Not in the Jungian sense, but rather the hidden costs of distributed labor. For example, let's say a large company licenses expense management software for employees to scan and record their own travel receipts. This allows them to lay off x number of admin staff, and save twice what they spend on the software. This year's earnings will be slightly higher, investors may reward that growth with a higher earnings multiple, and they'll pay an even higher multiple for the software vendor. But now you have 100x other employees with an extra task/distraction, which has to weigh on productivity / morale / retention in at least some marginal way.
My use of the term comes from books by Ivan Illich and Craig Lambert, which seem to have more of a cultural/individual perspective, and frame this as an exploitation story in which the company extracts a bit more work (from their customers as well, with things like self-checkout) that is effectively uncompensated.
But maybe that concedes too much... e.g. surely these office workers also doing a bit less of their other work, and the employers/investors may have made a short-sighted decision against their own self-interest. It's an empirical question about the genuine efficiencies in the software vs the various costs of reversing the division of labor.
Where can I find the existing work from that perspective? What are the other terms I should be searching for? Thanks in advance for any suggestions!
