Greider, W.
(2003).
The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy.
"Employers are willing to pay a higher cost for temp laborers because they are disposable. 'We call it pimping people out,' says Suzie Qusenberry, 'because that's really what it is. I'm going to pimp you out for $8 an hour and all you're going to get is $5.35.' They take the money and you do the work. Isn't that just like pimping?'"
Bowker, G. C., & Star S. L.
(2000).
Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences.
"Information technology operates through a series of displacements, from action to representation, from the politics of conflict to the invisible politics of forms and bureaucracy. Decades ago, Max Weber wrote of the iron cage of bureaucracy. Modern humans, he posited, are constrained at every juncture from true freedom of action by a set of rules of our own making. Some of these rules are formal, most are not. Information infrastructure adds another level of depth to the iron cage. In its layers, and in its complex interdependencies, it is a gossamer web with iron at its core." (p. 320)
Buckley, W.
(1967).
Sociology and modern systems theory..
"As in any organization, rules were selectively evoked, broken, or ignored to suit the defined needs of personnel. Higher administrative levels, especially, avoided periodic attempts to have the rules codified and formalized, for fear of restricting the innovation and improvisation believed necessary to the care of patients. Also, the multiplicity of professional ideologies, theories, and purposes would never tolerate such a rigidification." (p. 150)
Heatherton, T. F.
(2003).
The Social Psychology of Stigma.
"How do people come to accept their own unjust treatment of the stigmatized? Ideological commitments lead them to self-justification. A justification ideology exempts stigmatized individuals from full moral inclusion, and as a result, the stigma in conjunction with the ideology can lead to rough treatment." (p. 128)
Weick, K. E.
(1979).
The Social Psychology of Organizing.
"As criticisms first start to increase the person exerts more effort, concentration is already quite high, and quality improves. As the criticisms continue to increase there comes a point where the additional increments of effort are now canceled because the person can't concentrate. Beyond this point, the greater the number of criticisms, the lower the quality of performance." (p. 227)
Hodson, R., & Sullivan T. A.
(1995).
Social Organization of Work.
"Alienation occurs when work provides inadequately for human needs for identity and meaning. Work is alienating to the extent that one does it only from economic necessity, not from its intrinsic pleasures." (p. 56)
"A common response to alienating work is passive resistance through making work into a game (Burawoy, 2000), restricting one`s output (Roy, 1952), or focusing on aspects of work tangential to the main productive activity (Collinson, 2003). For instance, workers often adjust to alienating situations by focusing on interactions with their peers. Managers label such behavioral responses 'poor performance.' However, such behaviors do not necessarily result from incompetence or laziness: rather, they may be straightforward responses to having a job that is tedious, repetitive, or alienating. These responses are difficult to predict from workers' levels of job satisfaction or commitment. Workers who are very committed to their work may be the ones most likely to resist alienating conditions. Those who are less committed may simply exit or grudgingly suffer in silence." (p. 68)
Goleman, D.
(2006).
Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships.
"Feeling secure, Kohlrieser argues, lets a person focus better on the work at hand, achieve goals, and see obstacles as challenges, not threats. Those who are anxious, in contrast, readily become preoccupied with the specter of failure, fearing that doing poorly will mean they will be rejected or abandoned (in this context, fired)—and so they play it safe." (p. 277)
Stephenson, N.
(1993).
Snow Crash.
Stephenson's dark social satire illustrates what an anti-ROWE future might look like:
"You could try to favor a particular station, try to sit there every day, but it would be noticed. Generally you pick the unoccupied workstation that's closest to the door. That way, whoever comes in earliest sits closest, whoever came in latest is way in the back, for the rest of the day it's obvious at a glance who's on the ball in this office and who is—as they whisper to each other in the bathrooms—having problems.
Not that it's any big secret, who comes in first. When you sign on to a workstation in the morning, it's not like the central computer doesn't notice that fact. The central computer notices just about everything....You're only required to be at your workstation from eight to five, with a half-hour lunch break and two ten-minute coffee breaks, but if you stuck to that schedule it would definitely be noticed..." (p. 282)