Officing : professionals' daily ICT use and the changing space and time of work

Abstract

In the early years of the twenty-first century the office is popularly imagined as having a mobile and flexible form. In the context of these visions, I argue for a new understanding of the form of the office as a series of intersecting material and discursive processes. An account termed Officing is developed, offering several new concepts and methodological tools to recover and analyse these processes, with the aim of identifying trends and complexities in the space and time of work, and for making new connections with the issues of work""life interaction, time pressure and overwork. This account is developed through an investigation of professionals' daily use of information and communication technology (ICT) at a municipal council in Sydney and at a global telecommunications company engaged in a workplace trial of a smart phone. An analysis of past and present discourse on the changing conditions and forms of office work is undertaken as part of this investigation. I argue that the "'Office of the Future' operates as a myth through which new work forms and identities are envisaged and materialised, framed as a response to large scale and seemingly external transformations. The origins of this myth are traced to the rationalisation of work and new mechanisms of labour control in Scientific Management. Reviewing the currency of this myth today, I argue that visions of the office create a discursive space for the emergence of new work forms and identities based on their dislocation (Du Gay 1996). Through these visions, mobile and flexible office forms and identities appear necessary, inevitable and urgent, a solution to global changes such as the irrelevance of place and time, the speed of information and communication, the rise of post-bureaucratic organisations, the complexity of technology and the need for better work""life balance. At the same time, the ongoing effort, space and time required to sustain the conditions that make these forms and identities possible, are denied. The "'office setup' and "'workability' are two key concepts introduced as part of the account of Officing to recover and analyse this effort, space and time. Weber's notion of a "'rationalised' or abstracted relationship forged between individuals and organisations informs a definition of the office as a configuration or "'setup' for establishing the official agency, authority and identity of workers. "'Workability' is a concept developed to highlight how workers turn this office setup into a productive platform for work in the process of daily work. In formulating this concept, two important contributions are synthesised, that of "'articulation work' (Suchman 1995; Star and Strauss 1999) and "'bricolage' (Levi-Strauss 1966; De Certeau 1984) to expose the effort, space and time involved in achieving workability and to analyse its significance for the experience of work. Through Officing, trends and complexities in the space and time of work can be revealed that would otherwise go undetected. Applied to the municipal council (Innertown) and the telecommunications company (Worldcom), these include the swapping of personal and organisational resources of space, time and technology, the integration of activities into a single block of "'spacetime' and a web of new places, rhythms and bodily techniques. These trends are magnified at Worldcom as a result of a pre-existing discourse of mobility and flexibility and the introduction of a new smart phone but are also evident at Innertown where there is a noticeable tension between the official and unofficial office setup. In sum, the dislocated office can be seen to be emerging as a central work platform for mediating external changes and identities produced through its dislocation. Yet, as a result of the denial of the effort, space and time required for its support, a powerful sense of time pressure, increased "'boundary work' (Nippert-Eng 1996) and a deep sense of ambivalence are fore grounded in professionals' daily work experience. I conclude by arguing that we must take into account our investment in material infrastructures since not only is time, space and a sense of self thoroughly tied up in these, these infrastructures demand ongoing support. New methods are needed to account for this work and to recognise that people have different levels of access to resources to mobilise towards workability. Drawing attention to the form of the office as a series of processes has a political goal. It offers a way to not just observe technological change from a distance, as if it really did take place outside of culture, but to include deleted accounts of work, space and time in narratives of change and in this way, create more sustainable material cultures.

Date of Award	2009
Original language	English