IT firms' working time (de)regulation model: a by-product of risk management strategy and project-based work management
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.13169/workorgalaboglob.7.1.0076 |
| Published date | 01 July 2013 |
| Date | 01 July 2013 |
| Pages | 76-94 |
| Author | Marie-Josée Legault |
76 Working online, living ofine: labour in the Internet Age
IT rms’ working time (de)regulation
model:
a by-product of risk management strategy and
project-based work management
Marie-Josée Legault
Marie-Josée Legault is a Researcher in the School of
Administrative Sciences at Téluq-Université du Québec, in
Montréal, Canada
ABSTRACT
This paper, based on 140 interviews carried out in two case studies in Montreal
over the past decade, builds on previous research results demonstrating the
existence of unlimited unpaid overtime among videogame developers and
software designers. It uses the two case studies to illustrate an emerging
workplace regulation model based on unacknowledged unlimited and unpaid
overtime. It argues that this model stems from the combination of information
technology rms’ risk management strategy with project-based working as an
organisation mode and is closely tied to the high international mobility of both
capital and workforce. This paper focuses just on the (de)regulation of working
time, but it opens up a path to account theoretically for the (de)regulation of
work more generally in an expanding sector of the workforce: ‘new professionals’
in knowledge work.
Introduction
A search of webzines, social media websites and blogs will turn up many examples of
cartoons and accounts of the pervasive phenomenon of overtime and long working
hours among videogame developers and soware designers working in business-to-
business technological services (B2BTS) rms. Whether humorous or bitter, these
accounts create a rhetorical eect by opposing the widespread representation of their
work environment as a cool, creative, challenging place for autonomous experts, on
the one hand, with, on the other hand, a darker depiction of a demanding, exhausting
and poorly-compensated job, requiring extensive overtime working for which
compensation is in no way guaranteed and is oen expected to be provided for free.
is picture is conrmed by the results of eld work (Chasserio & Legault, 2009, 2010;
Legault & Ouellet, 2012). e phenomenon has been nicknamed the ‘death march’,
conjuring up images of the march of prisoners of war, in which those unable to go on
are le to die as they fall.
In an elementary version of the neoclassical approach to economics, working time
is considered as a commodity that is traded against wages that compensate for lost
Work organisation, labour & globalisation Volume 7, Number 1, Summer 2013 77
leisure time. In this model, free workers are retained at their places of work by wages
that are supposed to compensate for the so-called ‘disutility’ of work, and to remain in
these jobs as long as this compensation is eective. Hard facts, however, are not easily
reconciled with simple models. Unlimited and unpaid overtime, for instance, is an
especially hard fact in this regard.
Videogame developers and soware developers are not part of a large pool
of replaceable labour either, as a neo-Marxist framework would suggest; on the
contrary, they constitute a strategic asset for their employers, a critical success factor,
especially so in the context of a shortage of skilled labour, which existed in these two
IT subsectors in Quebec at the time of my research (Corbeil, 2011:8;44-45). Because
employers in this industry invest a great deal in recruiting experts, the trend toward
more unpaid overtime cannot be explained by the pressure of unemployed workers
triggering competition on the job market, as some analysts maintain occurs in other
elds of employment (Aronsson, 1999).
While unusual among blue-collar workers in manufacturing jobs (Campbell,
2002:113), unpaid overtime has traditionally been well-known as a feature of
managerial and professional work, where the willingness to exert considerable eort
on behalf of the organisation can be understood in the framework of organisational
commitment at work (Chasserio & Legault, 2010). Unpaid overtime in this context
is analysed as a manifestation of high commitment at work, a behavior with a sound
economic rationale, since it can be associated with deferred material benets such as
pay increases and promotion, given a stable relation of employment.
If the common work contract implies trading time and eort against wages, a
result-based contract entails an employer-employee agreement that certain goals
or results will be achieved and compensated for regardless of the amount of time
expended. Since workers under such contracts are usually self-employed, working time
is not stipulated in the contract or controlled either; as a consequence, the legal notion
of overtime is not relevant. Such contracts are designed to reduce cost-uncertainty and
allow for planning in a contingent context.
Yet, videogame developers and soware developers are salaried employees working
under time-based contracts, neither managers nor organised professionals. Videogame
developers and soware designers working in business-to-business technological
services (B2BTS) are highly-qualied knowledge workers who can be regarded as part
of the larger information technology (IT) industry (Corbeil, 2011). Considered among
the privileged, they are oen marginalised in research on working time and overtime
compensation. As a result, ‘passion’ is still the most common explanation oered to
account for the unlimited unpaid overtime which is common in these occupations,
though this explanation is clearly unsatisfactory.
In this paper, based on 140 interviews in two case studies carried out in Montreal,
Quebec, I draw on previous demonstrations of the existence of unlimited unpaid
overtime among videogame developers and soware developers, and use these two
case studies to illustrate an emerging workplace regulation model, stemming from a
combination of IT rms’ risk management strategy and project-based working as an
organisational mode, closely tied to the high international mobility of both capital and
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