Strategic CSR - Amazon

As the article in the url below implies, how is this for creepy?

 

"What if your employer made you wear a wristband that tracked your every move, and that even nudged you via vibrations when it judged that you were doing something wrong? What if your supervisor could identify every time you paused to scratch or fidget, and for how long you took a bathroom break?"

 

In the name of ever-greater efficiency, this day is drawing nearer as Amazon expands its reach into every corner of the economy (and our lives):

 

"What may sound like dystopian fiction could become a reality for Amazon warehouse workers around the world. The company has won two patents for such a wristband, though it was unclear if Amazon planned to actually manufacture the tracking device and have employees wear it."

 

If you are interested to see what the workplace of the future looks like, the two patents are available here: http://pdfaiw.uspto.gov/.aiw?PageNum=0&docid=20170278051&IDKey=0E2634BC1119

 

You would have thought Amazon would have learned from the withering coverage it received for its "bruising workplace" culture in this profile in The New York Times in 2015:

 

"At Amazon, workers are encouraged to tear apart one another's ideas in meetings, toil long and late (emails arrive past midnight, followed by text messages asking why they were not answered), and held to standards that the company boasts are "unreasonably high." The internal phone directory instructs colleagues on how to send secret feedback to one another's bosses. Employees say it is frequently used to sabotage others. (The tool offers sample texts, including this: 'I felt concerned about his inflexibility and openly complaining about minor tasks.')"

 

Instead, given its rapid expansion, fawning attention over its HQ2 decision, and share price that defies gravity (and common sense), the message it is getting from its stakeholders is to keep on going. Apparently, its employees are just happy to be working there and the rest of us don't care if their privacy and/or security is threatened. Frederick Taylor would be impressed with the extrapolation of his work over a century ago:

 

"In theory, Amazon's proposed technology would emit ultrasonic sound pulses and radio transmissions to track where an employee's hands were in relation to inventory bins, and provide 'haptic feedback' to steer the worker toward the correct bin. The aim, Amazon says in the patent, is to streamline 'time consuming' tasks, like responding to orders and packaging them for speedy delivery. With guidance from a wristband, workers could fill orders faster."

 

Take care

David

 

David Chandler

Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility: Sustainable Value Creation (4e)

© Sage Publications, 2017

 

Instructor Teaching and Student Study Site: https://study.sagepub.com/chandler4e

Strategic CSR Simulation: http://www.strategiccsrsim.com/

The library of CSR Newsletters are archived at: https://strategiccsr-sage.blogspot.com/

 

 

Track Hands of Workers? Amazon Has Patents for It

By Ceylan Yeginsu

February 2, 2018

The New York Times

Late Edition – Final

B3

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/01/technology/amazon-wristband-tracking-privacy.html

 

Strategic CSR - Gig economy

The article in the url below provides some fascinating insight into the lives of people working in the gig economy for firms like Uber, Deliveroo, and TaskRabbit:

 

"There are no good estimates on the global scale of the gig economy but in the US there are about 800,000 people earning money this way without being anyone's employee."

 

"Algorithmic management" is the term academics have devised to explain how the working lives of these people are increasingly being dictated by software (via apps) as opposed to by managers (as in a traditional organization and employer/employee relationship):

 

"For companies like Uber, which aspires to 'make transportation as reliable as running water,' algorithmic management solves a problem: how to instruct, track and evaluate a crowd of casual workers you do not employ, so they deliver a responsive, seamless, standardised service."

 

These algorithms essentially track every aspect of the work being conducted for the company as soon as each worker logs on to the app. It dictates everything from how quickly they must respond once an opportunity is sent to them (within 30 seconds for Deliveroo) to assessments of performance:

 

"Deliveroo's algorithm monitors couriers closely and sends them personalised monthly 'service level assessments' on their average 'time to accept orders,' 'travel time to restaurant,' 'travel time to customer,' 'time at customer,' 'late orders' and 'unassigned orders.' The algorithm compares each courier's performance to its own estimate of how fast they should have been. … Drivers for Uber's ride-hailing app, of which there are about a million around the world, are subject to similar algorithmic control. They choose when to work but once they log on to the app, they only have 10-20 seconds to respond to 'trip requests' routed to them by the algorithm. They are not told the customer's final destination until they have picked them up. If drivers miss three trip requests in a row, they are logged out automatically for two minutes. Uber sends drivers a weekly report including their confirmation rate and average customer rating (out of 5)."

 

Rather than something new, however, "algorithmic management" is increasingly thought of as an extension of innovations that were the foundation of the field of management:

 

"'Algorithmic management' might sound like the future but it has uncanny echoes from the past. A hundred years ago, a new theory called 'scientific management' swept through the factories of America. It was the brainchild of Frederick W Taylor, the son of a well-to-do Philadelphia family who dropped his preparations for Harvard to become an apprentice in a hydraulics factory. He saw a haphazard workplace where men worked as slowly as they could get away with while their bosses paid them as little as possible. Taylor wanted to replace this 'rule of thumb' approach with 'the establishment of many rules, laws and formulae which replace the judgment of the individual workman.' To that end, he sent managers with stopwatches and notebooks on to the shop floor. They observed, timed and recorded every stage of every job, and determined the most efficient way that each one should be done. … For Jeremias Prassl, a law professor at Oxford university, the algorithmic management techniques of Uber and Deliveroo are Taylorism 2.0. 'Algorithms are providing a degree of control and oversight that even the most hardened Taylorists could never have dreamt of,' he says."

 

As companies tighten the screws, however, these workers are beginning to pushback, complaining that they were lulled into working for these companies with elevated pay rates and conditions that are then gradually reduced. The recent lawsuit against Uber (in California and Massachusetts) is a good example of this. Something similar (although less formal) also occurred over the summer in London – "one of the first industrial disputes to hit the city's so-called gig economy":

 

"These are workers without a workplace, striking against a company that does not employ them. They are managed not by people but by an algorithm that communicates with them via their smartphones. And what they are rebelling against is an app update."

 

While it is clear that many people self-select into these jobs because they fit their lifestyle at present ("Some 85 per cent of couriers have told Deliveroo they use it for 'a supplementary income, or short-term flexible work'"), it is also clear that the structure of these jobs are redefining the nature of 'employment' in a way that poses significant challenges to courts (that have to deal with grievances today) and public policy planners (who will have to deal with the social consequences in the future if these jobs fail to provide the healthcare and pension support these people will need at some point). There is also, of course, a moral component to the way these jobs are structured. While some see them as facilitating 'flexibility' and others see them as incentivizing 'abuse,' the danger is that whatever we gain in productivity in the short term ("Taylorism 2.0"), we lose in our humanity over the longer term.

 

Take care

David

 

David Chandler

Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility: Sustainable Value Creation (4e)

© Sage Publications, 2017

 

Instructor Teaching and Student Study Site: https://study.sagepub.com/chandler4e

Strategic CSR Simulation: http://www.strategiccsrsim.com/

The library of CSR Newsletters are archived at: https://strategiccsr-sage.blogspot.com/


When the boss is an algorithm

By Sarah O'Conner

September 10/11, 2016

The Financial Times

Late Edition – Final

Life & Arts, 1

https://www.ft.com/content/88fdc58e-754f-11e6-b60a-de4532d5ea35

 

Strategic CSR - Tesco

I am not in charge of the largest supermarket company in the UK, but if I was, I don’t think I would treat my employees like Tesco does:

“There’s a fine line between micromanaging and house arrest, and British grocery store chain Tesco seems determined to cross it. According to the Irish Independent, employees at the company’s Dublin distribution center are forced to wear armbands that measure their productivity so closely that the company even knows when they take a bathroom break.”

I understand the attractions of monitoring and measuring employee performance in order to maximize productivity, but I find it hard to believe that at least one Tesco executive didn’t stop to consider whether constant vigilance would do more to demotivate employees (reducing productivity) in ways that offset any incremental performance benefits gained by collecting these data:

“The armbands … keep track of how quickly and competently employees unload and scan goods in the warehouse and gives them a grade. It also sets benchmarks for loading and unloading speed, which workers are expected to meet. The monitors can be turned off during workers’ lunch breaks, but anything else—bathroom trips, visits to a water fountain—reportedly lowers their productivity score.”

I am not sure what is worse—that Tesco is experimenting with this technology or that it might even work:

“In recent years, Tesco has ramped up its productivity. From 2007 to 2012, the average number of full-time employees in a standard 40,000-square-foot Tesco superstore reportedly fell nearly 18 percent.”

Of course, as the article notes, speed and efficiency is not necessarily the same as quality:

“Tesco is one of the major retailers currently embroiled in Europe’s ever-widening horse meat scandal. When it turns out that the box frozen spaghetti Bolognese contains 60 percent horse meat, it doesn’t really matter how quickly it was unloaded from the delivery truck.”

I am sure that Frederick Taylor would be flattered at the extent to which his ideas have been pursued. As the great man himself said:

“Hardly a competent workman can be found who does not devote a considerable amount of time to studying just how slowly he can work and still convince his employer that he is going at a good pace.”

Have a great weekend

David

Bill Werther & David Chandler

Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility: Stakeholders in a Global Environment (2e)

© Sage Publications, 2011

http://www.sagepub.com/strategiccsr2e/

Instructor Teaching Site: http://www.sagepub.com/strategiccsr/

The library of CSR Newsletters are archived at: http://strategiccsr-sage.blogspot.com/

Tesco Monitors Employees With Motorola Armbands

By Claire Suddath

February 13, 2013

Bloomberg Businessweek

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-02-13/tesco-monitors-employees-with-motorola-arm-bands