The impact of the autonomy-control paradox through blockchain technology on site and white-collar workers in construction production: insights from Sweden

Paper in proceeding, 2022

The construction industry is characterised by power dynamics – also within Sweden. Those can affect clients, contractors, and, crucially, construction site and white-collar workers during construction production – with the workers potentially experiencing an intensification of their labor. In this paper, we address the research question of how such power dynamics are getting modified by implementing blockchain technology, and the effect this has on workers within Swedish construction production. Blockchain has been claimed to foster partially decentralised digital ecosystems featuring partly automated peer-to-peer transactions with a reduced need for third-party intermediaries, thus generating trust and transparency. However, the provision of such transparency through generalised and decentralised control can also lead to a reduced autonomy of the actors (esp. the workers) represented by the blockchain network nodes – an autonomy-control paradox. As such, we analyse this paradox through labor process theory to see whether utilising blockchain can aid workers in getting mobilised and re-capturing more sway on construction production labor processes. In this analysis, we also try to account for the specificities of the Swedish construction site – as sites constitute production spaces that differ from factory floors. These theoretical foci are supported by a targeted review on blockchain properties and its relation to construction, while drawing empirical insights on the transformation of work practices through a test implementation of a blockchain prototype for construction logistics during the production of a specific construction project in Sweden. Despite the early stage of that test, the study’s main results already indicate changes in controlling labor and information. It seems that for site and white-collar employees, transactional transparency can be realised through a blockchain akeen to our testing formulation, while impacting operations management, work processes, and material flows. In that vein, the autonomy-control paradox for site and white-collar workers in sales, purchasing, route planning etc. can show that through blockchain, the present work regime may become stricter (e.g., missing micro-breaks); however, blockchain’s transparency could also enable a bottom-up element, where site and white-collar workers obtain better insights in the processes they participate, as well as new forms of qualities in their work. Ultimately though, judging from the present test, the focus on the material flow (i.e., the companies’ and managers’ main interest) will probably be more prevalent in future implementations of blockchain in construction production - a prevailing "business as usual" even in a blockchain-driven digital workplace, indicating labor process theory discourses on re-structuring employment, controlling regimes, and autonomising spaces. It is thus more likely that blockchain will be utilised to increase top-down control over labor. As such, this study contributes with insights on the effect of implementing blockchain - a hyped digital technology - on the power dynamics impacting labor processes during construction production. Those insights are backed by on-site empirical observations, a rare trait in blockchain research for construction production, where actual use cases are yet to be found.