The securitized workplace: document protection, insider threats and emerging ethnographic barriers in a South Korean organization

IF 0.9 Q4 MANAGEMENT
Michael M. Prentice
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引用次数: 0

Abstract

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how document protection has become a key object of concern for organizations, how the threat of leaks has led to an increase in security technologies and policies and how these developments present new and emergent ethnographic challenges for researchers. Through a study of a South Korean organization, the paper aims to demonstrate the ways workplace documents are figured into wider legal, regulatory and cyber security concerns.Design/methodology/approachThe research is based on 12 months of intensive embedded fieldwork in a South Korean firm from 2014 to 2015 and follow-up interviews in 2018. The author followed an immersive and inductive approach to collecting ethnographic data in situ. The author was hired as an intern in a Korean conglomerate known as the Sangdo Group where he worked alongside Human Resources managers to understand their work practices. The present article reflects difficulties in his original research design and an attempt to analyze the barriers themselves. His analysis combines ideas from theories of securitization and document studies to understand how the idea of protection is reshaping workplaces in South Korea and elsewhere.FindingsThe paper highlights three findings first that South Korean workplaces have robust socio-material infrastructures around document protection and security, reflecting that security around document leaks is becoming integrated into normal organizational life. Second, the securitization of document leaks is shifting from treating document leaks as a threat to organizational existence, to a crime by individual actors that organizations track. Third, that even potential document leaks can have transitive effects on teams and managers.Originality/valueOrganizational security practices and their integration into workplace life have rarely been examined together. This paper connects Weber's insights on bureaucratization with the concept of securitization to examine the rise of document security practices and policies in a South Korean organization. The evidence from South Korea is valuable because technological developments around security coupled with organizational complexities portend issues for other organizational environments around the world.
证券化的工作场所:韩国组织中的文件保护、内部威胁和新兴的人种障碍
目的本文的目的是展示文件保护如何成为组织关注的关键对象,泄露的威胁如何导致安全技术和政策的增加,以及这些发展如何给研究人员带来新的和新出现的民族志挑战。通过对一家韩国组织的研究,该论文旨在展示工作场所文件如何被纳入更广泛的法律、监管和网络安全问题中。设计/方法论/方法该研究基于2014年至2015年在一家韩国公司进行的为期12个月的深入实地调查和2018年的后续采访。作者采用了一种身临其境的归纳方法来现场收集民族志数据。作者受雇于一家名为Sangdo Group的韩国企业集团实习,在那里他与人力资源经理一起了解他们的工作实践。本文反映了他最初研究设计中的困难,并试图分析这些障碍本身。他的分析结合了证券化理论和文件研究的思想,以了解保护思想如何重塑韩国和其他地方的工作场所。发现该论文强调了三个发现——首先,韩国工作场所在文件保护和安全方面拥有强大的社会物质基础设施,这反映出围绕文件泄露的安全正在融入正常的组织生活。其次,文件泄露的证券化正在从将文件泄露视为对组织存在的威胁转变为组织追踪的个人行为者的犯罪。第三,即使是潜在的文档泄漏也可能对团队和经理产生传递性影响。独创性/价值组织安全实践及其与工作场所生活的结合很少被一起研究。本文将韦伯对官僚化的见解与证券化的概念联系起来,考察韩国组织中文件安全实践和政策的兴起。来自韩国的证据很有价值,因为围绕安全的技术发展加上组织的复杂性预示着世界各地其他组织环境的问题。
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来源期刊
CiteScore
1.90
自引率
37.50%
发文量
17
期刊介绍: The Journal of Organizational Ethnography (JOE) has been launched to provide an opportunity for scholars, from all social and management science disciplines, to publish over two issues: -high-quality articles from original ethnographic research that contribute to the current and future development of qualitative intellectual knowledge and understanding of the nature of public and private sector work, organization and management -review articles examining the history and development of the contribution of ethnography to qualitative research in social, organization and management studies -articles examining the intellectual, pedagogical and practical use-value of ethnography in organization and management research, management education and management practice, or which extend, critique or challenge past and current theoretical and empirical knowledge claims within one or more of these areas of interest -articles on ethnographically informed research relating to the concepts of organization and organizing in any other wider social and cultural contexts.
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