Who wants to be in a prison - if you can be in a palace? Rewriting organizational control in the work setting of IT-engineers

Sammanfattning: This interpretive study, taking place in the context of the IT-company Ericsson, aims at exploring the engineers’ understanding and experience of organizational control. The study builds on data gathered through semi-structured interviews, which are analyzed by taking the lenses of discourse theory. The study firstly shows the engineers’ understanding of control as something ‘bad’ whilst contrasting it with freedom as something ‘good’. This leads to the second finding of engineers presenting themselves as being free of control meanwhile showing awareness of certain restricting factors within project work. These findings are discussed by drawing upon metaphors of a prison and a palace, thereby uncovering the phenomenon of rewriting organizational control. With the study pointing towards the engineers being social actors of constructing the world as they understand it, this allows us to argue for the influence of discourse when rewriting organizational control. Lastly, our research contributes to rethinking organizational control in the setting of IT-engineers by taking a new perspective on the role of projects in engineering work.