Time and Professionalism: Disputes Concerning the Nature of Contract
| Date | 01 November 1989 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8543.1989.tb00346.x |
| Author | Ken Starkey |
| Published date | 01 November 1989 |
British
Journal
of
Industrial
Relations
27:3
November
1989
0007-1080 $3.00
Time
and
Professionalism:
Disputes Concerning
the Nature of Contract
Ken
Starkey"
1.
INTRODUCTION
This paper examines two issues neglected in the industrial relationsliterature:
time and professionalism. Commodification
of
time has been a key factor
in the trend towards the intensification
of
working time under industrial
capitalism. The employment contract has functioned as an important
mechanism for controlling commodified time. Commodification entails
closed contracts with tightly specified temporal parameters. Some
occupational groups have resisted commodification. Professionals have
been particularly opposed to the application
of
the equation 'time is
money'
to
the services they provide and the time they spend with their
clients. Currently, however, professional groups employed by the state
are under attack
on
the grounds
of
accountability. Accountability is
conceptualised by employers in terms of an adequate return on the time
professionals are obliged, by contract, to commit to their work.
Accountability in this context
is
associated with the framing of performance
measures that depend on the commodification
of
time and the
monitoring
of
time commitments made explicit by increasingly closed
contracts. Professionals resist these measures while, perhaps paradoxic-
ally, demanding certain elements
of
closure in their contracts which will
make possible the measurement and reward
of
time commitments that
they consider they are increasingly having to make without recognition
or
reward. This paper examines the issues
of
time and professionalism,
focusing on the professional employment contract as it pertains to time.
2.
COMMODIFICATION
An essential element
of
the employment contract is time. Contracts, as they
become more closed, tend towards increasingly explicit definition
of
*Department
of
Industrial Economics, University
of
Nottingham.
376
British Journal
of
industrial Relations
temporal commitments reflecting ‘the growing prevalence
of
the quantita-
tive conception of temporality’ (Zerubavel 1981: 101). Dominant in
Western industrial democracies is a commodified conception of time,
epitomised in the saying ‘time is money’.
A
consequence
of
such a
conception is the quantification
of
time and efforts
to
organise social time in
terms
of
economic production and profit. Time is always too short for
management and
too
long for labour. Management tries to master time
in
order to prolong it,
while
labour tries
to
master time
in
order
to
shorten it
(Gurvitch 1963:
44).
The centrality
of
a quantitative view
of
time has grown with the progress
of
industrial organisation and has been facilitated by the application
of
clock
time to social organisation. Mumford (1973) emphasises this point when he
stresses that the first characteristic of modern machine civilisation is its
temporal regularity and that this depends for its precise regulation on
the
clock. The clock is ‘the key machine
of
the modern industrial age . . .
a
piece
of
power machinery’ (Mumford 1973:
271-2).
The clock is the ‘crucial’
machine
of
an industrial society (Moore 1963: 163), and the management
of
time is a major problem
of
industrial organisation. Weber (1976) isolates the
rationalisation
of
time as
a
fundamental,
if
not the fundamental, character-
istic
of
the Spirit
of
Capitalism. Time is the primary scarce resource, the use
of
which has to be maximised. It is used as a commodity, to be traded like
any
other. Time is a key element
of
industrial control.
The commodification
of
time has been particularly emphasised in Marxist
theory. It is highlighted by Marx as a guiding principle
of
capitalism:
The underlying constitutive component
of
both goods and labour that permits
their
common existence as interchangeable commodities, according to
Marx,
is
time. Every commodity, including labour-power itself, is ‘the objectivication
of
a
given amount
of
labour time’. The ‘socially necessary labour time’ governs
the
value
of
commodities, and
is
the standard measure
of
exchange-value. Units of
time are
what
makes the value
of
commodities divisible and quantifiable. The
quantification
of
time is thus that very foundation
of
the universalising character
assumed by the exchange
of
commodities. In economic calculation, accounting,
and
so
on, commodities are transformed into quantitative measures
of
value on
paper. On paper,
as
Marx says,
this
process proceeds by mere abstraction; but
‘in
the real exchange process. a real mediation
is
required, a means
to
accomplish
this
abstraction’. This means
is
supplied
by
the fact that commodities
in
exchange exist
only as exchange-values, which
in
turn depends upon the temporal equation of
units of labour. (Giddens
1981:
118-19)
One of the key themes
of
Capital
is that ‘the economic order
of
capitalism
depends upon the exact control
of
time’ (Giddens 1979:
210).
The
regulation, and exploitation, of labour-time is central to the economic
development of the capitalist system. The logic of capitalist development
entails the maximisation
of
productivity in time either by the lengthening of
the working day or, when this becomes impossible, by the intensification of
the maximally available time. Time becomes everything, ‘man is nothing; he
is, at most, the carcase
of
time’ -this, Marx proclaims, is the central fact of
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