Information Technology and the Service Class

Abstract

Information technology (IT), combining microprocessing with electronic communications, is now being introduced to the work of those relatively advantaged white-collar groups, notably professionals, managers and administrators, which some sociologists have categorised as the ‘service class’ (e.g. Goldthorpe, 1982).² Previous generations of electronic technology were used to assist the rationalisation and intensification of routine white-collar work (Crompton and Reid, 1982), and contributed in this way to the creation of a deskilled white-collar ‘proletariat’ with which the service class has been contrasted (Abercrombie and Urry, 1983). The economic considerations which encouraged earlier investments in computers apply today with even greater force, and the new technology itself offers more powerful and adaptable information processing.³ It would not be surprising therefore to find IT being used to extend rationalisation upwards within white-collar hierarchies.

This chapter draws in part upon research being conducted by the author and colleagues in the ESRC Work Organisation Research Centre, and particularly its associated project into ‘Microelectronics in the Service Sector’. The financial support of the Economic and Social Research Council is gratefully acknowledged, as are also the helpful comments of this book’s editors.