Isolation and technology: the human disconnect

Management control over production has often meant control over one means of production: people. There is evidence of the use of social isolation to control human behavior throughout recorded history. Traces the development of social isolation through the multiple lenses of management, economics, psychology, sociology, engineering technology, social psychology, and communication science and presents a taxonomy of perspectives for discussion. The taxonomy is further elucidated through the assignment and distribution of 13 organizational factors for both the objective state and subjective feelings of social isolation as linked to advances in telecommuting and other off‐site “open collar” work.

[1]  Joan C. Woodward.  Industrial Organization: Theory and Practice , 1966 .

[2]  K. Erikson.  On Work and Alienation , 1986 .

[3]  David C. Farwell,et al.  Telecommuting and Organizational Change , 1984, Comput. Networks.

[4]  S. Barley,et al.  Design and devotion: Surges of rational and normative ideologies of control in managerial discourse. , 1992 .

[5]  Denise M. Rousseau,et al.  Psychological contracts in organizations , 1995 .

[6]  Barrett S. Caldwell,et al.  Social isolation and integration in electronic environments , 1993, Behav. Inf. Technol..

[7]  Martin Brigham,et al.  E‐mail, Power and the Constitution of Organisational Reality , 1997 .

[8]  M. Tushman.  Work Characteristics and Subunit Communication Structure: A Contingency Analysis. , 1979 .

[9]  G. Vega,et al.  Stoking the engine The pressure → release effect in management control , 2000 .

[10]  P. Goldman,et al.  Contested Terrain: The Transformation of the Workplace in the Twentieth Century , 1980 .

[11]  David A. Diekema.  Aloneness and Social Form , 1992 .

[12]  E. Fromm.  Escape to Freedom , 1941 .

[13]  Jon Miller.  Isolation in Organizations: Alienation from Authority, Control, and Expressive Relations. , 1975 .

[14]  Dimitrina S. Dimitrova,et al.  Computer Networks as Social Networks: Collaborative Work, Telework, and Virtual Community , 1996 .

[15]  William G. Ouchi,et al.  Markets, Bureaucracies, and Clans. , 1980 .

[16]  A. Rokach.  Relations of Perceived Causes and the Experience of Loneliness , 1997, Psychological reports.

[17]  P. Lawrence,et al.  Organization and environment , 1967 .

[18]  R. Larson,et al.  The capacity to be alone as a stress buffer. , 1996, The Journal of social psychology.

[19]  D. M. Pedersen.  PSYCHOLOGICAL FUNCTIONS OF PRIVACY , 1997 .

[20]  Lee Sproull,et al.  Connections: New Ways of Working in the Networked Organization , 1991 .

[21]  B. E. Wynne,et al.  An experiment assessing group support system and facilitator effects on meeting outcomes , 1995 .

[22]  K. Rook.  Research on social support, loneliness, and social isolation: Toward an integration. , 1984 .

[23]  Peter F. Drucker,et al.  Technology, Management and Society , 1970 .

[24]  Anthony R. Hendrickson,et al.  Virtual teams: Technology and the workplace of the future , 1998 .

[25]  Nava Pliskin,et al.  Explaining the paradox of telecommuting , 1998 .

[26]  W. M. Fox.  Sociotechnical System Principles and Guidelines: Past and Present , 1995 .

[27]  George Ritzer,et al.  The McDonaldization of Society: An Investigation into the Changing Character of Contemporary Social Life , 1993 .

[28]  E. Durkheim.  Suicide: A Study in Sociology , 1897 .

[29]  Lindsley G. Boiney,et al.  Reaping the Benefits of Information Technology in Organizations , 1998 .

[30]  W. Alan Randolph.  Matching Technology and the Design of Organization Units , 1981 .

[31]  F. Fukuyama.  Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity Penguin London , 1995 .