Beyond the Hype. Working in the German Internet Industry

In: Critical sociology, Band 33, Heft 1-2, S. 73-99

Abstract

How are work and knowledge organized in high-skill services? This question is widely debated as these work-arrangements are often presented as precursors of a future reconciliation of flexibility and self-determination. After introducing some of the most important concepts, the focus will be directed towards the Internet-Industry, which has been perceived as an especially innovative part of the (German) labor market since the mid-1990s. It will be argued that this new industry has been constituted at the core of Internet-services, displaying a distinctive structure of (usually small) firms with rather clear-cut portfolios and job-profiles. Drawing upon 12 case-studies in German Internet-companies, we will discuss the nature and development of interdisciplinary project-work as well as the (changing) significance of flexible employment-relationships, flat hierarchies and indirect methods of control. Emerging is a picture of young companies, in which expectations of creative tasks and egalitarian work-structures are widespread among management and employees alike. They are, however, increasingly confronted with the need to rely upon routine work, stable employment, formal hierarchical structures and direct control under the conditions of consolidation after 2001. This makes the Internet-companies of our sample appear as rather typical small- and medium-sized enterprises, shaped by the German institutional framework of work-organization as well as by the front-line character of service work, although the (often frustrated) ideals of self-determination may prove to be a source of future innovation.