The use of information technology as a control mechanism: analysis of multiple cases in the banking sector

Abstract

The Technology of Information has been one of the most useful and developed tools on the business world. In the same way, there are the control modes, in which companies use with their employees. In fact, it is important to distinguish them far apart in time: in the past, rustic and explicit ways were used to keep workers controlled; currently, it is important to make the control implicit, so that the employees do not realize that they have been manipulated by their superiors, with the aim to increase the corporate profits. Understanding that there is a big connection between Technology of Information development and modern ways of control, came the need to deeply study this question and to find out how this process really works. For this analysis, public and private banks from Pelotas were used, in which the control is both visible and invisible to employees’ eyes. Therefore, seven interviews were conducted with people who work in banks, using the ‘snowball’ research system, in which each person indicated another. In the end of this article, the results from those interviews are revealed and also, the real relation between the development of Technology of Information and modern ways of control inside companies.