Research on workplace surveillance highlights managerial initiatives to expand monitoring and make it less obtrusive, but we know relatively little about how to explain workers' diverse responses to monitoring. Using ethnographic data collected at an electronics retailer, I suggest that gender-related status seeking between workers helps to account for variation in workers' experience of and responses to workplace surveillance. Men used surveillance to demonstrate their skill and expertise relative to other men, a process I refer to as manufacturing masculinity. Although women also aspired to be strong and knowledgeable salespeople, they were treated as illegitimate competitors in men's status contests. The company's masculine culture primed workers to interpret surveillance through this gendered lens.
Manufacturing masculinity
Exploring gender and workplace surveillance
Payne, J. (2018). Manufacturing masculinity: Exploring gender and workplace surveillance. Work and Occupations, 45(3), 346-383. https://doi.org/10.1177/0730888418780969
Abstract
Publications Info
To contact an RTI author, request a report, or for additional information about publications by our experts, send us your request.
Meet the Experts
View All ExpertsRecent Publications
Article
Protection of forest ecosystems in the eastern United States from elevated atmospheric deposition of sulfur and nitrogen
Article
The use of patient experience feedback in rehabilitation quality improvement and codesign activities
Article
SPTSSA variants alter sphingolipid synthesis and cause a complex hereditary spastic paraplegia
OCCASIONAL PAPER