It will be an excellent occasion for our community to meet with
the European Academy of Management.
EURAM 2013 will take place in Istanbul 26th-29th June. Deadline
for paper submission is 15th January.
Please find the track description and call for paper here
below.
EURAM 2013
Organisational Behaviour
General Track
SUB-track:
Performance and control in
Information systems
- Andrea Carugati, Aarhus University, Business and Social
Sciences, Department of Business Administration
- Joao Vieira da Cunha, Aarhus University, Business and
Social Sciences, Department of Business Administration
- Lapo Mola, University of Verona, Department of Management
- Nancy Pouloudi, Athens University of Economics &
Business, Department of Management Science & Technology
Sub-track description
Information systems have an unprecedented potential for
surveillance and control. Information systems
have been described as a panopticon - a mechanism of
surveillance that exposes the most minute details
of people's actions and achievements at work. People are
said to react to such a level of surveillance
through anticipatory conformity, whereby “the behavioural
expectations of [managers] can be so keenly
anticipated by [employees] that the foreknowledge of
visibility is enough to induce conformity to […]
normative standards”{Zuboff, 1988 #209: 345}.
In many cases this is an all too accurate description of
the challenges of working in jobs where
information systems are at the same time the means that
people use to work and the means that
managers use to monitor that work. However, the theories
that have been used to specify the role of
information systems as mechanisms of control has emphasized
the agency of employees in reproducing
the conditions necessary to make their work visible.
Foucault wrote that, "He who is subjected to a field of
visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibility for
the constraints of power; he makes them play
spontaneously upon himself; he inscribed in himself the
power relation in which he simultaneously plays
both roles; he becomes the principle of his own
subjection." Giddens argued that "all forms of dependence
offer some resources whereby those who are subordinate can
influence the activities of their superiors"
{Giddens, 1989: 16}.
Introducing technology between controller and controlled
occasions the emergence of behaviours for the
different stakeholders that go beyond our normal
understanding of and expectations for the role of
managers and employees. Research has emphasized the extent
to which people are capable of improvising
with and around information systems. However, there are
still few explorations and explanations of the
implications for surveillance and control of people's
disposition and ability to adapt technology to suit
their own interests.
This track invites papers that theorize and research
control mediated by IT by taking into account the active role
that employees, managers and stakeholders in general, play in
this process. We invite papers that focus on topics such as:.
1.How does improvisation with and around information
technology affect computer-mediated control?
2. How does computer-mediated control affect people's
ability and willingness to adapt IT to their everyday
challenges?
3. What distinguishes effective and ineffective attempts to
limit computer-mediated control over work?
4. What are the organizational consequences of employees'
attempts to limit computer-mediated control over their own
work?
5. How do managers cope with the effect on control of
employees' adaptation of IT?
6. How do external and internal stakeholders design
organizational computer-mediated control