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The future of office work: Difference between revisions
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It largely satisfies the formal model of what it is to work, but largely fails the informal one. | It largely satisfies the formal model of what it is to work, but largely fails the informal one. | ||
==== | ==== Remote working as codifying the org chart ==== | ||
There are two ways of looking at a corporate organisation: the vertical one | {{quote|“Designed or planned social order is necessarily schematic; it always ignores essential features of any real, functioning social order. This truth is best illustrated in a [[work-to-rule]] strike, which turns on the fact that any production process depends on a host of informal practices and improvisations that could never be codified. By merely following the rules meticulously, the workforce can virtually halt production. | ||
:— [[James C. Scott|James C.Scott]], {{br|Seeing Like A State}}}} | |||
There are two ways of looking at a corporate organisation: the vertical one — the [[org chart]] — which depicts the firm as a kind of root system whose ley-lines radiate out from the centre and the top, and the lateral one, which starts from any node on the network, and traces where, when and how often that node interacts with all the others. The first is the firm’s ''formal'' structure — how it might looks if in a portrait, framed, and at rest — the second its ''informal'' structure — how it looks ''when in action''. | |||
The formal structure is the bird’s eye view one gets from the executive suite. But a firm working purely according to its formal communication lines, strictly according to its documented policies and procedures is, literally, in a “[[work-to-rule]]” — once a popular form of industrial action, shy of an outright strike. To work-to-rule was to refrain from doing anything or exercising any judgment, effort, energy, time or discretion beyond what is officially required — to obey ''only'' the formal lines of the org chart — as a means of choking productivity and pressuring management into better working conditions. | |||
Of course, the dynamic nature of the workplace is usually different. We help each other out, we keep eyes peeled, we intervene in matters outside our remit if it will avoid misunderstandings, we ignore obviously redundant procedures and take a view on marginally relevant policies. All these are informal actions: well meant, fundamentally benign and even constructive. To the extent they contravene established rules they do so with the best intentions — it is inevitable that some rules are badly framed, knowing winks, blind eyes and constructive interpretations in the name of keeping the jalopy going. As such they tend to be oral or gestural, and we tend not to commit them to writing. This kind of | |||
==== Bullshit jobs ==== | ==== Bullshit jobs ==== | ||
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{{sa}} | {{sa}} | ||
* [[Org chart]] | *[[Org chart]] | ||
*[[Work-to-rule]] | |||
*[[Bring your own premises]] | *[[Bring your own premises]] | ||
{{ref}} | {{ref}} | ||