ExpressionandExpropriation
Ursula Huws Expression and expropriation: The dialectics of autonomy and control in creative labour Ephemera , theory & politics in organization . Volume 10(3/4): 504-521 . Disponivel aqui: http://www.ephemeraweb.org/journal/10-3/10-3huws.pdf
Resumo: Creative labour occupies a highly contradictory position in modern, global, ‘knowledge-based’ economies. On the one hand, companies have to balance their insatiable need for a stream of innovative ideas with the equally strong imperative to gain control over intellectual property and manage a creative workforce. On the other, creative workers have to find a balance between the urge for self-expression and recognition and the need to earn a living. This article explores the interplay between these doubly contradictory impulses, drawing on the results of European research carried out within the scope of the WORKS project as well as other research by the author. It argues that the co-existence of multiple forms of control makes it difficult for workers to find appropriate forms of resistance. Combined with increasing tensions between the urges to compete and to collaborate, these contradictions pose formidable obstacles to the development of coherent resistance strategies by creative workers.
Contradictory role of creative workers in the restructuring of global capital, a role which renders them simultaneously both complicit agents of restructuring and victims of it (see Huws, 2006) .
There were some very striking common trends that cut across all these variables, in particular a noticeable standardisation and intensification of work and a speed-up of its pace. Linked in many cases with a growing precariousness of work, these had strongly negative impacts not only on the quality of work but also on feelings of security and career prospects as well as on the quality of life outside the workplace .
Union or works council response was generally passive or reactive and focused mainly on dealing with the employment consequences of restructuring rather than influencing the shape of the new structure’; and ‘very few (if any) examples of representation influence the change itself. The management prerogative in defining restructuring seems almost total .
In retrospect, this failure of ‘knowledge workers’ to resist restructuring of their work even when they know that it will be deleterious is one of the most surprising results of the whole project. Like the dog that failed to bark in the night in the Sherlock Holmes story, it provokes the question: ‘Why not?’ What can account for this failure to resist these negative changes either individually or collectively?
I wondered whether these results might illuminate the complex and dynamic interplay between management’s drive to control the creative workforce on the one hand, and workers’ urges for autonomy on the other.
I have used the overlapping terms ‘knowledge worker’ and ‘creative worker’ somewhat interchangeably throughout, aware that neither is really adequate, especially when the knowledge which forms the content of the work and contributes to the occupational identities of many non- manual workers is undergoing a rapid process of commodification, degradation and reconstruction.
1.The role of creative workers in capitalist development
Braverman himself, like Taylor before him, made it clear that he regarded the separation of ‘mental’ activities from ‘manual’ ones as a process that also involved the creation of some new, more highly skilled activities. There is a close connection between the simplification of routine tasks and an expansion in the role of the manager.
(a)One important creative function is the invention of new products.
(b)Related to the function of developing new products is that of customising, improving or adapting them for different purposes or different markets.
(c)Linked to the function of adapting and customising products is that of providing content for various forms of media.
We have a wide range of possible relationships between these creative workers and capital, which may be governed by a range of different employment contracts, licensing agreements or contracts for the supply of services.
(d) Overlapping with these content-generating activities is another set of activities connected with providing information to the public, education and training.
In the past, it might have seemed logical to make a clear distinction between commercial information provision and the provision of information to citizens by the state (and regard the latter as part of the function of governance), but the commodification of public services and the growth in outsourcing them to the private sector or consigning them to the voluntary sector has rendered such a distinction increasingly anachronistic.
It remains the case that a considerable amount of creative labour is invested in the legitimation and reproduction of the power of the state, as well as the reproduction of the workforce, so creative work should not be regarded as solely concerned with the development and circulation of commodities for the market.
Here too we find a variety of different relationships both to the intellectual property that is produced and to the employer, including the bureaucratic relationships of civil servants with the governments that employ them, more contingent employment relationships, including self-employment, and commercial contracts between companies, with the workers’ output being regarded sometimes as a public good, sometimes as a product in its own right and sometimes as a form of advertising.
(e)My final category of creative work is even harder to delineate from other categories of labour, only in this case the blurred boundary is with management and technical functions. This is the creative labour that goes into inventing new systems and processes, or adapting old ones for new purposes.
Their ‘soft’ and ‘knowledge-based’ skills are not just used to develop new systems and refine and trouble-shoot older ones; they are also essential for the management of these systems once they are up and running, including ‘knowledge management’.
2. What is distinctive about creative work?
One (a) of these features is a high commitment to the work itself. Applying one’s mind to solving a new problem, as opposed to repeating a known activity, is of the essence of creative work .
“This overcoming of obstacles is in itself a liberating activity – and [that,] further, the external aims become stripped of the semblance of merely external natural urgencies, and become posited as aims which the individual himself posits – hence as self-realization, objectification of the subject, hence real freedom, whose action is, precisely, labour”. (Marx, 1973: 611)
There is a sense in which this work contains elements of ‘really free labour’ which is experienced as unalienated – a form of personal fulfilment (see Sayers, 2003). This constitutes a source of genuine satisfaction, creating an additional motive to work that cannot be subsumed into the simple economic motive of earning a living.
This attachment to the work may express itself in the form of a commitment to service users (for instance in education), audiences (for instance in performing arts) or customers (for instance in product design). It may also be linked with concerns about the worker’s own personal reputation.
This strong identification with the product of the labour can leave workers with an illusion of continuing ownership.
To the extent that it is genuinely innovative, creative work could be said to be permanently poised at the moment of alienation, and the creative worker at the centre of a drama of contradiction: the work, as it comes into being, both belongs to and is torn away from its begetter. Part of this belonging is the risk of failure; no innovation can be known before it comes into being (if it did, it would not be an innovation), so each time there is a risk that it will not work, or will be found ugly or otherwise unacceptable. Because in that moment of creativity the worker has not yet separated from his/her creation, this is experienced as a personal failure.
The personal identification of the innovative worker with his or her innovative idea also gives rise to another contradiction: between the individual and the collective interest; between competition and collaboration. If your ideas and knowledge are all you have to sell in the labour market, then they constitute a form of personal intellectual capital which, for reasons of self-interest, should not be parted with freely, but should be guarded and kept for future sale wherever possible.
However few forms of creative work can be carried out in isolation. Most involve team-work and, for the team to be successful, there is an equally strong self-interested imperative to share knowledge.
Another (b) associated feature of many types of creative work is that it has a ‘meaning’ in the form of some sort of ideological content or potential for social impact, positive or negative. Creative workers therefore have ethical choices to make about how their work is carried out.
Where creative workers feel themselves to have responsibility without power, taking an ethical stand may entail considerable courage and sacrifice. Failure to do so may result in being haunted by guilt.
3. Current trends in the restructuring of knowledge-based work
One of the most noticeable of these is a general trend of work intensification.
Intensification [also] takes the form of expecting workers to add new tasks to their existing core activities, a concept they refer to as ‘skill intensification’, as opposed to a simple upskilling.
In general, the regulation of work has increasingly shifted from one based on working time to one based on ‘work done’ (Krings et al., 2009: 30).
Linked to this intensification of work is a general speed-up of its pace.
A third striking transversal trend is that of standardisation. In R&D, for instance, there is: “a growing formalisation and standardisation of the tasks in view of facilitating communication along the value chain. However, this does not mean that tasks are necessarily becoming simpler.”
For software development professionals: “Standardisation transforms pieces of tacit knowledge into codified knowledge... [It] also concerns the relationships with customers and is linked to the quality criteria laid down in the Service Level Agreement (SLA) ... Many interviewees perceive standardisation as a threat to their own expertise. Expertise becomes easily transferred or shared, and specialists become more interchangeable. (Valenduc et al., 2007: 86) ”
However managers often underestimate the amount of tacit knowledge that is required to enable supposedly standardised systems to operate smoothly. In order to get the job done, workers have to bring into play creativity, skills and knowledge for which they are not credited or rewarded.
4. Control and autonomy in creative work
In contemporary capitalism, there is no single standard form of relationship between creative workers and those who pay for their work. They may be paid a salary, a fee, a commission, a royalty or a lump sum for what they produce. They may be employees, independent entrepreneurs, freelancers, partners, franchisers or day labourers. Just as there are multiple forms of contractual relationship, there are multiple forms of control.
As Damarin has observed, ‘there is no clear consensus on how control operates or what autonomy looks like in post-industrial settings’ (2010: 1).
One of these types is personal control exercised through relationships and obligations between known individuals. This form of control is bolstered by gift relationships, the mutual exchange of ‘favours’ and a complicity in ignoring the formal terms of contracts. It can not only lead subordinated creative workers into situations that are highly exploitative but can also make it impossible to seek recourse if the relationship breaks down. It may also be associated with forms of sexual predation or harassment.
A second type of control is bureaucratic. This form is exercised through formal and explicit rules, often negotiated with trade unions. ...It is associated with hierarchical structures and strict rules of entry, with many of the characteristics of an ‘internal labour market’ (Doeringer and Piore, 1971).
A third type is the sort of Tayloristic control anatomised by Braverman (1974). In essence, this involves a system of management (and sometimes also of payment) by results. Targets, or quotas may be set individually or for a whole team. The most effective form of resistance to Taylorism takes place prior to its introduction, and involves resistance to standardisation, demands for more varied work, job rotation or the introduction of various forms of job enrichment or ‘human-centred design’ (Cooley, 1982). Many of these are difficult for creative workers to adopt, because they imply an attitude that inhibits creativity.
A fourth type is control by the market. Unless what they have to offer is exceptionally sought-after, self-employed workers and independent producers have little choice but to offer what their customers want, at the price they are prepared to pay . The main form of resistance here lies in the creation of professional associations, guilds or trade unions in which suppliers combine with each other in order to try to set out basic ground rules and avoid undercutting each other in a race to the bottom in which everyone loses.
With forceful sanctions, including the right to exclude transgressing members from practicing their professions, many such organisations exert considerable power. Even these, however, are currently under threat of modification, if not erosion, from the commodification of knowledge (Huws, 2008; Leys, 2003).
When several forms of control exist alongside each other, the contradictory pressures on workers seem to be so great that they are often disempowered from adopting any effective form of resistance. Instead, they may only be able to respond by becoming physically or mentally ill, letting their families take the strain (or abstaining from any form of adult family life altogether – see Steinko, 2006) .
I hope I have presented enough evidence to demonstrate that the interaction between different management drives for control does not only create near-paralysing contradictions for creative workers, but also creates contradictions for management itself.
Conclusions
We can conclude that, for capital, there is a contradiction between, on the one hand, the need for a continuous (but dispensable) supply of new ideas and talent in order to fuel its accumulation process and, on the other, the need to control these processes tightly in order to maximise efficiency and profit and to appropriate the intellectual property so that companies are able to trade freely in the resulting commodities.
On the side of labour, there is the urge by individual workers to do something meaningful in life, to make a mark on the world, to be recognised and appreciated and respected, on the one hand, and, on the other, the need for a subsistence income, the ability to plan ahead and some spare time to spend with loved ones. This is often expressed as a contradiction between a drive for autonomy and a search for security.
Perhaps it is time for creative workers to invest some of their creativity in finding ways to exploit these contradictions.
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