„Wir haben keinen Plan B“: Chronik einer gescheiterten Digitalisierung

Simon Hendrik (), Brinkmann Ulrich () and Paulitz Tanja ()
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Simon Hendrik: Goethe Universität Frankfurt am Main, Fachbereich Gesellschaftswissenschaften, Theodor-W.-Adorno-Platz 6, 60323 Frankfurt, sowie Leibniz-Institut Hessische Stiftung Friedens- und Konfliktforschung, Baseler Straße 27‒31, 60329 Frankfurt, Deutschland.
Brinkmann Ulrich: Technische Universität Darmstadt, Institut für Soziologie, Residenzschloss, Marktplatz 15, 64283 Darmstadt, Deutschland
Paulitz Tanja: Technische Universität Darmstadt, Institut für Soziologie, Residenzschloss, Marktplatz 15, 64283 Darmstadt, Deutschland

Arbeit, 2022, vol. 31, issue 4, 355-375

Abstract: The article argues that behind the implementation of digital technologies in large companies old conflicts of interest can often be found. These old conflicts are intensified in the course of digitalization, shifting to new fields. In the dense description of an implementation process accompanied by participant observation, this article reconstructs the chronicle of a failed digitalization. In doing so, we point to the competing interests from the ‘top’ and the ‘bottom’ in the battle over the level of regulation as well as to internal strategies which are used to conceal the looming failure of the implementation process: Since the new digital technology is boycotted by the employees, the steering group erects facades in order to nevertheless sell it as a success within the company. Paradoxically, however, this very strategy provokes the construction of facades on the part of the employees as well. The organizational ethnographic case study thus points to a diversity of local rationalities in the internal digitalization conflict beyond the unambiguous discourse of digitalization on the company’s front stages.

Keywords: Digitalization; big companies; social conflict; micropolitics; dramaturgy; Digitalisierung; Großunternehmen; sozialer Konflikt; Mikropolitik; dramaturgischer Ansatz; Digitalization; big companies; social conflict; micropolitics; dramaturgy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bpj:arbeit:v:31:y:2022:i:4:p:355-375:n:7

DOI: 10.1515/arbeit-2022-0021

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