Digital work: a research agenda

Abstract

IntroductionWe have been invited to discuss "digital work" and to propose a research agenda for the next decade or so. We value the opportunity to share some thoughts on this important area. In doing so, we will begin with a reconceptualization of the phenomenon that is at stake here, offer some specific examples, and then close by considering some possible future research directions that we hope will be both useful and generative. The phenomenon: What is digital work?The term "digital work" suggests that we are able to differentiate work that is dependent on digital technologies from "other work" that is not. We argue that in order to develop a contemporary research agenda for management and organization studies we must take a different route because the "digital" no longer serves as a useful separable feature distinguishing a type of work. Work today always entails the digital; even where the work itself doesn't directly involve a computing device, most contemporary work relates to digital phenomenon. What we mean by this is that most work practices involve digital technology to a greater or lesser extent -whether through digital networks that transfer email, cellular communications, and webpages or the computers that process financial transactions for global funds flow, facilitate writing and editing of documents, and handle logistics so parcels can be delivered on time.Although office, manufacturing and service work have been through more intense processes of digitisation that are more easily called out as "digital," we contend that such easy categorizations have blinkered us from realising the relational processes through which all work has become "cyborgian" to use Haraway's (1991) technology, yet their activities are surely configured by it as the quality of their cleaning becomes subject to online user-generated commentary. These reviews posted on social media websites such as TripAdvisor will elicit praise or rebuke from hotel managers while also impinging on their job security (as social media reviews and ratings influence room bookings that affect the financial position of the hotel and its staff levels).Work is "a doing," it is performed. As Weick (1969) suggests, we are better served by talking in terms of verbs rather than nouns. So our focus is on the dynamic and situated activities that constitute working rather than static or abstract tasks that make up "the work." As a doing, work is configured by its performance through the specific actions, voices, bodies, rooms, documents, tools, infrastructure, etc., that constitute it. As these specificities change, so does the work. Over the years, considerable attention has been paid to how certain kinds of work are reconfigured through different technologies. As we have argued above, all work is today being reconfigured in relation to digital technologies, and so it is important for us to draw attention to and craft accounts of the critical issues that this raises. But how are we to do this and what kind of research agenda are we calling for?One way of...

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