Nice Work? Rethinking Managerial Control in an Era of Knowledge Work
评估劳动过程理论能否解释知识工作时代看似更自主、更自由条件下管理控制的持续存在，提出应围绕“知识的不确定性”而非“劳动的不确定性”来理解控制问题。
This article assesses the ability of labour process theory (LPT) to account for the persistence of managerial control under the apparent conditions of greater autonomy and discretion we have come to associate with ‘knowledge Work’. LPT has traditionally problematized control around the need to resolve ‘the indeterminacy of labour’—that is, how do managers ensure that workers’ actual labouring efforts approach their potential labour power? In contrast, I propose that it is more useful to problematize control around the ‘indeterminacy of knowledge’—that is, how do managers ensure that workers’ cognitive efforts approach their full cognitive potential? A common response to the problem of the indeterminacy of knowledge has been to cede discretion to workers so that they can exercise their mental capabilities in order to provide their organizations with solutions to workplace problems. I will show, however, that this still requires the operation of disciplinary mechanisms that perpetuate managerial control under conditions that ostensibly reverse the separation of the conception and the execution of work tasks inherent in the logic of Taylorism.