Helen Richardson

Being an ‘it’ in IT: gendered identities in IT work

This paper reflects on aspects of gender and IT work. The core hypothesis is that, if technical skill and masculinity are fundamentally related, then women working in IT jobs who are, in effect, challenging masculine skills by gaining them themselves, must develop a number of strategies to cope with the challenge that they feel is being made to their own gender identities and those of the men with whom they work. One strategy is for women to distance themselves from IT work; a second strategy is for women to distance themselves from their identities as women. Our results are drawn from a set of semi-structured interviews. We adopt the approach of critical research that seeks to expose asymmetric power relations in the organization and to let silenced voices be heard. This is related to the literature on silence in organizations. Within the critical approach, we chose a feminist methodology that looks towards identifying practices that are problematic for women and that acknowledges our biases and interests as researchers. Additionally, we draw upon the theoretical constructs of the gender and technology literature to theorize the relationship between gender and technical skill and how this impacts conceptions of gender identity.

The contradictions of CRM - A critical lens on call centres

This paper aims to explore the contradictions of CRM systems and their use in call centres and in doing so contribute to the literature on critical information systems research. By invoking a critical perspective our analysis shows significant contradictions between system objectives and outcomes in practice. With reference to the work of Pierre Bourdieu, a sociologist and critical social theorist, we highlight the powerful theoretical lens that his work can provide for information systems researchers. Using an empirical study which draws upon Bourdieus key concepts of field, habitus, logic of practice and symbolic violence, we illustrate how these processes of contradiction operate at the local level in the context of the field.

'Stressed out of my box': employee experience of lean working and occupational ill-health in clerical work in the UK public sector

Occupational health and safety (OHS) is under-researched in the sociology of work and employment. This deficit is most pronounced for white-collar occupations. Despite growing awareness of the significance of psychosocial conditions – notably stress – and musculoskeletal disorders, white-collar work is considered by conventional OHS discourse to be ‘safe’. This study’s locus is clerical processing in the UK public sector, specifically Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, in the context of efficiency savings programmes. The key initiative was lean working, which involved redesigned workflow, task fragmentation, standardization and individual targets. Utilizing a holistic model of white-collar OHS and in-depth quantitative and qualitative data, the evidence of widespread self-reported ill-health symptoms is compelling. Statistical tests of association demonstrate that the transformed work organization that accompanied lean working contributed most to employees’, particularly women’s, ill-health complaints.

Lean and mean in the civil service: the case of processing in HMRC

The public sector has been importing private sector methods and practices aimed at generating efficiencies and cost savings. However, the consequences of these changes on the working lives of civil servants are under-researched. This article uses detailed fieldwork to investigate the impact of Lean on labour processes in HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC). We argue that Lean has a detrimental effect on employees, their working lives, and the service that is provided to the public. The consequences of Lean on public sector work are highly problematic, which is of serious concern given its progressive impact on other civil service departments in the UK.

Critical research in information systems: looking forward, looking back

Purpose – The purpose of this article is to reflect on the development of critical research in information systems and give an overview of the papers chosen for this special issue.Design/methodology/approach – To set the scene by discussing the origins and the developing field of critical research in information systems and to analyse each paper, suggesting ways in which it relates to the chosen themes.Findings – The papers chosen address theoretical foundations, paradigmatic and methodological issues, empirical studies and praxis and reflexivity in critical information systems research.Originality/value – Highlights the growing interest in critical research in the information systems discipline and enables reflection on the difficulties, barriers and opportunities for development.

The back office goes global: exploring connections and contradictions in shared service centres

This article explores a neglected aspect of IT-enabled service work: the back office. The fieldwork study reveals how back office service work has been identified as suitable for ongoing reorganization and reconfiguration as firms respond to the pressures of contemporary capitalism. The article focuses on standardization as a means of facilitating organizational restructuring into shared service centres as highly skilled back office work is reframed as routine service work. Standardization is the vehicle that drives the commodification of the labour process as tasks are fragmented, quantified and traded in the global sourcing of services, allowing work to be lifted out of traditional organizational structures and placed elsewhere, or outsourced to other service providers. The study shows how this ongoing process is fraught with contradictions, problematically rendering people and place ancillary.

A 'smart house' is not a home: The domestication of ICTs

This paper discusses the domestication of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), particularly their use, in UK households reporting on research undertaken between 1998 and 2004. Issues raised are linked to the dominant discourse of the ‘digital divide’, which in the UK means engaging with ICTs in a ‘meaningful’ way to ensure the economic and social well-being of UK plc (public limited company—in the UK this refers to companies whose shares can be sold to the public. The acronym is used here ironically to indicate the motivation of the government to brand and promote the UK as a whole.). Utilising a framework of understanding digital inequality and the ‘deepening divide’, domestication theory is applied to discuss motivational, material and physical, skills and usage access in the gendered household, critically contrasting this approach to ‘smart house’ research. This qualitative enquiry contributes to the neglected area of domestication studies in Information Systems research.

Gender Matters in the Global Outsourcing of Service Work

This paper provides a gendered analysis of the outsourcing of service work to developing economies taking, as illustration, call centres, shared service centres and the general ICT sector. The paper challenges the suggestion that changes in global capitalism, facilitated by ICT-enabled employment, offer new opportunities that benefit women, and suggests a degree of caution is needed before assuming a reduction of gender inequalities.

‘Nothing Gets Done and No One Knows Why’: PCs and Workplace Control of Lean in HM Revenue and Customs

This article examines the willingness and capacity of public sector unions to mobilise action against changes in the labour process in order to maintain some measure of control at the point of production. Taking as an instance an extended dispute in Her Majestys Revenue and Customs over the introduction and impact of Lean processes, it marshals evidence gathered from documentary sources, branch representatives and national lay full-time officers to engage with the notion of a trade union bureaucracy. In taking a union with a left-wing leadership and a section with 80 per cent membership with an expressed willingness to escalate industrial action, the article tests Hymans 1979 contention that, rather than a concentration on a bureaucratic caste, a much better explanation for conservatism centres on the nature of social relations within the union that encompass a wider layer of representatives.

Absent Friends? The Gender Dimension in Information Systems Research

This paper argues that research on gender and information systems, from both quantitative and qualitative traditions, is problematic as the concept of gender continues to remain under-theorized. We discuss why this may have occurred given that an interest in gender has begun to permeate other disciplines. We elaborate an extensive critique of research which utilizes a statistical approach, discussing four recent papers with one MIS Quarterly paper taken as the cardinal example. We also include a shorter discussion of qualitative literature on gender and IS which reflects the paucity of published literature in this area. Here we see similar tendencies at work, where both gender and technology are taken to be fixed, “essential,” and even stereotypical categories and where authors have yet to grasp the nettle of solidly theorizing the concept of gender against the extensive gender and information technology literature which now exists.