engleski

The Power Battles in IT Environments

The novelty that the processes of globalisation, as essentialy economic processes, with the inherent political and social consequences, brings about is that they transfer the power battle field into the environment of information technologies. The paradigm of information technologies has provided a material basis for a pervasive expansion of networks along the entire social structure. It pervades the core of life and mind, while the networks constitute a new social morphology in a way in which the network logic represents a distinctive feature of the global era. Hence Castells (2000) has a reason to use the term 'network society' as he wants to emphasize the 'preeminence of social morphology over social action'. Computer networks are not mere technical facts, but they are in the first place social catalysts which have significant influence on the relations between individuals, especially when we talk about economic relations and power relations that we find in the corporate culture of the global era. Managers are aware that having control over information systems is the same as having control over the organisation, and it is not surprising that ever since the beginnings of implementation of computer systems within organisations, intense battles have been fought over the systems' locations and transfers. The underlying message of this paper is that the function of control is too important as to leave it to the researchers in the field of management in today's turbulent conditions of the processes of globalisation, whose theories, in the first instance, aim to justify corporate practice and malpractice. For this to be possible, however, the social issues should be put into the context of the law of value in capitalist economy. In this paper we would like to make a distance from the 'strong position' of understanding power, which assumes that power is an immortal form of all social relations. Hence we would like to present evidence for a more plausible version of the view held by Foucault (1980), who believes that power is a medium through the social world produces and reproduces itself, and so here power is not simply understood as a represive force, but also as a force involving numerous productive reactions. As Tinker (1997) points out, the disclosure of financial scandals becomes a crucial factor in mobilizing the public and forming the public opinion, which results in regulatory regimes that the state uses to protect the interests of citizens, in the first place of small shareholders. The importance of the audit and regulatory mechanisms for the functioning of capitalism as a system becomes an imperative in the global environment this clears the way for a new turning point in the history of regulatory mechanisms, and this time the daily schedule will include demands for global regulatory mechanisms. In the altered reality of the global era in which power has been ceded by the state to the corporation, there is a need for new practices regarding the protection of human rights. New times not only ask for new fighting methods but also change the front itself that is moving from the political sphere into the economic, i.e. in the direction of the corporate sector. Thus the Pandora's box being opened, the three key issues have come out of it: first, the issue of creating effective managerial control and co-ordination ; second, the issue of the public's responsiveness, initially in the form of the call for social audit in the sense of systematic reporting of an corporate's commitments and accomplishments in areas of social responsibility' (Schermerhorn Jr., 1996 ; Crowther, 2002), but also of creating a new social morphology, which is to limit managerial control so as to reduce the possibility of malpractice at the expense of other stakeholders ; third, the creation of effective mechanisms of control of the corporate sector when making the contracts with the Thirld World countries and transitional countries. The subtlety of this issue arises from the fact that here we deal with the countries which have the status of the countries followers in the two ways: 1. In the sense of being importers of the capitalist way of production and institutions, and equally of its crises and pathological processes ; 2. In the sense of importers of information technology industry, as it represents the technical basis for the network society. The authors advocating the labour process theory have significantly contributed to the research on the phenomenon of control. First, they have pointed out to the fact that the concepts of the general control systems can be essential tool for representing capital relations. Second, they have emphasized the importance of a whole range of mediating and contextual factors that form the processes of control such as the product market, labourers' resistance, the processes of recruitment and selection, as well as the formation of distinctive organisational culture (Knights & Wilmott, 1986 ; Ackroyd & Thompson, 1999). Third, debates have shown that the phenomenon of labour process control, with the help of capital, involves a variety of diverse procedures and structures. In contemporary research, the emphasis tends to be put on the varied dimensions of control, as well as on various combinations of practices, and the conditions affecting their use. Fourth, regardless of control structure, a successful execution of control always depends upon human agency (Thompson, 1988). Fifth, the conceptualisation of managerial control comes from the understanding of a management as a collective labour process, an extremly important element highlighted in modern research. In the context of the global era Braverman's analysis (1974) serves as a useful tool for two reasons: on the theoretical and methodological level, he gives us a framework for an evaluation of the malformations deriving from contradictions and crises of today's corporate world ; at the practical-political level, he opens up space for the organized answers of the global labour force against unscrupulous activities of the capitalist system. What marks the new model of global production and management is a simultaneous integration of work process and a disintegration of workforce (Castells, 2000). Consequently, at present we cannot talk about 'a unified global labour market', not even about 'a global labour force'. The important thing emerging from these processes is indeed global interdependence of the labour force in the informational economy. Castells, however, is not optimistic about these processes, while we believe that they open up space not only for new forms of workers' resistance, but also for new methods of struggle. This certainly presupposes a much greater ability of the labour movement to adapt itself to a networking logic as a major source of social cohesion in the global capitalism. In the new global environment, IT is an omnipenetrating social force that changes power relations, provides mechanisms that enable the shift of power from those who abuse it to those who are their victims, which ultimately brings the issue of control of the controllers on the agenda.

Information technologies; power; network society; regulatory mechanisms; labour market.

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