Perception of technology exempt from its relation to social milieu restricts its meaning. Technology is about techniques but approaching technology in terms of social relations reveals other peculiarities of it. Workers have been the subjects of a technical outlook in their relation to technology yet industrial social relations are contextual and flexible challenging any such outlook. Workers of all positions in the hierarchy are encouraged to take responsibilities and decisions and subject to high control owing to adoptations of technology.

The theory of industrial sociology explains the change dating back to the last quarter of the twentieth century in the workplace from Fordism to Post-Fordism. Fordism and Taylor’s scientific management changed the workplace dramatically highlighting the Weberian rationality principles andthe Marxist labour concept but it was challenged by Mayo’s Human Relations approach which focuses on psychology, societal qualities and relations instead of material motivators. This argument is in line with the qualities of Post-Fordism, prioritising horizental organization types and skills of workers. Some other qualities include the importance of information, flexibility, technology, instant production, flexible production, deskilling, specialization and increase in the number of service jobs. In addition to the above mentioned theories, Foucaultian power and authority perspective and recent literature on technology studies provide theoretical body to build on in this study.Nevertheless, the perspective is partly challenged by a reconsideration of agency and autonomy. The study is about civil aviation because it reflects recent developments in technology and industry. It has been on a growth trend in Turkey.

In order to have a deep understanding of the social reality, a qualitative approach is adopted. How technology effects responsibilities of workers and control over workers is the main research question. In collection of the data, focal points, which are otherwise not easily observable because of the technical terminology and peculiarity of the workplace, are determined with the help of participation experience. The analysis of the data was simultaneous with the data collection due to non-linear research path. An initial open coding of the concepts is followed by a second coding in which relations among initial codes led to categories and the themes emerged. A third phase included selection of the data to support the predetermined categories and revision of previous codings. Some significant details are presented in a descriptive way.Purposively selected participants are eight Turkish civil aviation workers of an airline company and seven handling company workers who provide services for passengers and aircrafts.

Findings demonstrate responsibility and control as the key concepts. “Responsibility” was chosen because of its relation to the authority and control as its Latin root connotate obligation and responding. Responsibility provides a perspective which reconciles agency-structure and captures contextuality and relations. It enables one to move beyond approaches emphasizing roles or rationality. Control takes an indirect form characterized by centreless authority contrary to the direct control. As a main part of the responsibilities, being controlled and controlling are constant states of work for the workers belonging to different stratas of the hierarchy. Responsibilities are for customers, colleagues, managers and workers themselves. Responsibilities include decision-making and attention as choosing necessary from excessive information which is about taking risks and competition. Technology challenges workers to be more attentive in a constant flow of information and requires to be a lot more dominant in time and space control. Taken all together with time pressure and attention in contemporary society, responsibilities highlight tendencies in industry. Responsibilities and control require horizental organization, flexibility, appealing to skills andthey mostly proliferate in service jobs. They lead us to open the door into industry 4.0. Such a conceptualization of responsibility and control canmake a genuine contribution to the existing literature.