TY - CONF
T1 - Flexible turtles and elastic octopi
T2 - 17th European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, ECSCW 2019
AU - Erickson, Ingrid
AU - Menezes, Deepti
AU - Raheja, Raghav
AU - Shetty, Thanushree
N1 - Funding Information:
The research presented herein is part of a largr inietiative to understand how modern-day knowledge workers, in their complexity as described at the beginning of this paper, encounter and interact with digital inrastfructures. The project was initially funded by an exporatlory grant from the United States National Science Foundation in 2013; data collection, primarilyin the form of inervitews, commenced in 2014 and was completed in 26.0Sev1raleprotds frouthmcsi research have been previously published emphasizing how workers create digtal i assemblages and engage in infrastructuring practices (Jarrahi, et al., 2019; Erickson, et al., 2017; Erickson and Jarrahi, 2016; Erickson, et al., 2014). Several papers will be forthcoming describing the copmtenceies that workers need to engage in these activities. As the work hs maodvo tehnfires,t author has been oriented toward more reflexive considerations, such as questions of methodology (Erickson, 2)0as w1ell as7the topic of the current paper, namely the meaning(s) embedded in the concept of flexibility.
Funding Information:
We would like to acknowledge the generosity of our interviewees in sharing their stories; prior collabratoros, Mohammad Jarrahi and Steve Sawyer, for their analytical contributions; and the National Science Foundation for their generous support of this research.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 held by Authors.
PY - 2020
Y1 - 2020
N2 - This paper takes as its starting place the rich context of many knowledge workers today-highly distributed, increasing project focused, typically atypical days, infrastructural-and attempts to push past extant descriptions of their practices as 'flexible'. Using empirical data informed by a practice theory lens, we expand the understanding of flexibility with regard to work by augmenting how worker disposition, as well as the ability to engage with agility in dynamic circumstances, should be considered as a factor when examining and designing for this population. We make several contributions of interest to the wider CSCW community. First, we distinguish between those who showcase flexible practices and those who proactively orient around flexibility. We call this second group 'elastic workers'. Second, we raise new questions for us as scholars and designers keen to exploit the conceptual and pragmatic intersection of technology and work. These questions create opportunities to explore different methods for understanding complex phenomena such as flexibility, as well as understanding how we might design for this phenomenon with more foresight in the future.
AB - This paper takes as its starting place the rich context of many knowledge workers today-highly distributed, increasing project focused, typically atypical days, infrastructural-and attempts to push past extant descriptions of their practices as 'flexible'. Using empirical data informed by a practice theory lens, we expand the understanding of flexibility with regard to work by augmenting how worker disposition, as well as the ability to engage with agility in dynamic circumstances, should be considered as a factor when examining and designing for this population. We make several contributions of interest to the wider CSCW community. First, we distinguish between those who showcase flexible practices and those who proactively orient around flexibility. We call this second group 'elastic workers'. Second, we raise new questions for us as scholars and designers keen to exploit the conceptual and pragmatic intersection of technology and work. These questions create opportunities to explore different methods for understanding complex phenomena such as flexibility, as well as understanding how we might design for this phenomenon with more foresight in the future.
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M3 - Paper
AN - SCOPUS:85085029110
Y2 - 8 June 2019 through 12 June 2019
ER -