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Parasitic universes: Organisational and technological meddling in the social

Lookup NU author(s): Dr Dean PieridesORCiD

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Abstract

Debates about technology theorising ‘the social’ solely on dyadic and fixed positional terms fail to grasp important ways that new financial technologies participate in work organisations. As an alternative, we build on the work of Michel Serres to propose that these technologies already inhabit triadic and relational parasitic universes in which they introduce interruptions that do much more than mediate between degrees of technological and social determinism. To understand the forms of agency this affords, we analyse two contrasting studies of workplaces where financial technologies were introduced. In a UK non-profit social care organisation, relations of care were fundamentally disrupted by disorderly, dysfunctional forms of agency, whereas in UK retail banking, management used disorder to strategically obscure their own agency. Technological innovation and ‘future of work’ narratives are shown to feed each other, in service to interests that benefit from the repurposing of technologies, people and organisations.

Publication metadata

Author(s): Bailey S, Lenglet M, Lord G, Pierides D, Tischer D

Publication type: Article

Publication status: Published

Journal: New Technology, Work & Employment

Year: 2023

Volume: 38

Issue: 1

Pages: 41-58

Print publication date: 06/03/2023

Online publication date: 11/07/2022

Acceptance date: 24/06/2022

Date deposited: 11/07/2022

ISSN (print): 0268-1072

ISSN (electronic): 1468-005X

Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/ntwe.12253

DOI: 10.1111/ntwe.12253

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