"Timeless time" and the New Economy

Studying working time used to always mean studying hours of work. Let's say you were going to study working time in an insurance office. You'd pretty much take the same steps as you would studying working time in a factory. There's the punch clock, there's the hours of work, and there's the overtime.

Step 1: Find out how many hours people are working.
Step 2: Find out how people feel about those hours.
Step 3: Make recommendations about those hours.

Sounds pretty straightforward right?

The problem is that time doesn't work that way anymore. Sociologist Manuel Castells calls today's working time "timeless time." He says global capitalism has "annihilated time" through the use of information technologies. He's right to some extent -- take a look at the world's stock markets the minute after a catastrophic event in some faraway land.

Now apply this troubling idea to your study of time. People work in an office (not a factory), they use web-based time sheets (not a punch clock), they carry their laptops home with them (not leave their tools at the factory), and they have all sorts of personal technologies that allows work to follow them on the road, to lunch, and even home. Their clients are up at all hours, in different time zones, asking them for work. Even their immediate colleagues work in other offices, pinging them through instant messenger or phoning their cell phones.

Sure, sometimes it's not about work. Sometimes the cell phone call is a welcome invite out for beers. Sometimes the IM is a chat about life in general. But since when did a factory foreman call you up while you're taking the train home and ask you out for wings, and oh, by the way, did you finish fixing that conveyor belt?

Where is the time clock here? Does it make sense to say that "hours of work" are really an adequate way of understanding time?

I argue it is not. Timeless time, annihilated time, postindustrial time, whatever you call it, it is not the same time as Fordist, modernist, scientific management time.

Today's time for interactive agencies is "polychronic" (and really check out that link. It'll cook your noodle later).

Time in interactive agencies has creativity, timelessness, time compression, time intensity, timeless time AND factory Fordist time built in. And that's part of the problem.

Fordist time is old school. It helps you understand when you're working "over time." It helps you make divisions between Monday and Saturday. It structures your life in an orderly way. But agency life isn't like that. People work in the office Monday to Friday. They socialize in the office. They work weekends. They work remotely. They work on the road. They socialize on the road. Work and play are intermingled and confused.

So I am not simply going to measure "how many hours." That's too simple and it just doesn't work. Instead, I'm exploring the effects of polychronic work, the overlap between work and play, and ultimately, the fulfillment that this model brings (or doesn't bring.

Agencies are not factories. They are postindustrial. It's about time researchers caught up to that.

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Why don't we all telecommute?

I was reading a post today about the recent collapse of portions of a highway in California. There were thousands of people who had to make alternate arrangements to get to work. The bloggers asked:

Why are all those people commuting to their downtown offices in the first place? If you've got the right IT resources and work for a company that understands the power of not commuting, you know what I'm talking about.

My thoughts exactly. I have found that all of my respondents have ample access to their email and their work files when they are away from work. This is partly because they have to (business trips and off-site meetings have made their employers equip them with whatever they need).

But for some reason, this doesn't translate into "I work from home regularly" or "I like to telecommute once a week."

There's likely a reason for this that is not at all economically rational. Ask yourself how much it costs for an employer to equip an office. Fill it with people and their machines, the support staff, the kitchen. Add all the maintenance costs. The telephone costs, the network costs. Now think about your own home office (come on, we know you have one). How much do you spend on yours? Could you work at home, conceivably? Do you have what you need to do so?

Now why is the employer spending all that money? One theory, suggested by Harvard professor Stephen Marglin is that economic efficiency is less important than control. Another Harvard prof, Shoshanna Zuboff, argues that technology is chosen specifically to "informate" (that is help the creative process) or to simply control.

The idea is that intentions behind the design of the "office technology" (that is, its form) matters. What is the intention behind a group of people, coming in at the same time, to the same place, everyday. Is it economically efficient? Is it socially cohesive? Is it controlling?

Our friends at the Future of Work think it's not sustainable (Shoshanna Zuboff agrees). But the questions about control and intention must be asked when you think about telecommuting.

Why Theory Actually Matters

Another post for those of you interested in the research process.

I cannot tell you how many times I have heard that theory is "irrelevant" or "too complex" or "a waste of time." And no, that's not just from undergraduates who don't want to study it! It's from people in all walks of life. They are justified, I think, because theory is often portrayed as "special" or "elite" knowledge, rendered completely inaccessible.

But theory matters and here's why.

I'm interested, as some of you know, in three approaches to understanding work and time:

• Political economy of time
• Symbolic practices of time
• Conscious experience of time

Each one of these approaches has implicit "truth claims" or "ontological assumptions" or "this how I think the world is" embedded within them. If you never talk about theory, you never know what your implicit assumptions are. And you never know how these assumptions can be out-right WRONG.

Case in point: Political economy believes time is a resource or a commodity that can be bought and sold (and therefore, fought over). Few political economists question this idea -- it is implicit. But there is ample evidence to suggest that time is not actually experienced as a commodity, but more as a sense of timelessness. This is the theory of "flow" for those of you who are interested.

Time is also experienced through social events. The space between breakfast and lunch, for example, is this kind of time. The years between matriculation and graduation is another example. Time passes without our notice if do not bookend it with anniversaries, birthdays, and other social practices.

Now why does theory matter? Because you use it anyway. If you don't examine what you are implicitly using, you run the risk of doing all sorts of ill-advised things, like restricting the money supply, preventing broken windows, and teaching intelligent design.

The Research Process: Looking for Conflict

Another post for those of you who are interested in the research process. This time I'm interested in the notion of conflict.

If any of you have seen the movie Half Nelson, you may remember that the lead character, Ryan Gosling, tries to teach his high school students about "opposing forces" or in the academic parlance, the dialectic. He uses the example of the Civil Rights movement, where ordinary people started resisting the dominant white order, and, in the process, changed institutions like lunch counters, the education system, and even the Supreme Court.

The dialectic -- two opposing forces moving against each other -- indicates where social change is happening. In this research project, on the one hand, workers are telling me that they work too many hours, that they are tired. They want more vacation, more time to think, more time to be creative.

But on the other hand, they are also telling me that they like to work. They want to put in long hours either to get ahead, or to simply solve interesting problems.

On the one hand, they resent that their companies use technology to beckon them back to work (either virtually or in person). But on the other hand, they welcome the use of the company issued laptops. They relish the ability to spend hours online for "work" purposes. They like the convenience of instant messenger.

Where are the conflicts? Between workers and the tools they are issued. Between the experience of work and the tracking of work time. Between the desire for fulfillment and the dominance of billable hours.

People engage in all sorts of practices that undermine the notion that billable hours actually matter. But they also pay homage to billable hours, with a nod and a wink. Does this mean that conflict is currently happening? Does this mean that social change is underway?

I want to know if any of these conflicts lead to meaningful change. My initial suspicion is that it does -- but not on a grand scale. The dominance of the system of tracking billable hours is so entrenched and necessary to the success of the companies that it will likely not go away. But! That does not mean that everyday practice does not provide some room for change.

Observing = Understanding: Why in-person interviewing matters

For those of you wanting some insight into how to do research, this post is for you.

Back when I was in journalism school, our profs told us repeatedly "Go, don't phone." They argued you'd only get better reporting if you actually went and witnessed events yourself.

Of course when I got out into the big, bad world, I discovered "going" wasn't always in the cards. So I learned to rely on telephone interviews.

Now that I'm researching the experience of work and time in interactive agencies, I have an advantage: I worked in an interactive agency and know first-hand what goes on. But I don't know how people understand their own experiences, how work invades their homes, and what their partners think.

Compare the following three examples:

1. The family of three had no television, but a computer monitor set up on a credenza in the living room. The coffee table had a wireless keyboard for the "TV" and my interviewee had his own, work-issued laptop sitting right next to it. When I asked him why his work laptop was there, he said, "That's its place. If there's something else there, it's temporary."
   
   What did I take this to mean? That work has now taken up permanent real estate, not just in my interviewee's life, but in his family's home. All three of them see his work (literally) everyday. It flickers into the night as they gather, as a family, in the "living" room.
   
   
2. There was no evidence of a work computer anywhere. As we sat over tea at her kitchen table she told me that's because she doesn't bring work home. "But do you have a computer?" I pressed. "Oh yes," she says, "It's in there," pointing to a closed door. "Do you ever do work there?" I ask. "No," she says.
   
   
3. Another kitchen table, and another pot of tea. We can hear music streaming from down the hall. "That's the computer," she explains to me. She tells me later that she doesn't bring her laptop home, but she does us a USB key to periodically transfer files and work at them at home.
   

What is the significance here? Each person has negotiated their relationship with their work tools differently. One person fully embraces the sense of ownership his company has given him over his laptop. He brings it back and forth to work everyday, but his family sits next to him as he answers emails or checks on work.

Another worker chooses to draw a line by not bringing her computer home, yet she brings home work, in a deceptively small package, that occupies her as her husband and their friends entertain themselves in the living room.

And a third worker draws a distinct line: no work at home. She can't even see her computer because she puts it behind a closed door.

Each one of these workers believes they don't work at home. Yet each one of them has very different symbolic relationships with icons, artifacts, and remnants of work as they come into their homes.

The long and short of it: Go, don't phone. You never know what subtleties you will find.