Work's intimacy / Melissa Gregg.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Gregg, Melissa, 1978-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Work environment--Social aspects.

Work environment.

Employees--Effect of technological innovations on.

Employees.

Work environment--Technological innovations.

Work-life balance.

Quality of work life.

Physical Description:

xii, 205 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, UK ; Malden, MA : Polity Press, 2011.

Summary:

This book provides a long-overdue account of online technology and its impact on the work and lifestyles of professional employees. It moves between the offices and homes of workers in the new "knowledge" economy to provide intimate insight into the personal, family, and wider social tensions emerging in today's rapidly changing work environment.

Drawing on her extensive research, Gregg shows that new media technologies encourage and exacerbate an older tendency among salaried professionals to put work at the heart of daily concerns, often at the expense of other sources of intimacy and fulfillment. New media technologies, from mobile phones to laptops and tablet computers, have been marketed as devices that give us the freedom to work where we want, when we want, but little attention has been paid to the consequences of this shift, which has seen work move out of the office and into cafés, trains, living rooms, dining rooms, and bedrooms. This professional "presence bleed" leads to work concerns impinging on the personal lives of employees in new and unforeseen ways.

This groundbreaking book explores how aspiring and established professionals each try to cope with the unprecedented intimacy of technologically mediated work, and how its seductions seem poised to triumph over the few remaining relationships that may stand in its way. Book jacket.

Contents:

Pt. I. The connectivity imperative: business responses to new media

Selling the flexible workplace: the creative economy and new media fetishism

Working from home: the mobile office and the seduction of convenience

Part-time precarity: discount labor and contract careers

pt. II. Getting intimate: Online culture and the rise of social networking

To CC: or not to CC: teamwork in office culture

Facebook friends: security blankets and career mobility

Know your product: online branding and the evacuation of friendship

pt. III. Looking for love in the networked household

Home offices and remote parents: family dynamics in online households

Long hours, high bandwith: negotiating domesticity and distance

On call

Conclusion: Labor politics in an online workplace

the lovers vs. the loveless.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [175]-198) and index.

ISBN:

0745650279

9780745650272

0745650287

9780745650289

OCLC:

669262653