Dariusz Jemielniak

Managers as lazy, stupid careerists?: Contestation and stereotypes among software engineers

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present the results of a qualitative study of software engineers’ perception of dress code, career, organizations, and of managers. Design/methodology/approach – The software engineers interviewed work in three European and two US companies. The research is based on ethnographic data, gathered in two longitudinal studies during the period 2001-2006. The methods used in the study include open-ended unstructured interviews, participant observation, collection of stories, and shadowing. Findings – It was found that the majority of software engineers denounce formal dress-codes. The notion of career was defined by them mostly in terms of occupational development. They perceived their own managers as very incompetent. Their view on corporations was also univocally negative. The findings confirm that software engineers form a very distinctive occupation, defining itself in opposition to the organization. However, their distinctiveness may be perceived not only as a manifestation of independence but also contrarily, as simply fulfilling the organizational role they are assigned by management. Originality/value – The study contributes to the organizational literature by responding to the call for more research on high-tech workplace practices, and on non-managerial occupational roles.

The new knowledge workers

This critical ethnographic study of knowledge workers and knowledge-intensive organization workplaces focuses on the issues of timing and schedules, the perception of formality and trust and distrust in software development as well as motivation and occupational identity among software engineers. The book is a cross-cultural, comparative study of American and European high-tech workplaces. Its conclusions shed new light on the problems typical for software projects.

Time as symbolic currency in knowledge work

The paper discusses the issue of time slips in software development. Increasing time sacrifices toward work constitutes an important part of modern organizational environment. In fact, the reign over time is a crucial element in controlling the labor process. Yet a lack of cultural studies covering different approaches to this issue remains-particularly those focusing on high-skilled salaried workers. This article is a small attempt to fill this gap, based on an analysis of unstructured qualitative interviews with high-tech professionals from a B2B software company. It focuses on the issue of timing in IT projects, as perceived by software engineers. The findings indicate that managerial interruptions in work play an important part in the social construction of delays. However, interruptions from peer software engineers are not perceived as disruptive. This leads to the conclusion that time is used in a symbolic way, both for organizational domination and solidarity rituals. The use of time as a symbolic currency in knowledge-work rites is presented as often influencing the very process of labor and schedules. It is revealed to be the dominant evaluation factor, replacing the officially used measures, such as efficiency, or quality.

Wake Up or Perish: Neo-Liberalism, the Social Sciences, and Salvaging the Public University

Higher education around the world is currently undergoing a neo-liberal administrative takeover. The drive to reduce costs and increased bureaucratization do not serve any other purpose than increasing the power of the universities’ administration. The reasons for allowing this situation to happen are related to scholars’ inertia and subscribing to a belief that academia can and should be impractical. As a result, the emerging corporate university, McDonaldized model relies increasingly on contingent and deskilled faculty, effectively eliminating the traditional academic freedoms. We conclude with suggestions for possible courses of action to make a constructive counter-movement to the radical changes taking place. We propose that we can begin addressing the predicaments of higher education through re-discovering our role in the society, by re-conceptualizing the disciplinary boundaries of academic fields, by forcing the de-bunkerization of academic career and work, and by starting up multi-disciplinary learning communities at universities. We argue that collective action is needed immediately, if any positive change is possible at all before more of higher education is more deeply degraded.

Bridging the gap between wikipedia and academia

In this opinion piece, we would like to present a short literature review of perceptions and reservations towards Wikipedia in academia, address the common questions about overall reliability of Wikipedia entries, review the actual practices of Wikipedia usage in academia, and conclude with possible scenarios for a peaceful coexistence. Because Wikipedia is a regular topic of JASIST publications (Lim, 2009; Meseguer‐Artola, Aibar, Lladós, Minguillón, & Lerga, ; Mesgari, Okoli, Mehdi, Nielsen, & Lanamäki, ; Okoli, Mehdi, Mesgari, Nielsen, & Lanamäki, ), we hope to start a useful discussion with the right audience.

Handbook of research on knowledge-intensive organizations

The Handbook of Research on Knowledge-Intensive Organizations offers an international collection of studies on knowledge-intensive organizations. As one of the first comprehensive books to cover the topics vitally important for the whole theory of organization and management, this Handbook of Research delivers a state-of-the-art view on this timely issue.

Inequalities in Open Source Software Development: Analysis of Contributor’s Commits in Apache Software Foundation Projects

While researchers are becoming increasingly interested in studying OSS phenomenon, there is still a small number of studies analyzing larger samples of projects investigating the structure of activities among OSS developers. The significant amount of information that has been gathered in the publicly available open-source software repositories and mailing-list archives offers an opportunity to analyze projects structures and participant involvement. In this article, using on commits data from 263 Apache projects repositories (nearly all), we show that although OSS development is often described as collaborative, but it in fact predominantly relies on radically solitary input and individual, non-collaborative contributions. We also show, in the first published study of this magnitude, that the engagement of contributors is based on a power-law distribution.

Wikimedia movement governance: the limits of a-hierarchical organization

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to show the limits of a-hierarchical organization in the Wikimedia movement governance model. Wikimedia governance, as well as the dynamic transformations it is currently undergoing, remains to be covered by the literature on organization and management studies; yet, they exemplify the problems with the “organization of the future,” which is highly idealized throughout the management literature. Design/methodology/approach – The research design relies on an ethnographic, long-term, participative study of the Wikipedia community at large. The methods used rely mainly on discourse analysis and interviews. The study benefits from the unique participant immersion of the researcher (who spent six years participating in the studied community, making over five edits each day on average, and being elected to several positions of highest trust within the organization). Findings – The findings show that the open, participative, and democratic character of the organization, whi...

Managing Dynamic Technology-Oriented Businesses: High-Tech Organizations and Workplaces

Dariusz Jemielniak, Ph.D. is Associate Professor of Management and the head of the Center for Research on Organizations and Workplaces (CROW) at Kozminski University in Poland. He held visiting appointments at Cornell University (2004-2005), Harvard University (2007 and 2011-2012), University of California Berkeley (2008). His research interests include workplace practices in knowledge intensive work, software development, as well as open collaboration communities (which he currently studies on the example of Wikipedia, through a long-term ethnographic project). He recently published a book on The New Knowledge Workers (2012, Edward Elgar). He is the editor-in-chief of Tamara Journal for Critical Organization Inquiry. Market: This premier publication is essential for all academic and research library reference collections. It is a crucial tool for academicians, researchers, and practitioners and is ideal forclassroom use. Dariusz Jemielniak (Kozminski University, Poland) & Abigail Marks (Kozminski University, Poland Heriot-Watt University, UK)

Little Johnny and the Wizard of OS: The PC User as a Fool Hero

There are only 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary and those who don’t. This pun has made a career as a status message in IMs, emails, forum signature notes, and on a T-Shirt in a ThinkGeek.com online store. It has been indexed by Google half a million times. Still, it is only one of millions of similar jokes that deprecate those who are not adept at technology and mathematics.