Manufacturing Drudgery: Computerization and Job Quality in a Non-Profit Bureaucracy

• In Event: 256 - Section on Organizations, Occupations and Work Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 09. Job Satisfaction and Turnover

Abstract

The study of computerization at work has yielded remarkable insights into how they transform workplaces, job quality, and meanings of work. However, this research has largely overlooked white-collar, non-profit workplaces. In the course over eight months of field work I examine how jobs and job quality changed in response to new computer systems at a large, bureaucratic non-profit. I find that these new systems intensified the “formal structure” of the organization, increasing routine tasks and the amount of coordination required for larger projects. In addition, I argue that the changes were linked to attempts by the organization to use new computer systems as tools of oversight and governance, imposing additional requirements on workers.

Author

• Marcel Knudsen, Northwestern University