Paradoxes from the Individualization of Human Resource Management: The Case of Telework

Abstract

In the context of change to the ''new modernity'' described in Beck's work, companies develop management modes and methods that focus more and more on individuals. Constitutive of the individualization process, human resources practices have become ambivalent as the process itself. This contribution examines how a managerial and organizational innovation as telework contributes to the process of individualization, and the paradoxes it addresses to management. At the interface of the social and the technical, teleworking appears as a flexible arrangement, meeting employees' and employer's demands -which is a characteristic of the process of individualization -by simultaneously fragmenting collectivity, exposing individuals to social risk, and producing exclusion. The authors focus on two consecutive paradoxes of such individualized managerial practices: the individual-collective dilemma and the autonomy-control paradox. Finally, the paper reveals HRM as a new institution of individualization in a world where regulation functions are more and more transferred to individuals themselves.

A Brief History of Long Work Time and the Contemporary Sources of Overwork

“…More autonomy in scheduling tends to be offered to individuals in organizations who are presumed to adhere to the ''ideal worker'' norm (Drago et al, 2005). The extension of hours has been facilitated by teleworking -computerization and network-based telecommunications that allow work to be ever more portable and asynchronous, albeit also more intrusive into nonwork time (Argandona, 2003;Hübler, 2000;Taskin and Devos, 2005).…”

Transformation of the Nature of Managerial Work in Modernity: Evidence from the Japanese Workplace

“…In this statistical data, however, in addition to there not being a clearly unified concept of telework that can be said to be held in common, according to an interview survey by the authors, there was also the aspect that working from home was often at the trial run and experimental stages. We assume that one reason why telework did not spread in Japan in comparison with the EU or the United States was because of the influence of the Japanese collectivist work style and because telework has the traits of the process of "individualization" by fragmenting collectivity and producing exclusion (Taskin & Devos, 2005). In line with existing studies, the effect on society has been at the forefront of discussions.…”

Are new organisations at the cutting edge of employment relations innovation?

“…Other studies have different bundle configurations with wide variability in the number of practices included (Wilkinson et al, 2016) There is a second, less-commonly celebrated field of innovation in ER, relating to the impact of product or physical work-space innovation on ER. Research, for example, points to the impacts -positive and negative -of hot-desking (Millward et al, 2007), the internet and e-mail (Lengnick-Hall and Moritz, 2003), teleworking (Golden, 2007;Taskin and Devos, 2005), mobile phones (Lowry and Moskos, 2005) and open plan offices (Hedge, 1982;Lee and Brand, 2005) on managing employees. A new organisation may engender novelty in ER simply through the way its structures, less systematically entrenched than in mature organisations, shape work practices.…”