Information Society and the Workplace: Spaces, Boundaries and Agencies (Routledge Studies in Technology, Work and Organisations, 1)

249 Pages·2003·0.82 MB·English

by  T. Heiskanen

Information Society
and the Workplace
In recent years there has been a great deal of talk about information society – in
business, workplaces, organizations, management, government, academia, media
and politics. This book looks at how the twin notions of information and society
are entwined in workplaces and organizations.
Information Society and the Workplace brings together studies of everyday local
practices in workplaces within the information society, with a special focus on
social space and the agency of actors. The book makes use of both theoretical
reviews and detailed qualitative research from Finland, which is at the forefront
of the information society.
Key chapters include:
• Bounded or empowered by technology? Information system specialists’
views on people’s freedom within technology.
• The dynamics of control and commitment in IT firms.
• Women and technological pleasure at work?
• Fulfilment or slavery? The changing sense of self at work.
Highlighting the political challenges of the information society that are likely to
become increasingly pressing worldwide, this book will be of essential interest to
students and researchers in the fields of Business and Management Studies,
Technology Studies and Sociology of Work and Organizations.
Tuula Heiskanenis Research Director of the Work Research Centre, a unit of
multidisciplinary working life studies in the Research Institute of Social Sciences,
University of Tampere, Finland. She has studied professional and industrial
work, work organizations in both public and private sectors, and both male- and
female-dominated organizations. She is co-editor of Gendered Practices in Working
Life(Macmillan 1997).
Jeff Hearn is Research Professor in Sociology, University of Huddersfield, UK,
and Academy Fellow and Professor at the Swedish School of Economics and
Business Administration, Helsinki, Finland. His interest in information society
comes particularly from research on gender, sexuality, violence and ICTs. His
many books include Gender, Sexuality and Violence in Organizations(Sage 2001).
Routledge Studies in Technology, Work
and Organizations
Series edited by David Preece
1. Information Society and the Workplace
Spaces, Boundaries and Agency
Edited by Tuula Heiskanen and Jeff Hearn
2. Technological Change and Organizational Action
Edited by David Preece and Juha Laurila
Information Society
and the Workplace
Spaces, Boundaries and Agency
Edited by Tuula Heiskanen
and Jeff Hearn
First published 2004
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004.
© 2004 Editorial matter and selection, Tuula Heiskanen and Jeff Hearn;
individual chapters, the contributors
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording,
or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested.
ISBN 0-203-40265-0 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-40924-8 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0–415–27223–8(Print Edition)
Contents
Notes on contributors vii
Preface: paradoxes of information, society and workplaces x
Acknowledgements xvii
PART I
Introduction
1 Spaces, places and communities of practice 3
TUULA HEISKANEN
PART II
The creation of spaces
2 Bounded or empowered by technology? Information system
specialists’ views on people’s freedom within technology 29
TARJA TIAINEN
3 Gendered local agency: the development of regional
information society 47
MARJA VEHVILÄINEN
4 Empty spaces without knowledge and management 62
RIITTA KUUSINEN
vi Contents
PART III
Working and living in spaces
5 The dynamics of control and commitment in IT firms 83
SIRPA KOLEHMAINEN
6 Virtualizing the office: micro-level impacts and driving forces
of increased ICT use 103
PERNILLA GRIPENBERG
7 Women and technological pleasure at work? 125
PÄIVI KORVAJÄRVI
8 Fulfilment or slavery? The changing sense of self at work 143
RIITTA LAVIKKA
9 In search of boundaries: changing boundaries in and through
teleworking 178
RIIKKA KIVIMÄKI
PART IV
Concluding discussion
10 Information society, agency and identity positions 193
TUULA HEISKANEN
Postscript: information societies are still societies 205
JEFF HEARN
References 209
Index 226
Contributors
Pernilla Gripenberg is a doctoral researcher in the Department of Management
and Organization, Swedish School of Economics and Business Administration
in Helsinki. She is currently finalizing her thesis on interpretations of the infor-
mation society, where she is studying ICT use in everyday life contexts, such as
home, workplace and community. She has written and edited a series of reports
in the IT_FAMILIES project. She has also published in The Information Society
journal and in Proceedings of the European Conference on Information Systems. Her
research interests include the social study of technology perspective, in partic-
ular for studying the human side of ICT including learning, computer literacy,
digital divide, end users of ICT, virtual organizations and environments, and
information society. She has also taught international business and business
ethics.
Jeff Hearn is Research Professor in Sociology, University of Huddersfield, UK,
and Academy Fellow and Professor, Swedish School of Economics and
Business Administration, Helsinki, Finland. He has published very widely on
work, organizations and management. His interest in information society
comes particularly from research on gender, sexuality, violence and ICTs,
including that with Wendy Parkin in Gender, Sexuality and Violence in Organizations
(Sage, 2001), which examines ICTs, and globalization; that with Marjut
Jyrkinen on the “Sexualized violence, global linkages and policy instruments”
project, on policy development on the sex trade in the light of the growth of
ICTs; and the Academy of Finland fellowship project on “Men, gender rela-
tions and transnational organizing, organizations and management”.
Tuula Heiskanen is Research Director of the Work Research Centre (WRC),
a unit of multidisciplinary working life studies in the Research Institute of
Social Sciences, University of Tampere, Finland. She has a PhD in
Psychology and has studied professional and industrial work, work organiza-
tions in both public and private sectors, and both male- and female-
dominated organizations. She has a long-term interest in international scien-
tific co-operation. With Liisa Rantalaiho, she co-edited Gendered Practices in
Working Life(Macmillan 1997).
viii Contributors
Riikka Kivimäkiis a researcher in the Work Research Centre in the University
of Tampere. Her main research interest has been to study the relationship of
work and family. She has published articles on this theme, for example in L.
Rantalaiho and T. Heiskanen (eds) Gendered Practices in Working Life (Macmillan,
1997), and a Nordic publication, J. Bonke (ed.) Dilemmaet arbejdsliv-familieliv i
Norden (Nordisk Ministerråd, TemaNord 1997:534, Socialforskningsinstituttet
97:5).
Sirpa Kolehmainen is Assistant Professor in the Department of Social Policy
and Social Work, University of Tampere. Her main research interests are
employment and gender segregation in the labour market, gender equality in
the working life, and knowledge-intensive work organizations. Her doctoral
dissertation, Gender Segregation on the Finnish Labour Market 1970–1990, was
published in 1999. She has taken part in the international comparative
OECD project, “The future of female-dominated occupations”, and partici-
pated in the national Finnish evaluation of the effects of the European
Employment Strategy. Her publications include the OECD report Occupational
and Career Opportunities of Women in Female-dominated Occupations, 1997, Work
Organisation in High-tech IT Firms (Tampere University Press, 2001) and
“Features of internal co-operation in high-tech project organisations” in E.
Pantzar (ed.) Perspectives on the Age of the Information Society (Tampere University
Press, 2002).
Päivi Korvajärvi is Professor of Women’s Studies in the Department of
Women’s Studies, University of Tampere. She has extensive experience of
ethnographic case studies both in public and private sector work organiza-
tions. Her recent publications include: “Gender-neutral gender and denial of
difference”, in B. Czarniawaska and H. Höpfl (eds) Casting the Other
(Routledge, 2002); and “Locating gender neutrality in formal and informal
aspects of organizational cultures”, Culture and Organization,8 (2002).
Riitta Kuusinen is a Doctor of Psychology, working in the University of
Tampere Work Research Centre. Her first career was in administrative and
curatorial tasks in the Finnish and Swedish school systems. She then returned
to the academic world to research the relationship between work and educa-
tion. Studying the question of learning skills of co-operation at school and in
working life has been a central concern to her. Her doctoral dissertation on
knowledge-intensive co-operation was completed in spring 2001.
Riitta Lavikka completed her doctoral dissertation, Big Sisters. Spacing Women
Workers in the Clothing Industry. A Study of Flexible Production and Flexible Women in
1997 (Work Research Centre, University of Tampere, 1997). This is a long-
term follow-up study of women workers’ work culture during structural and
work organizational changes in the Finnish clothing industry in the early
1990s. Following her first career as a journalist in labour and union journals,
she returned to the academic world in 1991 to work as a researcher at the
Work Research Centre, University of Tampere, on transformations of work
Contributors ix
organization in the clothing industry. Her main research interests lie in the
sociology of work, organization studies and women’s studies. She has also
studied information society in the context of working life in large European
and Finnish research programmes.
Tarja Tiainen is Acting Research Professor in Electronic Business at the
University of Tampere. Her background is in information and computer
sciences. She has studied the predispositions of the information system field
and the roles of system specialists and technology users in shaping future
technology. She has published in academic journals such as AI & Society and
Futures, and at various information system conferences.
Marja Vehviläinen is a University Lecturer at the Department of
Communication, University of Helsinki, and a Docent in Women’s Studies
and Information Technology, University of Jyväskylä, Finland. She was
formerly Professor in Gender, Culture and Technology Studies, Luleå
University of Technology, Sweden. She has conducted empirical research
projects on the cultural and social construction of information technology,
with a focus on gendering processes, in both the working life and broader
information society contexts. She has published articles in international
forums on gender, expertise and information technology as well as on local
interpretations and agency in information society.