Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how document protection has become a key object of concern for organizations, how the threat of leaks has led to an increase in security technologies and policies and how these developments present new and emergent ethnographic challenges for researchers. Through a study of a South Korean organization, the paper aims to demonstrate the ways workplace documents are figured into wider legal, regulatory and cyber security concerns.

Design/methodology/approach

The research is based on 12 months of intensive embedded fieldwork in a South Korean firm from 2014 to 2015 and follow-up interviews in 2018. The author followed an immersive and inductive approach to collecting ethnographic data in situ. The author was hired as an intern in a Korean conglomerate known as the Sangdo Group where he worked alongside Human Resources managers to understand their work practices. The present article reflects difficulties in his original research design and an attempt to analyze the barriers themselves. His analysis combines ideas from theories of securitization and document studies to understand how the idea of protection is reshaping workplaces in South Korea and elsewhere.

Findings

The paper highlights three findings first that South Korean workplaces have robust socio-material infrastructures around document protection and security, reflecting that security around document leaks is becoming integrated into normal organizational life. Second, the securitization of document leaks is shifting from treating document leaks as a threat to organizational existence, to a crime by individual actors that organizations track. Third, that even potential document leaks can have transitive effects on teams and managers.

Originality/value

Organizational security practices and their integration into workplace life have rarely been examined together. This paper connects Weber's insights on bureaucratization with the concept of securitization to examine the rise of document security practices and policies in a South Korean organization. The evidence from South Korea is valuable because technological developments around security coupled with organizational complexities portend issues for other organizational environments around the world.

中文翻译：

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安全化的工作场所：韩国组织中的文件保护、内部威胁和新出现的民族志障碍

目的

本文的目的是展示文档保护如何成为组织关注的关键对象，泄漏威胁如何导致安全技术和政策的增加，以及这些发展如何为研究人员带来新的和新兴的人种学挑战。通过对一家韩国组织的研究，该论文旨在展示工作场所文件如何被纳入更广泛的法律、监管和网络安全问题。

设计/方法/方法

该研究基于 2014 年至 2015 年在一家韩国公司进行的 12 个月密集的嵌入式实地调查以及 2018 年的后续访谈。作者采用沉浸式和归纳式方法原位收集人种学数据。作者被一家名为 Sangdo Group 的韩国企业集团聘为实习生，在那里他与人力资源经理一起工作，以了解他们的工作实践。本文反映了他最初的研究设计中的困难以及分析障碍本身的尝试。他的分析结合了证券化理论和文件研究的思想，以了解保护的思想如何重塑韩国和其他地方的工作场所。

发现

该论文首先强调了三个发现，即韩国的工作场所在文件保护和安全方面拥有强大的社会物质基础设施，这反映出围绕文件泄露的安全正在融入正常的组织生活。其次，文件泄露的证券化正在从将文件泄露视为对组织生存的威胁，转变为组织跟踪的个人行为者犯罪。第三，即使是潜在的文件泄露也会对团队和经理产生传递性影响。

原创性/价值

组织安全实践及其与工作场所生活的整合很少被一起研究。本文将 Weber 对官僚化的见解与证券化概念联系起来，以检验韩国组织中文档安全实践和政策的兴起。来自韩国的证据很有价值，因为围绕安全的技术发展加上组织的复杂性预示着世界其他组织环境会出现问题。