*Center for Work, Technology, and Organization Colloquium Series 2012-2013 *
*October 22, 2012* *Speaker*: Michel Anteby<http://drfd.hbs.edu/fit/public/facultyInfo.do?facInfo=ovr&facId=340838> (Harvard Business School) *Title*: Being Seen and Going Unnoticed: Working under Surveillance *Time & Location*: 12-1:30 PM in NANO 232 [MAP<http://campus-map.stanford.edu/?id=&lat=37.429855217917634&lng=-122.174002903&zoom=17&srch=Nanoscale%20Science%20And%20Engineering> ] * * *Abstract*: Since the advent of industrialization, controlling the workforce has been a recurring concern in organizations. Surveillance has increasingly been viewed as a crucial solution to this concern and new technologies have greatly facilitated the degree to which surveillance can be carried out. Yet research on how employees experience such intensified surveillance is sparse. This article, drawing on an interview-based study of U.S. Transportation Security Administration employees at a large urban airport, examines what it means for individuals to work under surveillance. We first identify an apparent contradiction: the coexistence of employee visibility and invisibility to management. Despite being constantly seen, most employees reported going unnoticed by management. The main explanation for this contradiction is that employees distinguished the visibility of their behavior from that of their selfhood. While their behavior was visible to management, employees felt that their selves remained largely invisible. Furthermore, visibility and invisibility were not solely imposed by management but also actively mobilized by employees to overcome surveillance. In fact, to deal with surveillance, employees mobilized strategies of invisibility and visibility involving both their behavior and their selfhood. Thus invisibility should be conceptualized as both a problem and a resource for employees. We discuss the implications of this proposition for theories of surveillance and control.
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