Normalization of degraded expert work in globalized finance: The experiences and consequences of organizational control over outsourced expert workers

Abstract

An important element of the crisis in expertise is the growing insecurity and degradation of the working conditions of many expert occupations. Building on theoretical work on the crisis of expertise, this paper examines the status and conditions of expert financial workers who find themselves in challenging and unwelcome working conditions. Using in-depth interviews with financial assistants employed in the outsourced fringes of the global banking industry, we portray how management in the outsourcing firm extracts, standardizes and exploits the expertise of its workers while using sophisticated cultural and normative techniques to normalize work degradation. Specifically, we show how workers’ aspirations, willingness and responsibilities are mobilized to cultivate elements of expertise deemed valuable to management. A paradoxical situation arises whereby management values the expert work conducted within the financial system, while simultaneously degrading the conditions of those executing the work. The notion of expertise emerges as a hidden yet powerful mechanism of organizational control, raising questions of the socially constructed, precarious, fluid and incomplete nature of expertise.