The role of ICTs in the servitization and degradation of IT professional work

Recently IT work has been subjected to management approaches that apply production methods to service work. Specialized ICTs used by IT professionals have played an important role in this ‘service turn’, but this has not been adequately explored in the literature. Via a qualitative study of IT profe...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Clive Trusson, Donald Hislop, Neil Doherty
Format: Default Article
Published: 2018
Subjects:
Other commerce, management, tourism and services not elsewhere classified
Professional work
Autonomy
Managerialism
IT service management
Deskilling
Control
Servitization
Job quality
IT workers
Business and Management not elsewhere classified
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/2134/32654
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Summary:Recently IT work has been subjected to management approaches that apply production methods to service work. Specialized ICTs used by IT professionals have played an important role in this ‘service turn’, but this has not been adequately explored in the literature. Via a qualitative study of IT professionals situated across the servitized IT functions of five UK-based organizations, this article considers how these ICTs are inscribed with managerial logics that afford control benefits to managers while undermining professional autonomy and job quality. The article makes two main contributions to the literature. Firstly, it sheds light on how ICTs introduced into organizational IT functions support managerial control objectives and impact the job quality of IT professionals. Secondly, it suggests that ICTs may infect the logic of professionalism that takes pride in the quality of the work performance with a dominant managerial logic that places an emphasis on meeting management objectives.

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