Relational work, post-bureaucracy, and inequality in Silicon Valley
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- In this dissertation, I explored the role of relational labor in Silicon Valley post-bureaucratic workplaces through two cases: the implementation of AI ethics in technology companies, and the role of employee's relational work at WeWork. I examine the growth of the field of AI ethics, also referred to as "responsible AI, " which has developed in response to criticisms following investigations of algorithms that revealed disproportionate harms on marginalized groups. I agrue that legitimacy shapes organizational similarity, or isomorphism, in the field and show that this constrains corporate practices related to ethics. Next, I examine ethics workers through the lens of institutional entrepreneurship to understand the barriers to implementing responsible AI in technology organizations. I focus on the diplomatic and interpersonal skills ethics entrepreneurs must engage in on a case-by-case basis in order to effect change, due to the lack of organizational infrastructure and support they receive. I find that ethics entrepreneurs face three major barriers to their work: the product-centered institutional environment, the difficulty of quantifying ethics in metrics-driven organizations, and frequent reorganizations of teams which make it difficult to access knowledge and maintain relationships central to their work. As a result of these barriers, ethics workers, who are often from marginalized backgrounds, take on great personal risk when raising ethics issues. Finally, I aim to understand what motivates the reaggregation of decentralized knowledge work in coworking spaces like WeWork. In recent years, coworking has exploded in popularity amongst knowledge workers. How can we understand the social and cultural forces that precipitated this shift from disaggregated to reaggregated work? I focus on the emotional labor and relationship labor performed by culture workers at WeWork, and I argue that this labor sustains decentralized capitalism. Despite the underlying spirit of techno-utopianism in Silicon Valley (Turner, 2006) and what Karppi and Nieborg (2021) describe as "an almost pathological belief in their corporation's ability to make the world a better place, " diversity in the technology industry remains stagnant or even regressive (Gee and Peck, 2015). This dissertation examines the stakes of changes to knowledge work, by outlining the consequences for workers at large but especially the implications on racial and gender inequality at work. These stakes have potential to affect not only the workplace, but also companies' products and society at large.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2023; ©2023 |
| Publication date | 2023; 2023 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Ali, Sanna Jamila |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Christin, Angèle |
| Thesis advisor | Christin, Angèle |
| Thesis advisor | Hamilton, James, 1961- |
| Thesis advisor | Turner, Fred |
| Thesis advisor | Valentine, Melissa (Melissa A.) |
| Degree committee member | Hamilton, James, 1961- |
| Degree committee member | Turner, Fred |
| Degree committee member | Valentine, Melissa (Melissa A.) |
| Associated with | Stanford University, School of Humanities and Sciences |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Communication |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Sanna Jamila Ali. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Communication. |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2023. |
| Location | https://purl.stanford.edu/td816xx9080 |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2023 by Sanna Jamila Ali
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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