Is_Electronic_Surveillance_At_The_Workplace_The_Iron_Cage_

Is Electronic Surveillance At The Workplace The Iron Cage' In the last few years, electronic surveillance at the workplace has skyrocketed. It is becoming an every minute occurrence. This leads many social experts to recall the words of great sociologist such as Weber and Foucault. These two sociologists espoused theories that predicted such an outcome. Weber spoke of the “iron cage” in which workers creative powers and imagination were crushed by the regulations of a powerful bureaucracy. In other words, Weber discussed how rationalization and the formation of large bureaucracy would dehumanize the worker. He theorized that it would happen as bureaucracies pushed for maximum efficiency. There is a direct parallel between Weber’s “iron cage” theory and the implementation of wide-scale surveillance at the work place. To achieve the most efficient company, the employers will keep watch on the workers to ensure that they are as productive as possible. However, the workers claim that this makes them feel paranoid and takes away his/her human nature. The more recent sociologist, Michael Foucault had advocated a theory that similarly parallels electronic surveillance at the work place. Foucault argued that the constant development of new technologies that allowed surveillance surveillance, workers, electronic, company, companies, cage, however, wolkomir, privacy, iron, work, weber, employers, workplace, theories, technology, act, 1994, worker, new, being, zuboff, large, keep, foucault, efficiency, because, times, productivity, place, need, management, know, feel, due