CENTRE OF BUSINESS ANALYSIS AND RESEARCH (CoBAR) DIVISION OF BUSINESS & ENTERPRISE UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA

Information technology's scientific and technological origins do not make it a neutral witness to the ongoing struggle over how scarce resources are utilised to generate more wealth. This paper argues that the manner in which the technology is used to capture, report and disseminate information reflects the underlying dialectic of control among competing organisational stakeholders as they contest the logic of capitalist priorities. Information technology's politically intrusive role in the struggle for control is discussed through a critique of a people-oriented information system methodology which fails to problematise the struggle over workplace ideology. The paper highlights the significance of this shortcoming by analysing capital's ideological use of Business Process Reengineering to gain workers' consent to their own exploitation. This 1990s innovation portrays the subjugation of social interests in favour of the relentless pursuit of profit as a coherent, social approach to transform labour relations. In conclusion, it is proposed that IT's social role should be an emancipatory one which, given the competitiveinterdependent context of work, should facilitate the emergence of multiple world views.