Changes in the volume, nature and complexity of the literacy demands on workers are attributed to a range of closely interconnected developments: an increasingly globalised market place, the rise of the ‘Knowledge Economy’, the adoption of a new culture of management and the rapid spread of new forms of communication, afforded by new digital technologies. Studies in the field of LS have sought to look beyond the rhetoric that tends to surround these phenomena and to understand what they mean in practice for front-line workers, in local situations, and the writing they undertake. They focus
particularly on questions of empowerment, agency, identity and control:
questions that, although not my central interest, still have relevance to my case studies.
In chapter one I make reference to Deborah Brandt’s book (2015, p. 607),
‘The rise of writing’ and her claim that writing ‘... is overtaking reading as the skill of critical consequence’ (ibid p. 161). She believes that the digital
revolution has detracted attention from ‘a more radical but quieter revolution’:
the ‘turn’ to writing as a mass daily experience. She attributes this to the rise of the knowledge economy in which texts are both the ‘chief means of
production and chief output of production’ (ibid p.3). The increasing demand for ‘knowledge workers’ is often cited in regard to the need for improved
literacy skills in the workforce (DfEE, 2001, p. 8) and Brandt highlights the significant role workplaces play in literacy learning in cases where writing is central to productivity. However, by her own admission, her data (based on 90 interviews with people in paid and unpaid work in the mid-west of USA) is weighted towards those who do a lot of writing at work and she warns that workplaces can also be ‘formidable’ sites for the production of literacy inequalities due to the ‘... stratified patterns of access, investment and reward that accompany the role of writing in society’ (Brandt, 2015, pp. 164-5). This is a warning I should consider in relation to the employees in my case studies.
While Brandt focuses on the knowledge economy, others address change from the perspective of globalisation. Farrell (2001) draws on a study of a small Australian textile company, undertaking work for a large US client company and notes how small companies increasingly find themselves connected to ‘centralised external agencies’. Referring to these connections as the ‘ligatures of globalisation’, she notes that these are ‘... generally mediated through textual practices at work’. Large companies seek to
achieve standardisation, across remote local sites, through use of texts such as manuals and standardised work procedures (Belfiore, Defoe and
Folinsbee, 2004; Farrell, 2000) while remote, regulatory organisations require written evidence of compliance with externally imposed standards (Farrell, 2001; Farrell, 2009; Joly, 2010). It is significant that very small businesses are not necessarily exempt. Jones (2000) analysed the way in which Welsh cattle farmers became ‘incorporated’ into the agricultural bureaucracy of the European Union through the requirement to complete an
animal movement form while Joly (2010) describes how a French cattle farmer had to adjust his record keeping practices to meet the conditions for European funding.
Such examples, Farrell suggests, represent the ‘micro-processes’ of globalisation in practice (2001, p. 60). Like Kell (2013), Farrell places emphasis on the need for detailed ethnographic evidence for an
understanding global links. She encourages us to see economic globalisation as a ‘social’ achievement, ‘accomplished through social relationships’; as something ‘... that happens moment by moment in a range of local and remote sites.’ As an example, she makes reference to observing ‘... two Australian weavers collaborate to complete a written Quality Audit that will be assessed by employees of a Quality Standards Organisation located in Brussels’ (Farrell, 2001, p. 60). It is important to note that such processes rely almost exclusively on the use of digital communication (Farrell, 2009) presenting new challenges for some workers and businesses (Joly, 2010).
Brandt and Clinton wrote of literacy from other places ‘... infiltrating, disjointing and displacing local life’ (Brandt and Clinton, 2002, p.343) but both Farrell (2009) and Joly (2010) claim that imposed writing practices, rather than replacing existing local practices, exist side by side with these and are ‘... in constant conversation’ (Farrell, 2009, p. 188). Joly (2010) notes that compliance with new procedures could be ‘selective’ and Farrell (2009, p. 188) that externally imposed practices were used and interpreted ‘... in specific local ways’. These findings lend support to Street’s concept of
‘hybrid practices’ (Street, 2002), discussed in chapter two.
For workers, becoming part of a global network can involve, not only the adoption of new literacy practices, but adaption to a new workplace culture.
The ‘new work order’ (Gee, Hull and Lankshear, 1996; Holland, Frank and Cooke, 1998) is based on a philosophy of management, characterised by a move from traditional hierarchical structures, in which workers were
managed and trained, to new roles for employees as independent, flexible, self-motivated members of learning organisations. Small teams with
responsibility for whole processes tend to replace ‘Fordist’ production line work and knowledge and decision making are distributed throughout the organisation rather being the preserve of a centralised management. The uptake of this approach is driven by an increasingly competitive market in which survival requires companies to capture niche markets for high quality, customised goods and have the flexibility to respond fast to changing
customer demands (Spinuzzi, 2010). The restructuring of workplaces along these lines requires workers to assume new identities at work (Farrell, 2001;
Scholtz and Prinsloo, 2001) and to engage with new ways of talking about work (Iedema and Scheeres, 2003).
The introduction of the ‘new work order’ has been viewed positively as leading to a greater sense of workers’ empowerment and opportunity to improve their literacy skills (Hart-Landsberg and Reder, 1995). Others have been highly critical (Gee, Hull and Lankshear, 1996), highlighting the
tensions and paradoxes that become apparent when theory is translated into practice. Farrell (2001, p. 57) notes that while, on the one hand, employees are required to be ‘autonomous, problem-solving entrepreneurs’, on the other, global companies strive to control operations through ‘specified and
regulated work practices that effectively circumscribe their activities and decisions’. Gee, Hull and Lankshear (1996) point out that the so called
‘enchanted workplace’ can only be a reality for a few and that large sections of the population, in developed and under-developed parts of the world, particularly those with lower skills, will be excluded. Even within a single workplace the experience of employees can differ (Scholtz and Prinsloo, 2001). While some take on roles that are ‘literacy rich’ and require
commitment to new ways of working, others continue to do very little writing and experience increased surveillance without a sense of empowerment.
How the position of employees in traditional microbusinesses compares with those who are part of global institutions is a question to be addressed in the case studies.
Central to understanding the emphasis on literacy in the ‘new’, globalised workplace are the processes of ‘continuous improvement’ and ‘total quality management’ (TQM) (Holland, Frank and Cooke, 1998).The former requires intensive record keeping, much of which depends on the writing practices of front-line workers. The latter relies on writing, to specify, but also to provide evidence of compliance with, standard operating procedures (Belfiore, Defoe and Folinsbee, 2004). Belfiore describes a food processing company driven by government regulation and customer requirements to move rapidly, from a traditional manufacturing operation, based on an oral culture, to ‘... a print driven and certified quality system.’ She notes the different meanings
attached to writing tasks at different levels of the organisation, with managers recognising their importance in relation to survival in an international market, while front line workers viewed them as additional to their main work and
supervisors were squeezed between the two. Conflicting messages from management, regarding priorities in relation to writing up records and keeping the production line moving, added to what Belfiore describes as a,
‘… tangle of meanings’ on the plant floor.
This ambivalence, regarding the uses of writing to evidence adherence to quality standards, stands in contrast with workers ‘making literacy work for them’ (Belfiore, Defoe and Folinsbee, 2004). Belfiore and colleagues found examples of workers designing and using their own notebooks to aid their work, a practice reported in workplaces elsewhere (Campinos-Dubernet and Marquette 1999.90 cited by Joly(2010)). Such ‘unofficial’ documents, they note, had no place in schemes such as ISO and sometimes had to be kept secretly to avoid charges of ‘non-conformance’.
Jackson (2000) calls on Darville’s distinction between ‘writing up’ and
‘writing down’, pointing out that, while workers’ own notes are an example of
‘writing down’ information and constitute writing over which they have control, much of the writing workers are now required to do is part of an
‘organisational literacy’ in which what counts is how matters are ‘written up’
or entered into the organisational process.
… the job of writing-up the work process in a form that makes it accountable, certifiable and marketable is increasingly inseparable from the job of producing the product itself. As supervisors
everywhere tell their reluctant workers, writing-up nothing makes it look like you’ve done nothing. On the contrary, .... ‘writing up’ is increasingly the form of the work that counts (Jackson, 2000, p. 13).
For front line workers, new writing practices can represent not greater empowerment but new instruments for control.
‘Writing up’ work has also become increasingly important in publicly funded organisations, in areas such as social care and education, as they are
required to engage in ‘accountability literacies’. Central bodies require written texts as auditable evidence that work is being carried out to the correct
standards, money is being spent efficiently and progress achieved (Tusting, 2012). Studies in the care sector have found that the texts used for audit are increasingly the responsibility of front-line workers (Wyse and Casarotto, 2004), that these texts are highly regulated (Waterhouse and Virgona, 2004) and can shape, not only what workers feel able to write (Nikolaidou and Karlsson, 2012), but the ways in which they come to view their clients.
In the field of education, Tusting (2012; 2010) studied the impact of increased ‘paperwork’ on the working lives of staff in an Adult Education college and an Early Years Centre. Her detailed analysis of a nursery teacher, attempting to write up an ‘observation’ of a child while responsible for a group of children, illustrates the pressures audit culture can place on front line workers. This study also provides an example of the use of Activity Theory as a means to conceptualise the many different activities present within the classroom and the different goals to which these are directed. In addition, Tusting draws on Lemke’s concept of timescales to discuss the way in which the writing of the observation integrates the immediate activities of a busy nursery classroom with the broader systems of the Early Years Centre, government policies and the inspection regime as well as the teacher’s own personal goals. Activity Theory is also used by Nikolaidou (2011) to analyse an employee’s uses of literacy as he both carried out his usual duties and undertook a workplace qualification.
Within the college, Tusting examines the individual learning plans (ILPs) that teachers of Skills for Life were required to use with their students. She
describes how teachers struggled to reconcile their beliefs, regarding what constituted ‘good teaching’, and compliance with the accountability
frameworks of the Skills for Life initiative which the ILPs represented.