Information specialists: Class, status and power

This paper examined the paradoxical class situation of information specialists in the post-industrial society as both professionals and employees. It described and analyzed the "technocratic" authority wielded by them and their mode of consciousness. It assessed whether these workers functioned as the vanguard of a new style of democratized work or buttressed the position of managerial authority. The analysis found that the subjects experienced a class situation that was somewhat more empowered than the industrial or corporate models, but did not differ substantially from that of the production workers in industrial society. Their power, prestige, privilege and status essentially camouflaged the subjects' compliance to hierarchical authority. The subjects exhibited awareness of their power but essentially directed their energies toward task attainment and individual mobility. Lacking an orientation toward structure change, the information specialists did not appear to fit the notion of a vanguard group. From this research some possibilities of changes are foreseen within organizational authority as information specialists confront management with their expertise, but it is anticipated that the institutions of social domination will prevail.