Technicians in the workplace: Ethnographic evidence for bringing work into organization studies

This paper lays the groundwork for new models of work and relations of production that reflect changes in the division of labor and occupational structure of a postindustrial economy. It demonstrates how new Ideal-typical occupations can be constructed, drawing on a set of ethnographies to propose an empirically grounded model of technicians' work. The paper focuses on two questions: What do technicians do and what do they know? The answers constitute a first cut at the ideal type, technician. The paper then turns to evidence of the difficulties that arise when organizations employ technicians but fail to appreciate the nature of their work. It closes by showing how a contextually derived model of technicians' work enables us to evaluate why some recent trends in organizing are congruent with an increasingly technical workforce, why others may be misguided, and why organizations are likely to face challenges that organizational theorists have but vaguely anticipated. The paper shows that the emergence of technicians' work may signify a shift to a more horizontal division of substantive expertise that undermines the logic of vertical organizing on which most organizational theory and practice still rests.(.)