taylorism management and the literature on human–machine interactions. A unique case study represents a first step in comprehending the phenomenon but could also represent a limit for the study.
Practical implications – Practical implications refer to the scientific path to facilitate the implementation and adoption of emerging technologies in the organisational process, including employee engagement and continuous employee training.
Originality/value – The research focuses on human–machine interactions in the process of adopting AI in the automation process. Its novelty also relies on the comprehension of the needed path to facilitate these interactions and stimulate a collaborative and positive approach. The study fills the literature gap investigating the interactions between humans and machines beginning with their historical roots, from Taylorism to digital Taylorism, in relation to an empirical scenario.
Keywords Taylorism,DigitalTaylorism,Emergingtechnologies,Artificialintelligence, Human–machine interactions, Employee motivation, Engagement and training
Paper type Case study
... Far from showing that ICTs have promoted a post-fordist organisation of labour (Brynjolfsson and McAfee 2014), or supplied the resources to overcome the traditional problems affecting social networks (Castells 2005), my Polanyian inquiry arrives at a more dystopic conclusion: a 12 renewed attempt to commodify labour, which has now among its main targets administrative, managerial and intellectual activities that had successfully resisted previous drives in that direction. This endeavour is dependent on scientific managerial principles the ultimate goal of which is to arrive at what has been labelled 'digital Taylorism' (Parenti 2001, also Head 2018, and supports the claim that "Wherever digital Taylorism has taken hold, people are again becoming appendixes of machine in certain areas of the world of work" (Staab and Nachtwey 2016: 469). ...
Since the 2008 financial crisis, the attempts to use Karl Polanyi's framework to make sense of current developments have multiplied, producing a noticeable and lively debate. This debate centres on the notion of double movement put forward by the Hungarian thinker in his masterpiece – The Great Transformation. The paper is a contribution to this debate. The first part addresses a series of questions that make the interpretations of the double movement advanced so far not very compelling. To this end, a close reading of Polanyi's text, with the aim of dismantling and rearticulating its analytical structure, is carried out. The upshot is a dynamic and multistage picture of the double process as a recurrent and vortex-like attempt to progressively commodify natural and social resources against growing opposition. The second part employs this revised reading of the double movement to explain the collapse of the postwar consensus politics, the success of the neoliberal counterrevolution and the development of the knowledge economy. The claim put forward here is that, in addition to sustained efforts to deepen previous forms of commodification (land, labour and money), we are witnessing a fullblown attempt to turn knowledge into a new fictitious commodity. Building on the idea of digital Taylorism, the paper tries to show that information and computer technologies are being used to standardise and routinise a growing number of intellectual, professional and managerial activities which were able to escape previous attempts in this direction. Once again, at the forefront of this process there are powerful state actors, who are using New Public Management policies strategically to: support the enclosure of intangible cultural resources through the creation of intellectual property rights regimes, and undermine the counter-reaction of negatively affected societal actors by rising the collective action problems they face.
... The atomic decomposition and the surveilling make it easy to substitute any worker that is not completing the prescribed task in an efficient way by another. Digital Taylorism drains the work processes for any specific personrelated professionalism, as such professionalism becomes incorporated in the computerstructures.In the article "Big Brother's Corporate Cousin: High-Tech Workplace Surveillance is the Hallmark of an New Digital Taylorism", ChristianParenti (2001) makes the following observation: "According to the American Management Association, 80 percent of US corporations keep their employees under regular surveillance, and that percentage is growing all the time. From the low-tech body and bag searches at retail stores, to computerized ordering pads at restaurants and the silent monitoring of e-mail and phone traffic in offices, the American workplace is becoming ever more transparent to employers and oppressive for employees." ...
In the philosophy of mathematics, ontological and epistemological questions have been discussed for centuries. These two set of questions span out a two-dimensional philosophy of mathematics. I find it important to establish a four dimensional philosophy of mathematics by adding two more dimensions, namely a sociological and an ethical dimension. The sociological dimension addresses the social formation of mathematics, while the ethical dimension addresses the mathematical formation of the social. In this article, I concentrate on exploring the ethical dimension by showing the broad range of social implications set in motion through bringing mathematics into action. These implications I illustrate in terms of quantifying, digitalising, serialising, categorising, and imagining. By the banality of mathematical expertise, I refer to the phenomenon that the formation of this expertise takes place in an ethical vacuum. To me this is a devastating feature of mathematical research and application practices. It is important that a philosophy of mathematics brings mathematics out of this vacuum. Keywords: Four-dimensional philosophy of mathematics; Ethics; Mathematics in action; Quantification; Digitalization.
... Eine treffende Zusammenfassung der Arbeit bei Amazon hat ein Manager von Amazon selbst geliefert: Die wissenschaftliche Zusammenfassung ist in den Begriffen "digitaler Taylorismus" (Parenti 2001; bezüglich Amazon: Staab und Nachtwey 2016) bzw. "digitaler Taylor-Fordismus" (Cattero/D'Onofrio 2018) enthalten. ...
This article investigates the relevance of digital technology for Amazon’s development into a digital conglomerate. Starting from the differentiation between long-linked (concatenation), mediating and intensive technologies (J.D. Thompson) the article argues that because of the sequential structure of the algorithms digital technology has to be understood as a long-linked technology. As such it presupposes standardisation and develops it further. What is new is that the algorithmic sequence and the network based on it overcome the rigidity of the analogous inter-linkage and thus extend the field of application of the concatenation technology. The article demonstrates how these two dimensions characterise Amazon. On the one hand the algorithmic management in the distribution centers leads to the industrialisation of manual work in the service sector which implies work intensification and increased control of the work performance. On the other hand a new form of hybridisation („algorithmic mediation“) takes place in the field of the mediating technology which forms the basis of Amazon as well as the other digital platforms. This hybridisation extends into the technical core of Amazon and constitutes the source of its innovation strength and its economic power.
... In a similar manner, both Jung (1964: 20-22) and Ricoeur (1976) emphasize the inexpressible nature of symbols in that it expresses something vague, hidden or unconscious to us. People use symbols not only to make sense of the world around them, but also to identify and cooperate in society across discourse (Palczewski, Ice, & Fritch, 2012). According to Tillich (1987: 46), there has been a great deal of confusion between signs and symbols. ...
Current and near future organizational strategies are placing great emphasis on machines, robots and AI. Automation to reduce menial or repetitive jobs, digitization of work to render remaining workers more efficient and AI to provide more reliable and productive top-end professional work are all inter-related initiatives enacted by current dominant imaginaries of efficiency and maximization. We argue that there is an Ellulian phenomenon of efficient techniques spreading within technical logics that go beyond neo-liberal frontiers – namely, algorithmic approaches which attempt to capture and reduce all manners of human knowledge and meaning across the efficient explication, formalization and manipulation of signs. Such purely ‘efficient’ and analytical approaches fail to recognize the unique and inimitable characteristics of human creativity and its associated tacit knowledge.
Inspirations from more holistic interpretations of Jungian symbolism allow us to provide a starting point towards comprehending the complex, ambiguous, constantly emerging and essentially hard-to-define aspects of human creativity and tacit knowledge. This, along with the argument that there exists a relationship between the democratization of knowledge and democratic decisional processes, provides us the basis to present an alternative imaginary of efficiency as proposed by Feenberg (1999). Such an imaginary, allows for the democratic participation of humans in the decisional process and development of technology; and also recognizes and enacts humans as full legitimate partners with technology in their mutual shaping capacities – thus, leading to human-centric organizations.
Keywords: Artificial intelligence; Creativity; Efficiency; Imaginaries; Digital taylorism
... It's human automation, if you like». La sintesi scientifica è contenuta nel concetto di «taylorismo digitale», con il quale si intende evidenziare il connubio tra rigida prescrizione dei compiti, controllo e digitalizzazione (tra gli altri : Parenti 2001;Brown, Lauder, Ashton 2011, pp. 65-82;e, su Amazon, Staab e Nachtwey 2016). ...
This chapter questions how digitalization impacted on work organization and industrial relations, taking into account the case study of Amazon, the leading company in the e-commerce industry. With specific regard to the logistics area of the company, represented by its fulfillment centers, we can observe the disruptive nature of the process of digitalization at the workplace by means of algorithms, innovative warehouse systems and data gathering. Nevertheless, the same process led to the impoverishment of the working conditions because of productive potential triggered by digitalization. The struggle for representing Amazon workers is analyzed by considering two different institutional contexts—Germany and Italy—in order to provide insights regarding how union movements react to the current transformation of both jobs and workers.
... It's human automation, if you like». La sintesi scientifica è contenuta nel concetto di «taylorismo digitale», con il quale si intende evidenziare il connubio tra rigida prescrizione dei compiti, controllo e digitalizzazione (tra gli altri : Parenti 2001;Brown, Lauder, Ashton 2011, pp. 65-82;e, su Amazon, Staab e Nachtwey 2016). ...
ORPHANS OF INSTITUTIONS.
WORKERS, UNIONS AND THE «DIGITALIZED TERTIARY FACTORY» OF AMAZON.
This article questions how digitalization impacted on work organization and the institutions of industrial relations, taking into account work within the fulfillment centers of Amazon. At organisational level, algorithmic management and electronic devices give rise to a sort of «digitalized tertiary factory» characterized by an unprecedented variant of «digital taylor-fordism», which brings back basic needs for work protection. On the other hand, the analysis of the ongoing conflict in Germany and, more recently, in Italy highlights on one side the structural obstacles that stand in the union action and, on the other, the institutional indifference of Amazon, not least because of the structural weakness of the national structures, still fordist and «analogical», and the inadequacy of European institutional level relating to transnational collective bargaining. ***** L’articolo indaga l’impatto della digitalizzazione sull’organizzazione del lavoro e sulle istituzioni delle relazioni industriali, prendendo in considerazione il lavoro nei centri di distribuzione di Amazon. A livello organizzativo, management algoritmico e dispositivi elettronici danno luogo a una sorta di «fabbrica terziaria digitalizzata» caratterizzata da un’inedita variante di «taylor-fordismo digitale», che ripropone esigenze elementari di tutela del lavoro. D’altro canto, l’analisi del conflitto in corso in Germania e, più di recente, in Italia mette in evidenza da un lato gli ostacoli strutturali che si frappongono all’azione sindacale e, dall’altro, l’indifferenza istituzionale di Amazon, non ultimo in seguito alla debolezza ormai strutturale degli assetti nazionali, ancora fordisti e «analogici», e l’inadeguatezza del livello istituzionale europeo nell’ambito della contrattazione collettiva.
... The introduction of new digital technologies has intensified work standardization, surveillance, and employee time management in a wide range of employment areas (Parenti, 2001). Notably, standardization and lean management approaches have not been restricted to manufacturing and primary sectors. ...
There is an inherent mismatch between the prevailing individualistic narrative implicit within the 20th century education gospel of higher skills equals better jobs equals a better economy, and the realities of the emerging knowledge-based creative economy. In this context, precarious, part-time labour persists and outsourcing of employment globally is compounded. Before broad implementation of innovative approaches within classrooms can be realized, underlying ideologies that have shaped and continue to shape education systems and policy must be surfaced and challenged, taking seriously the shifting employment landscape and social context in the enigmatic digital era. Two Dominant Paradigms Shaping Work and Play in the Digital Era In the fall of 2016 we engaged in a knowledge synthesis grant for the Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada (SSHRC).This synthesis explored how new technologies and Digital Taylorism, which involves the breaking down and standardizing of labour processes facilitated by now digital technologies, are changing work and society in Canada, and how education can best prepare students for the realities of the perpetually evolving and potentially enigmatic knowledge based economy. The subsequent report surfaced two dominant technological paradigms that are shaping work, play, and life in the digital era: one is that technology is replacing work through automation and Digital Taylorism; and the other is that technology is changing communication, collaboration and knowledge creation. Derived from the knowledge synthesis report, this article details these dominant technological paradigms and argues that prevailing underlying ideologies extant within the Canadian social imaginary must be surfaced and challenged, before effective implementation of innovative approaches in classrooms can occur.
... In fact, such research points precisely to the emergence of a panspectric society where humans become collectively trackable data points on behalf of the organization for which they work. It also indicates the potential emergence of a 'digital Taylorism' that seeks ways to increase efficiency and productivity (Parenti 2001). In short, tracking, mimicry and predictive analytics all raise, again, the tensions inherent in the microscopic, big data approach to collective interaction. ...
This paper argues that mimicry is a central issue in the development of new practices of predictive analytics and big data. The issue concerns the increasingly precise reproduction of human interactional dynamics and their translation to machine and code worlds. Mimicry, in this sense, allows for predictive analytics to simulate a huge range of individual and collective cross-species behaviours. This includes human practices, particularly at the non-conscious, non-verbal level sometimes with an uncanny appearance of intuitive anticipation. The paper takes up different perspectives on mimesis and simulation to discuss the exploitative and emancipatory tensions these articulate. It investigates these through developments in swarm robotics, text mining and recent advances in codifying human synchrony. All of these utilise mimicry as core elements in their development.
... A more extreme position towards commoditisation of higher education in the information age, commonly called 'new' or 'digital' Taylorism 3 (Au 2011;Parenti 2001) can be observed through the below extended quote, excerpted from a blog titled 'The economic advantage of online education' posted on the Huffington Post, 16 February 2012 by the dean of a prominent US faculty, outlining an 'assembly line in higher education': ...
The centralised discourse claiming ownership of ‘knowledge’ and ‘higher education’ seems to be declining as the decentralising discourse extolling open source software and informal social network communication are emerging: yet the two are complementary when higher education is seen as a commodity. Thus, in the internet age of the twenty first century there is no consistent narrative to identify what a ‘higher education’ consists of. J. F. Lyotard famously predicted in The Post Modern Condition that the commercialised computer age would ‘sound the knell’ of the professor. Lyotard understood that in order to begin to philosophise about higher education in an era of computerisation, the gatekeeper of knowledge role traditionally attributed to professors through a university title must first be rendered illegitimate. Lyotard did not envision, however, what a higher education might look like within the network neutral internet space, where the difference between ‘higher’ and ‘public’ education can be reduced through open accessibility to, and shared construction of, knowledge. Embracing a Socratic model of public discourse that openly challenges an epistemology of consensus, network neutrality has the potential to redefine the role of professors as fiduciaries of education across society, even globally. The resulting academic equality between professors and the public recreates the university as a boundless meeting space for public dialogue, and the professor as a digitized public intellectual.
Mathematics is indefinite with respect to concepts and proofs. Mathematical concepts are constructed and deconstructed, and conceptions of what is considered to be a mathematical proof have changed over time. Mathematics is indefinite with respect to topics and applications. The range of topics that characterise mathematics changes over time, both with respect to advanced mathematics and to school mathematics. Applications of mathematics can take surprising turns; what has been considered pure and harmless might turn out to be crucial for the further development of warfare technology. Mathematics is indefinite with respect to culture, and the Eurocentric interpretation of the history of mathematics draws in part on this indefiniteness to claim ownership of mathematics. Mathematics is indefinite with respect to power, and mathematics can be brought into action in order to serve a variety of interests. The fact that mathematics is indefinite raises a huge ethical challenge to mathematical research practices, to the philosophy of mathematics, and to mathematics education at all levels. Much research and education in mathematics ignores the possible social impacts of bringing mathematics into action, which leads to what is termed the “banality of mathematical expertise.” It is crucial to contest this banality.
In previous chapters, Nestorovic considers that branches of geopolitics have the initiative since they propose concepts, and corporations do their shopping when they pick up something that can be relevant for their business. In this chapter, the author takes the opposite approach. He uses the triptych space-state-power and for each element finds out what business proposes and what geopolitics can be interested in. He states that corporations invent new spaces like the metaverse in which virtual worlds, NFTs, avatars, chatbots, or AI-generated content coexists with the real space. He also suggests that a corporation can be considered as a state, with all attributes like sovereignty, nationality, or legitimate use of coercive power, because some corporations are in fact more powerful than states.
Inspired by a performative interpretation of language, a performative interpretation of mathematics is suggested. According to this interpretation, any form of mathematics is intrinsically linked to potential or actual actions. This interpretation is elaborated upon with respect to both advanced mathematics and school mathematics. It is highlighted that any kind of mathematics exercises a symbolic power, which brings to the forefront the ethical dimension of a philosophy for mathematics. Any kind of action is in need of ethical reflections and so specifically are mathematics-based actions. The ethical reflections concern the possible impact of mathematics, the different groups of people that might be affected by such actions, the possible acting subjects that might be hidden behind the curtain of mathematics, and the possible intentions behind the action and the ethical reflections themselves. Taken together, ethical reflections concern how symbolic acts rooted in mathematics might form our life-worlds.
In the philosophy of mathematics, ontological and epistemological questions have been discussed for centuries. These two sets of questions span a two-dimensional philosophy of mathematics. I find it important to establish a four-dimensional philosophy of mathematics by adding two more dimensions, namely a sociological and an ethical. The sociological dimension addresses the social formation of mathematics, while the ethical dimension addresses the mathematical formation of the social. I concentrate on exploring the ethical dimension by showing the broad range of social implications set in motion through bringing mathematics into action. These implications I illustrate in terms of quantifying, digitalising, serialising, categorising, and imagining. With the term “banality of mathematical expertise”, I refer to the phenomenon that the formation of this expertise takes place in an ethical vacuum. To me this is a devastating feature of mathematical research and application practices. It is important that a philosophy of mathematics brings mathematics out of this vacuum.
In a broad sense, the term ludification refers to the organization of social processes using games or game elements. However, in recent years the humanities and social sciences have started to focus on ludification in a more narrow sense: as the inclusion of digital game design elements in non-game, software-supported social processes. On closer inspection, however, digital ludification is not a novelty. The computerization of everyday social processes was accompanied from the beginning by a quiescent ludification process. The development
of the first Graphic User Interfaces (GUIs) was already strongly influenced by concepts derived from game design. Ludification processes can thus be viewed as major forces in the computerization of everyday life. It remains an open question what this insight provides for the ongoing digitization of society. Since the use of game-design elements in non-game software has been co-opted by a whole industry of developers and business consultants under the label »gamification«, the question arises whether it is increasingly becoming an instrument to enhance social control through digital infrastructures.
The increasing prevalence of affordable digital sensors, ubiquitous networking and computation puts us at what is only the start of a new era in terms of the volume, coverage and granularity of data that we can access about individuals and workplaces. This paper examines the consequences of harnessing this data deluge for the practice of E/HF. Focusing on what we term the ‘contextual digital footprint’, the trail of data we produce through interactions with many different digital systems over the course of even a single day, we describe three example scenarios (drawn from health care, distributed work and transportation) and examine how access to data directly drawn in considerable volume from the field will potentially change our application of design and evaluation methods. We conclude with a discussion of issues relevant to ethical and professional practice within this new environment including the increased challenges of respecting anonymity, working with n = all data-sets and the central role of ergonomists in promulgating positive uses of data while retaining a systems-based humanistic approach to work design.
Practitioner summary: The paper envisions the impact of new and emerging sources of data about people and workplaces upon future practice in E/HF. We identify practical consequences for ergonomics practice, highlight new areas of professional competence likely to be required and flag both the risks and benefits of adopting a more data-driven approach.
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