Dr Daniel Neyland
BA (Hons) Cambridge; PhD Brunel
Senior Lecturer
Department
Organisation Work and Technology
Professional Role
I am the ITMOC dissertation co-ordinator.
Current Teaching
Undergraduate:
OWT101 Management and Organisations II (Technology and Organisation)
Postgraduate:
ITO2/OWT503 – The Management of Organisational Change
ITO3 – Strategy and Information Technology Management
ITO6/OWT508 – Research in Organisational Settings
Research Interests
My research interests cover issues of governance, accountability and ethics in forms of science, technology and organization. I draw on ideas from ethnomethodology, science and technology studies (in particular forms of radical and reflexive scepticism, constructivism, Actor-Network Theory and the recent STS turn to markets and other forms of organizing) and my research is ethnographic in orientation.
Privacy Awareness Through Security Branding (PATS)
I am Lancaster University principal investigator on this 2.5 year project. The overall objective of PATS is to generate a concept of security branding to increase opportunities for voluntary adoption of privacy standards among security organizations. On the one hand, the project will study the degree of privacy awareness across various sectors, firms and across international government agencies that promote or use security technologies. It will focus particularly on biometrics and CCTV as these two merge continuously with each other and imply a range of applications such as motion detection, segmentation, object classification and tracking, background and behaviour identification. On the other hand, PATS will ask: what is security branding? As a concept, can branding resolve the tension between privacy and security? Who benefits from more sophisticated branding of surveillance systems? (2011-2014; FP7 5 partner collaboration, total budget euros 965,954). http://pats-project.eu/
Automatic Data relevancy Discrimination for a PRIVacy-sensitive video surveillance (ADDPRIV)
I am Lancaster University principal investigator on this 3 year project. Although video surveillance can be said to make a contribution to security, the entanglement of surveillance, security and citizens’ rights has generated deep controversy. ADDPRIV investigates the possibility that technologies can be developed which might guarantee a well-balanced trade off between security and human rights in the use of video surveillance in public places. Although technological development is central to the success of ADDPRIV, the solutions developed will need to be considered in line with the difficulties involved in introducing new technologies to organisational settings and ethical questions that are provoked as new surveillance systems are designed and developed. The technologies under development in this project involve secure deletion of surveillance images, route reconstruction for people and things and algorithmic selection of suspicious individuals and actions. Key research questions will be: what are the ethics of deleting? What happens when suspicion is delegated to machines? What are the organizational consequences of automating surveillance? (2009-2012; FP7 9 partner collaboration between academia and industry, total budget euros 2,818,338). http://www.addpriv.eu/
Researching Inequality through Science and Technology (ResIST)
I was the senior research fellow working on this 3 year project. The research investigated the possibilities of shaping alternative accountability systems in order to incorporate the needs of the disadvantaged. The research argued that systems of accountability are central to potential impacts on policy because they are the means by which the potential distributional consequences of science and policy and practices can be recognised and assessed by formal elements of the political system. The research focused in particular on re-distributional issues associated with the design, development, access to and use of mundane, everyday technologies – the development of interventions in malaria, attempts to produce an ethical t-shirt and the management of electronic waste (2006-2008; FP6 total budget euros 1,200,000) http://www.resist-research.net/home.aspx
Governance and accountability relations in mundane techno-scientific solutions to public problems
I was the senior research fellow working on this 2.5 year project. The research aimed to further our understanding of the ways in which science and technology is increasingly central to the formation and maintenance of systems of accountability and governance. The purpose of the research was to develop a model of accountability relations in networks of governance deploying mundane techno-scientific solutions in attempts to solve public problems. In so doing, the research also sought to engage a number of outstanding theoretical problems about the status and utility of the terms “accountability” and “governance”, and to extend our appreciation of the normative potential of science and technology studies (STS). In particular the research focused on local authority waste management and recycling, the movement of people through airports and the relationships of governance established through speed cameras (2004-2006; ESRC Science in Society program project budget £160,000)
Evaluating Information technology related ChangE (EVINCE)
I was the research fellow on this 3 year ethnographic research project investigating the challenges involved in introducing new technologies to UK Universities. The research focused in particular on the rapid growth of accountability systems within Universities and the consequences that emerged from these systems. (2000-2003; HEFCE Good Management Practice Project total budget £210,000)
Ethnographies of organizations
The principle means through which I carry out research in these projects is organizational ethnography. In my attempts to take the methodological aspects of researching organizational settings seriously, I have developed a book entitled Organizational Ethnography which is part history, part methodology and partly an opportunity to write about my favourite ethnographies: http://www.uk.sagepub.com/booksProdDesc.nav?prodId=Book229353
Does STS Mean Business?
This is a question that has arisen several times during these research projects for me and colleagues with whom I have worked. Through organizing two workshops and publishing a recent journal special issue (http://org.sagepub.com/content/16/1/5.extract), we explored what happens when STS ideas move into business settings, to what extent its radical edge is blunted or renewed by such engagements and the ways in which STS makes business look mean.
Publications
- Simakova E and Neyland D R, 2008, 'Marketing mobile futures: assembling constituencies and narrating compelling stories for an emerging technology', Marketing Theory, vol 8, no. 1, pp. 91-116.
View details - Neyland D R, 2007, 'Achieving transparency: the visible, invisible and divisible in academic accountability networks', Organization, vol 14, no. 4, pp. 499-516.
View details - Neyland D R, 2006, 'Moving images: the mobility and immobility of 'kids standing still'', The Sociological Review, vol 54, no. 2, pp. 363-81.
View details - Neyland D R, 2006, 'The accomplishment of spatial adequacy', Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, vol 24, no. 4, pp. 599-613.
View details - Neyland D R, 2006, 'Dismissed content and discontent: an analysis of the strategic aspects of actor-network theory', Science, Technology and Human Values, vol 31, no. 1, pp. 29-51.
View details - Neyland D R, 2004, 'Moving images: the story of Mr B and CCTV', Information, Communication and Society, vol 7, no. 2, pp. 252-271.
View details - Neyland D R and Woolgar S, 2002, 'Accountability in action? The case of a database purchasing decision', British Journal of Sociology, vol 53, no. 2, pp. 259-274.
View details
