Partecipanti: Chiara Bassetti (CNR Trento)
The article focuses on everyday work practices within the context of airport security, with a specific attention to techno-organizational change and how the latter may affect highly institutionalized and inter-organizational settings like the considered one.
The empirical material on which the article is based comes from the two-year ethnographic research that I conducted at an Italian international airport (April 2013 – March 2015). Data include field notes (380 h. observation), semi-structured interviews with security guards (24) and police officers (14), and video recordings (35.5 h.).
Once described the normative and operational scenario, I outline the contradictory pressures characterizing everyday work in airport security from the point of view of the guards and their occupational culture. Then I discuss a case of techno-organizational change concerning Threat Image Projection (TIP), the resistance that it summoned, and its effects on the whole socio-technical system.
Finally, I draw some conclusions and suggestions for purposeful and effective change management in organization. I argue that aspects of the socio-technical working order should be innovated: by taking into consideration the change’s consistency and coherence with the practices enacted at the workplace and their underlying logic, and by considering technological and organizational aspects in their mutual intertwinement.
Keywords: Airport Security; Occupational Culture; Socio-technical Systems; Techno-Organizational Change; Work Practices; Workplace Resistance.
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A cura di: Laura Sartori, Nicola De Luigi, Roberto Rizza, Dario Tuorto