Dal Zotto, Cinzia

2023-09-21, Omidi, Afshin, Dal Zotto, Cinzia

S'appuyant sur la théorie du processus de travail (LPT), telle qu'elle a été développée dans l'ouvrage de référence "Labor and Monopoly Capital" par Harry Braverman en 1974, le présent projet tente de faire la lumière sur les transformations du travail médiatique à l'ère des technologies numériques. La LPT est une approche critique des études sur le travail et l'emploi, ancrée dans la tradition marxiste, qui aborde les relations conflictuelles entre le capital et le travail et relie les transformations du travail à des contextes structurels plus larges. Dans cette veine, la présente recherche s'intéresse à la façon dont les plateformes numériques, régies par un mode de production capitaliste, peuvent avoir transformé la nature même du travail dans les industries des médias d'information. En outre, elle cherche à analyser de manière critique si et comment les travailleurs des médias peuvent subir une dégradation de leur profession en raison des impératifs commerciaux imposés par les réalités d'un écosystème axé sur les plateformes. À cette fin, le projet a été divisé en trois études. L'article 1 passe en revue les précédentes études empiriques sur la nature du travail dans les industries médiatiques afin de mettre en lumière les concepts et les facteurs qui caractérisent le travail dans les médias. D'après les conclusions de cet article, les travailleurs des médias donnent un sens à leur emploi non pas en raison des caractéristiques uniques que comporte le travail dans les médias. Au contraire, les expériences des travailleurs des médias et les perceptions de leur travail dépendent fortement des politiques du lieu de travail adoptées par les organisations médiatiques qui sont entrelacées et façonnées par d'autres facteurs tels que les macro-politiques et les transformations technologiques. Les articles 2 et 3 constituent la partie empirique de ce projet, qui a recueilli des données à partir de 20 entretiens approfondis avec des professionnels de l'information représentant 11 médias en ligne en Suisse. Plus précisément, l'article 2 se concentre sur le rôle des outils de mesure d'audience dans la création de tensions entre les journalistes et les responsables des médias. Bien que cette étude découvre certaines tensions induites par les outils de mesure parmi les journalistes en raison des approches managériales à l'œuvre, elle ne considère pas ces technologies comme des forces d'exploitation. Au contraire, les outils basés sur les métriques ont créé des ambiguïtés sur la manière dont les journalistes doivent intégrer le métier de journaliste à ces technologies. L'article 3, quant à lui, s'intéresse au rôle des logiciels de collaboration en ligne (OCS) dans le façonnement de la dynamique du pouvoir dans les salles de rédaction. Il constate que l'OCS joue un rôle inévitable dans la création de régimes de contrôle sur le lieu de travail. En particulier, les logiciels de collaboration en ligne peuvent étendre le pouvoir de la direction de manière à envahir l'espace, le temps et l'esprit des journalistes, révélant ainsi la nécessité d'une politique du travail capable de créer des synergies entre les travailleurs des médias, les dirigeants et les organisations d'une manière plus socialement responsable. Enfin, ce projet conclut que les technologies reflètent un contexte social, économique et politique particulier, ce qui pourrait être utile aux travailleurs des médias et aux organisations. Cependant, les managers des médias ont un rôle crucial à jouer dans l'application des nouvelles technologies au travail, afin que les créativités journalistiques soient favorisées et encouragées plutôt que limitées.
ABSTRACT:
Drawing on the labor process theory (LPT), as developed in the landmark book “Labor and Monopoly Capital” by Harry Braverman in 1974, the current project attempts to shed some light on the transformations of media work in the age of digital technologies. LPT is a critical approach to studies on work and employment, rooted in the Marxist tradition, which addresses conflictual relations between capital and labor and connects work transformations with broader structural contexts. In this vein, the present research addresses how digital platforms, governed by a capitalist mode of production, may have transformed the very nature of work within news media industries. Furthermore, it seeks to critically analyze if and how media workers may experience a degradation of their profession due to the business imperatives imposed by the realities of a platform-driven ecosystem. To this end, the project has been divided into three studies. Article 1 reviews the previous empirical studies on the nature of work in the media industries to shed light on the concepts and factors that characterize media work. Based on this article’s findings, media workers give meaning to their jobs not because of the unique features that work in the media entails. Instead, media workers’ experiences in and perceptions of their job highly depend on the workplace policies adopted by media organizations that are intertwined with and shaped by other factors such as macro policies and technological transformations. Article 2 and Article 3 form the empirical part of this project, which gathered data from 20 in-depth interviews with news professionals representing 11 online media in Switzerland. Specifically, Article 2 focuses on the role of audience analytics in creating tensions among journalists and media managers. While this study discovers some analytics-induced tensions among journalists as a result of managerial approaches at work, it did not see these technologies as exploitative forces. Instead, analytics created ambiguities concerning how journalists should integrate the craft of journalism with such technologies. Article 3, on the other side, pays attention to the role of online collaboration software (OCS) in shaping power dynamics in newsrooms. It finds that OCS has an inevitable role in creating control regimes in the workplace. In particular, OCS can extend managerial power so to invade journalists’ space, time, and mind, revealing the need for labor politics able to create synergies among media workers, managers, and organizations in a more socially responsible manner. Finally, this project concludes that technologies reflect a particular social, economic, and political context, which could be helpful for both media workers and organizations. However, media managers have a crucial role in applying new technologies at work so that journalistic creativities are fostered and encouraged rather than limited.

2022-2-24, Omidi, Afshin, Dal Zotto, Cinzia, Picard, Robert G

Media work is a culture-making activity affecting the ways people understand the world and, therefore, workers in the media industries have a critical role in shaping collective memories, traditions, and belief systems. While studies regarding the characteristics impacting the nature of work in the media industries have significantly been increasing over the last years, the literature in this area remains highly fragmented. This paper begins to address that shortcoming by conducting an in-depth review of 36 scholarly papers in influential journals published from 2006 to 2020 to provide a comprehensive view of the literature and its approaches. This study elaborates on the concept of media work by organizing previous efforts into five subthemes, including commonalities, contested terrain, gendered profession, emerging practices, and influencing factors. Previous research has emphasized that media workers’ subjective experiences need to be explored further and more in-depth; however, if we wish to depict a more holistic but realistic picture, those experiences should be contextualized and thus linked with the specific organizational configurations and macro structures in which media work is embedded. The present review depicts how work in the media may take different meanings when addressing it through various theoretical frameworks. Our study can enrich future studies regarding the nature of media work by providing a fine-grained foundation in which researchers could understand how their given research problem(s) would be connected with the other issues that potentially impact their studies.

2021-4-7, Lupova-Henri, Evgeniya, Blili, Sam, Dal Zotto, Cinzia

How should a cluster be designed to foster the innovativeness of its members? In this article, we view self-aware and organised clusters as “meta-organisations” which can deliberately shape their internal structures through design-based interventions. To formulate interventions for cluster design fostering its innovativeness, we adopt a methodology combining a systematic literature review and a design-oriented synthesis. We distinguish between six cluster business model elements: actors and their roles, resources and capabilities, value flows, governance, value propositions and value-creating activities. To gain insight into the properties of these elements conducive to cluster innovativeness, we review literature at the intersection of cluster, meta-organisation, business model and innovation studies. Our study allows to consolidate the extant research into “organised” clustering and the drivers of the cluster actors’ innovativeness. It also helps identify several important unanswered questions in the literature and to suggest potentially fruitful directions for further work.

2021-1-21, Lupova-Henri, Evgeniya, Blili, Sam, Dal Zotto, Cinzia

In this paper, we aim at exploring whether and how ‘organised’ clusters can be conceived of as deliberate actors within their contexts. Seeing such clusters as meta-organisations, we suggest that these can make ‘organisationality’ design choices, or decisions regarding full or partial implementation of the five elements constitutive of formal organisations: membership, hierarchy, rules, monitoring, and sanctions. To explore the relationship between clusters’ organisationality and actorhood, we conduct two qualitative case studies of organised clusters in Australia. Our findings suggest that clusters can deliberately ‘construct’ themselves both as organisations and social actors. Furthermore, drawing upon the institutional work perspective, we propose that clusters can engage in deliberate identity, boundary, and practice work. However, in doing so, they address both internal and external legitimating audiences. Finally, our findings suggest that clusters’ organisationality design choices may influence the locus of their actorhood resulting in more or less collaborative approaches to institutional work.

2023-1-2, Omidi, Afshin, Dal Zotto, Cinzia

2022-2-12, Omidi, Afshin, Dal Zotto, Cinzia

2021-3-24, Veglianti, Eleonora, Dal Zotto, Cinzia, De Marco, Marco

2022-4-21, Omidi, Afshin, Dal Zotto, Cinzia

2022-1-26, Dal Zotto, Cinzia

Propulsée notamment par la digitalisation, la collaboration implique de se connaître les uns les autres et de beaucoup communiquer. Mais encore ? Cinzia Dal Zotto nous donne quelques pistes sur le sujet.

2021-2-15, Lupova-Henri, Evgeniya, Blili, Sam, Dal Zotto, Cinzia

In this article, we explore whether organized clusters can act as institutional entrepreneurs to create conditions favorable to innovation in their constituent members. We view self-aware and organized clusters as “context-embedded meta-organizations” which engage in deliberate decision- and strategy-making. As such, clusters are not only shaped by their environments, as “traditional” cluster approaches suggest but can also act upon these. Their ability to act as “change agents” is crucial in countries with high institutional barriers to innovation, such as most transition economies. Focusing on Russia, we conduct two cluster case studies to analyze the strategies these adopt to alter and shape their institutional environments. We find that clusters have a dual role as institutional entrepreneurs. First, these can act collectively to shape their environments due to the power they wield. Second, they can be mechanisms empowering their constituent actors, fostering their reflexivity and creativity, and allowing them to engage in institutional entrepreneurship. Moreover, both collective and individual cluster actors adopt “bricolage” approaches to institutional entrepreneurship to compensate for the lack of resources or institutional frameworks or avoid the pressures of ineffective institutions.