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Relational Work, Post-Bureaucracy, and Inequality in Silicon Valley.

Record Type:	Language materials, manuscript : Monograph/item
Title/Author:	Relational Work, Post-Bureaucracy, and Inequality in Silicon Valley./
Author:	Ali, Sanna Jamila.
Description:	1 online resource (154 pages)
Notes:	Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 85-04, Section: A.
Contained By:	Dissertations Abstracts International85-04A.
Subject:	Minority & ethnic groups. -
Online resource:	click for full text (PQDT)
ISBN:	9798380482097

Relational Work, Post-Bureaucracy, and Inequality in Silicon Valley.
Ali, Sanna Jamila.

Relational Work, Post-Bureaucracy, and Inequality in Silicon Valley. - 1 online resource (154 pages)

Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 85-04, Section: A.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2023.

Includes bibliographical references

A PhD student studying machine learning develops an interest in equity and fairness in machine learning in graduate school: having grown up in a low-socioeconomic status community, she says "it spoke to me because of my past and my family and who I am." After graduating and starting work in the technology industry, she wants to apply her interests in equity to investigate the idea that algorithmic recommender systems benefit people who are already popular on the platform. She is directed to seek out teams within the company that would be willing to work with her and whose products would be relevant to her question. The first team she approaches does not have capacity at the time, but she finds a different team that is willing to collaborate. She tells them, "Here's a proposal... I'd like to tweak your model... And then we can run an A/B test and see what happens." They respond, "Sure we'd be happy to, but like, you need to do most of the work." It is up to her to conduct the research and also make the case to the team about deploying changes to the model based on that research and the team's metrics.An entrepreneur pays a membership fee for himself and his cofounder to join a local WeWork, declaring it's "better than Starbucks." He uses the space to do individual work, but also, more importantly, to take meetings and network with other members. On a Friday afternoon, he grabs a free beer from the tap in the shared kitchen and hangs out at the reception desk, chatting with any of the mostly women Community Associates in the vicinity. Sometimes, the Community Associates offer to refer other WeWork members, whose work might be useful to his business, to him.Both of these vignettes from contemporary workers reveal different ways in which knowledge work is seemingly evolving to be increasingly self-directed, flexible, enjoyable, and informal; however, they also raise more nuanced questions around recent developments to the changing nature of work. Sociologists identify flexible, self-directed work as part of a trend toward post-bureaucratic work (Powell, 2001). The traditional bureaucratic organization, predominant in the 1950s to 1985, is based on rules, hierarchy, and "careers" with paths toward promotion within the bounded firm. In the shift toward the post-bureaucratic organization over the past thirty-five years, work is instead characterized by decentralization, blurred boundaries of the firm, independence and autonomy given to workers, and informalization of processes. Technologists and corporate executives often package and present these changes in the aesthetics and language of innovation, autonomy, fun, passion, and convenience. However, many scholars argue that post-bureaucratic modes of work, in fact, use more subtle and underhanded forms of control and exploitation (Boltanski & Chiapello, 1999; Sennett, 2007). Other scholars interrogate the "over-simplification" of dichotomizing the "postbureaucratic era" from bureaucratic ideal types at all (Hopfl, 2006; McSweeney, 2006), and still others highlight attempts to reintroduce bureaucratic control, such as formalism and surveillance, in post-bureaucratic organizations (Briand & Bellemare, 2006; Hodgson, 2004; Torsteinsen, 2012; Turner, 2018).

Electronic reproduction.
Ann Arbor, Mich. :
ProQuest,
2024

Mode of access: World Wide Web

ISBN: 9798380482097Subjects--Topical Terms:

1372498
Minority & ethnic groups.
Index Terms--Genre/Form:

554714
Electronic books.

Relational Work, Post-Bureaucracy, and Inequality in Silicon Valley.
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520 $a A PhD student studying machine learning develops an interest in equity and fairness in machine learning in graduate school: having grown up in a low-socioeconomic status community, she says "it spoke to me because of my past and my family and who I am." After graduating and starting work in the technology industry, she wants to apply her interests in equity to investigate the idea that algorithmic recommender systems benefit people who are already popular on the platform. She is directed to seek out teams within the company that would be willing to work with her and whose products would be relevant to her question. The first team she approaches does not have capacity at the time, but she finds a different team that is willing to collaborate. She tells them, "Here's a proposal... I'd like to tweak your model... And then we can run an A/B test and see what happens." They respond, "Sure we'd be happy to, but like, you need to do most of the work." It is up to her to conduct the research and also make the case to the team about deploying changes to the model based on that research and the team's metrics.An entrepreneur pays a membership fee for himself and his cofounder to join a local WeWork, declaring it's "better than Starbucks." He uses the space to do individual work, but also, more importantly, to take meetings and network with other members. On a Friday afternoon, he grabs a free beer from the tap in the shared kitchen and hangs out at the reception desk, chatting with any of the mostly women Community Associates in the vicinity. Sometimes, the Community Associates offer to refer other WeWork members, whose work might be useful to his business, to him.Both of these vignettes from contemporary workers reveal different ways in which knowledge work is seemingly evolving to be increasingly self-directed, flexible, enjoyable, and informal; however, they also raise more nuanced questions around recent developments to the changing nature of work. Sociologists identify flexible, self-directed work as part of a trend toward post-bureaucratic work (Powell, 2001). The traditional bureaucratic organization, predominant in the 1950s to 1985, is based on rules, hierarchy, and "careers" with paths toward promotion within the bounded firm. In the shift toward the post-bureaucratic organization over the past thirty-five years, work is instead characterized by decentralization, blurred boundaries of the firm, independence and autonomy given to workers, and informalization of processes. Technologists and corporate executives often package and present these changes in the aesthetics and language of innovation, autonomy, fun, passion, and convenience. However, many scholars argue that post-bureaucratic modes of work, in fact, use more subtle and underhanded forms of control and exploitation (Boltanski & Chiapello, 1999; Sennett, 2007). Other scholars interrogate the "over-simplification" of dichotomizing the "postbureaucratic era" from bureaucratic ideal types at all (Hopfl, 2006; McSweeney, 2006), and still others highlight attempts to reintroduce bureaucratic control, such as formalism and surveillance, in post-bureaucratic organizations (Briand & Bellemare, 2006; Hodgson, 2004; Torsteinsen, 2012; Turner, 2018).
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