telework and the information age

12
New Technology, Work and Employment 13:1 ISSN 0268-1072 Telework and the information age Celia Stanworth This article provides a critical analysis of the information age litera- ture, explores its attractions for management and assesses evidence of the impact of the information age on the UK. It finds that material changes to work organisations and employment relationships fre- quently contrast with the optimistic predictions contained in much of the writing. The ‘digital age’[1], the ‘information society’[2], and the ‘information age’ are all popular titles used to describe developments in society which are linked to the coming together of information and communication technologies(ICTs) to produce what may be a new ‘heartland technology’[3], whose dif- fusion may indicate the beginning of a fifth Kondriateff wave of economic develop- ment[4]. The concept of the information age also has its roots in the post-industrial writ- ings of Bell[5] and shares with post-Fordist flexible specialisation an emphasis upon uni- linearity of outcomes[6]. It is predominantly a paradigm of the services sector, whereas writings such as those of Piore and Sabel focused on the manufacturing sector. Most of the writings, as with flexible specialisation, foresee an optimistic future where techno- logically-based revitalised economies operate with reskilled collaborative workers[7]. Much of the popular output is post-modernist in its use of the ‘global threat’ and the idea of empowered and discerning customers con- Celia Stanworth is Senior Lecturer in Human Resource Management at the University of Greenwich Business School, London. Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 1997, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main St., Malden, MA 02148, USA. Telework and the information age 51 stantly demanding new goods and ser- vices[8]. It also tends to be technologically deterministic, with the assumption that tech- nology is an irresistible driver for progressive change. Economic deterioration, higher unemployment and industrial strife are pre- dicted if there is no change or a slow take-up of the technology. The predicted effects of the information age are much wider than the adoption of the technology itself, with consequences for the entire economic system, for nation-states, work organisations and labour markets. ICTs hold out the promise of facilitating an era of rapid innovation with the development of new products and services and sustainable economic growth producing new industries and jobs. The diffusion of this new paradigm is only possible if the supporting infrastruc- ture is in place, and this centres around the creation of the ‘information superhighway’ consisting of a network of optical fibre cables which links up homes and businesses facilit- ating an almost infinite number of interactive communications. Governments and political parties of both left and right in the US and the UK are united in their enthusiasm for the development of this infrastructure. Newt

Upload: celia-stanworth

Post on 15-Jul-2016

219 views

Category:

Documents


1 download

TRANSCRIPT

Page 1: Telework and the Information Age

New Technology, Work and Employment 13:1ISSN 0268-1072

Telework and the informationage

Celia Stanworth

This article provides a critical analysis of the information age litera-ture, explores its attractions for management and assesses evidence ofthe impact of the information age on the UK. It finds that materialchanges to work organisations and employment relationships fre-quently contrast with the optimistic predictions contained in much ofthe writing.

The ‘digital age’[1], the ‘informationsociety’[2], and the ‘information age’ are allpopular titles used to describe developmentsin society which are linked to the comingtogether of information and communicationtechnologies(ICTs) to produce what may bea new ‘heartland technology’[3], whose dif-fusion may indicate the beginning of a fifthKondriateff wave of economic develop-ment[4]. The concept of the information agealso has its roots in the post-industrial writ-ings of Bell[5] and shares with post-Fordistflexible specialisation an emphasis upon uni-linearity of outcomes[6]. It is predominantlya paradigm of the services sector, whereaswritings such as those of Piore and Sabelfocused on the manufacturing sector. Most ofthe writings, as with flexible specialisation,foresee an optimistic future where techno-logically-based revitalised economies operatewith reskilled collaborative workers[7]. Muchof the popular output is post-modernist in itsuse of the ‘global threat’ and the idea ofempowered and discerning customers con-

❒ Celia Stanworth is Senior Lecturer in HumanResource Management at the University of GreenwichBusiness School, London.

Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 1997, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main St., Malden, MA 02148, USA.

Telework and the information age 51

stantly demanding new goods and ser-vices[8]. It also tends to be technologicallydeterministic, with the assumption that tech-nology is an irresistible driver for progressivechange. Economic deterioration, higherunemployment and industrial strife are pre-dicted if there is no change or a slow take-upof the technology.

The predicted effects of the informationage are much wider than the adoption of thetechnology itself, with consequences for theentire economic system, for nation-states,work organisations and labour markets. ICTshold out the promise of facilitating an era ofrapid innovation with the development ofnew products and services and sustainableeconomic growth producing new industriesand jobs. The diffusion of this new paradigmis only possible if the supporting infrastruc-ture is in place, and this centres around thecreation of the ‘information superhighway’consisting of a network of optical fibre cableswhich links up homes and businesses facilit-ating an almost infinite number of interactivecommunications. Governments and politicalparties of both left and right in the US andthe UK are united in their enthusiasm for thedevelopment of this infrastructure. Newt

Page 2: Telework and the Information Age

Gingrich at the height of his powers advo-cated ‘high-tech capitalism’ and the restric-tion of US public spending allied to greatermarket competition in order to accelerate thedevelopment of the ‘information super high-way’[9]. This term was coined in the US byAl Gore and rapidly adopted by both mainUK political parties. Both government andopposition are persuaded of the importanceof developing an optical fibre infrastructureto facilitate the dawn of the new age. ‘New’Labour policies outlined before the recentelection, included a controversial deal withBritish Telecom (BT) whereby all homes,schools, libraries and hospitals would belinked up to the highway in return for per-mission to provide entertainment ser-vices[10]. The Conservatives, by contrast,relied on the free market to link up UKhomes and businesses. In the EuropeanUnion, Directorate Generals (DG) V and XIIIhave published a number of reports on thecreation of the ‘information society’ throughthe convergence of telecommunications infra-structure, with optimistic predictions of10 million new teleworking jobs by the year2000[11].

The last decade of the twentieth century isseen as the decisive decade in the diffusionof the new technological paradigm, as takeoff is dependent upon its use by a criticalmass within the economy[12]. The significantdevelopment of this decade is the linkingtogether of ICT networks, both within organ-isations, between suppliers and producers,and on a global scale. Kaplinsky[13] believes‘inter-sphere automation’, where differentspheres of activity are integrated, shouldbecome more widespread in the 1990s, andBessant emphasises the importance of elec-tronic data interchange between firms[14].The emergence of ‘virtuality’ takes theseideas one stage further, with work takingplace within global networks by means ofsuch developments as Computer SupportedCo-operative Work (CSCW)[15]. Tapscott[16]calls this ‘internetworking’. Barnatt[17] callsthese “metasystems” where “entire indus-tries, economies and other information net-work components may now be analysed notjust as single entities, but as amalgamatedand evolving metasystems” (p. 184).

The discourse of the information age con-flates a number of levels of analysis. It can beanalysed at the global level in terms of theregeneration of older industrialised econom-ies, as well as providing the opportunity for

52 New Technology, Work and Employment Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 1997.

developing countries to move from agrariandirectly to post-industrial. At the organis-ational level the discussion centres aroundthe ‘virtual’ organisation, the demise of hier-archy[18] and the coming of the ‘elusiveoffice’[19]. At work force level, the discussionis about innovative ways of working such asteleworking, telecommuting, call centres andtelecottages, with the work force ‘freed’ bythe technology from the constraints oflocation and time[20].

Virtual organisations—theliterature

Central to the discourse at the work organis-ation level is the ‘virtual’ enterprise or organ-isation, described as “an extremely loose webof individuals, capital and technologieswhich may operate in amalgamation as theultimate flexible organisational form”[21],and “project-focused, collaborative networksuninhibited by time and space”[22]. Workbased on the transformation of physicalresources in the industrial age is predicted tobe replaced by the processing of informationinto knowledge, which will be carried out by‘cerebral’ workers in dynamic organisations(often global) which may have little or nophysical entity or structure—they ultimatelyexist in cyberspace. Although much of thewriting is focused on the services sector,there is also some which extends the trans-formation to the manufacturing sector, wherethe technology is predicted to further blur theboundaries between the two sectors.

In the popular discourse, the growth of vir-tuality is driven by external turmoil and con-tinuing global economic threat. The ‘virtual’organisation is one stage on from the down-sized or Business Process Re-engineered(BPR) organisation as, in its archetypal form,it is without structure, dynamic, ever-chang-ing in its boundaries, delineated by currentcontractual agreements, and dissolves assoon as each project is completed. Infor-mation age and ‘excellence’ literature bothdenigrate hierarchy and elevate marketrelationships, look upon stable organisationstructures based on co-location as ‘dino-saurs’, and exhort managers to replace theseoutdated forms with those which are moreadaptable, innovative and responsive to ever-changing markets by the use of ICTs[23].Market relationships of short durationbetween self-employed individuals are con-

Page 3: Telework and the Information Age

sidered superior to all other forms of employ-ment, particularly in the US literature.

Teleworkers—the literature

The generic term ‘teleworker’ refers to some-one who works at a place other than wherethe results of work are needed usingICTs[24], and much of the literature describes(or prescribes) changes in working practiceswhich are facilitated by the technology.Popular writing stresses the freedom whichthe technology gives to workers to determinehow and when they work. Workers in theinformation age may be ‘portfolio’ work-ers[25] with a variety of jobs, and there ismuch discussion of individual enterprise,with information age workers beingdescribed as predominantly ‘free agent indi-viduals’[26] who are self-employed[27].Flexibility of contract is a dominant theme.Alternatively teleworkers may be privileged‘core’ employees with autonomy to organisetheir own time and location of work, enjoyinghigh trust relationships[28], and discretion tomanipulate the hardware and software[29].The information age discourse is mostly con-cerned with professional, technical andmanagerial workers, who are ‘symbolic ana-lysers’ needing high level skills to transformraw information into high added-valueknowledge products and services. Drucker’svision is:

. . . an organisation composed largely of specialistswho direct and discipline their own performancethrough organised feedback from colleagues, cus-tomers and headquarters[30].

There is far less discussion in the popularliterature of routine jobs such as data entry,word processing or telesales work. This neg-lect can be explained by the implicit portrayalof offices as glamorous, as “professionalworkplaces where all employees are knowl-edge workers”[31] ignoring the diversity ofoffice jobs, or it may be because the numberof routinised ‘back office’ workers is pre-dicted to decline with the advent of the infor-mation age[32]. The European Com-mission[33] believes that the new jobs of theinformation society will move beyond exist-ing routine work and will shift towardsknowledge work such as developingsoftware, professional or consultancy workfor a large number of workers.

Telework and the information age 53 Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 1997.

The information age literatureand management mindsets

The ‘information age’ is everywhere: the ava-lanche of press coverage, books, magazineand journal articles in the UK since the late1980s (and for much longer in the US) hasmainly been targeted at the management andexecutive market. It would be an exception-ally reclusive UK manager or executive whowould not have been exposed to the mediacoverage, or the writings of Charles Handy,Bill Gates or numerous other gurus andfuturologists. Apart from the power of highprofile and long-term exposure, the ideascontained within the literature and mediacoverage are likely to be attractive to the tar-get audience for a number of reasons. Firstlythey engage with the deep-seated pessimismof Western managers about the global threatposed by the newly industrialising world. AsLegge states: “. . . managers (are) shaping upto heightened global competition fromnations their countries once defeated inwar”[34]. This real or imagined threat can bedefused by entering the information age first,by gaining the competitive edge and securingthe market for innovative ICT services beforethey are poached by competitors. The litera-ture promises that by so doing the decline ofWestern developed economies can bereversed, and their predominant position inworld markets recovered and sustained.These promises are accompanied by thethreat that failure to change could be econ-omically catastrophic:

Some varieties of the Future Work organizationhave the power . . . to affect the very fabric of theworld’s economic geography radically. In the fieldof international competition, this is a subject weignore at our peril[35].

Or: Its current cowboys may be bleary eyed technofreaks married to their screens, yet these key-board-hungry individuals will quickly becomeinformation barons with more power overpeople’s lives than governments or multinationalsif today’s managers and corporations do notawake to the new connectivity age of the third mil-lennium[36].

In common with much of the ‘excellence’ dis-course, there is a ‘call to arms’ which servesto inspire managers and senior executives totranslate the prescriptions of the informationage, however difficult and challenging, intomaterial change. This projects the positiverole of manager as hero change-agent, withthe added promise of freedom of action to

Page 4: Telework and the Information Age

operate in global labour markets, untram-melled by the constraints of national employ-ment law and the like[37]. Grenier and Metesintend their book to be “a call to action tocompanies, organizations and groups thatmay be languishing in the organizational dol-drums of last-generation assumptions, pro-cesses, rules, and technology; either unawareof, or resistant to, the emerging virtualimperative”[38]. Tapscott[39] ends his bookwith the view that: “If we act, rather thanpassively observe, we can seize the time. Andthe Age of Networked Intelligence will be anage of promise fulfilled” (p. 320). The litera-ture is often technocratic in tone, exhortingits audience to act now, because the tech-nology is an irresistible driver for change: “Itis a powerful and unassailable force that isbeing propelled by the imperatives of busi-ness productivity, quality of life, and globalcompetition”[40]. “Everyone will be touchedby the information highway, and everyoneought to be able to understand its impli-cations”[41].

The information age also holds out thepromise of being an age of plenty. Thisimplicitly assumes that the modern industrialage was dominated by scarcity, and also thatproliferation is always progressive. The ‘digi-tal revolution’ is about accessing infiniteamounts of information carried by the infor-mation superhighway. We will be able tochoose entertainment from “hundreds orthousands of (television) channels”[42], andthere will be an almost unlimited choice forthe consumer of, as yet undreamed of, ICTbased products and services deliveredimmediately, at any time of the day or night,anywhere on the globe. The BangemannReport[43] emphasised the enormous poten-tial for new services in production, consump-tion, culture and leisure activities, andaccording to the commentators the Internet isalready creating novel services in the man-agement of the infrastructure, in hardwareand software, and new forms of retailing andmarketing[44], and a similar proliferation ispredicted as a result of the coming of theoptical fibre network. Millar[45] sums up theoptimistic view:

New communications technology will make tra-ditional services cheaper and many new serviceslike videotelephony, home banking and homeshopping economically possible. It will open upnew possibilities for home entertainment, with alarge choice of high quality digital television chan-nels and access to video libraries . . . Within the

54 New Technology, Work and Employment Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 1997.

coming decades distance and capacity constraintsto communications will be largely overcome andthe user will have at his (sic) command world-wide networks providing access to services madeup of images, sound and text in whichever formis required. (p. 2)

Most of the commentators link this abundantfuture with the creation of many more jobs,and the prediction is that these jobs will bepredominantly high in status and remuner-ation. There is some discussion of the possi-bility that ICTs may destroy jobs in the shortterm in the more academic literature, such asDrucker’s view that it will be managers inhierarchical organisations who “neither makedecisions nor lead”[46] who will disappear.Those who have specialist knowledge, thosewith relevant professional expertise, andabove all those who are enterprising andinnovative, are predicted to survive, so thatit is the middle manager or generalist admin-istrator who appears most at risk. Taking thepopular discourse as a whole, the optimisticscenario predominates, and generally thepossibility of job loss through automation orgeographical displacement is downplayed orignored. This despite the body of academicresearch which shows that, in general, areduction in job numbers is associated withthe adoption of ‘new’ technology and, lat-terly, computer networks, for exampleChild[47] and Boddy and Gunson[48].

The popular discourse of the informationage may sometimes appear naive andsimplistic, but there is a strong traditionamongst managers of seeking solutions towhat they perceive as current problems fromliterature which is questionable both metho-dologically and intellectually. What frustratessome academics in the social sciences is thatpractitioners do not read or act upon theirmore rigorous output, although by no meansall of it is opaque or difficult. For exampleGuest’s[49] critique of Peters and Waterman’sbook cannot alter the fact that the ideas ofexcellence have entered the mindsets of man-agers and have had dramatic effects on theworking lives of many workers in the US andin the UK[50]. No one information age bookhas yet emerged to rival the popularity of ‘InSearch of Excellence’, but the information ageoutput is carried by a variety of media, andincludes the high profile ‘gurus’ Tom Petersand Charles Handy who promulgate themessage to a wide audience.

But just as the ‘excellence’ ideas of quality,commitment and empowerment, when mani-

Page 5: Telework and the Information Age

fested in material change, have been per-ceived very differently by the workforces onthe receiving end, so might these new ideasof ‘virtual organisations’, ‘teleworkers’ and‘global teamworking’. We need to look atmore rigorous evidence to judge whether theoptimistic predictions of the information ageliterature are coming true. Indeed, if as thecommentators suggest, we are already in theperiod of transition to the information age(Bell, Toffler, and Handy, for example)[51]we should be starting to see early manifes-tations of these changes within some Westerneconomies. We would expect to find suchchanges to be most advanced in those econ-omies where there is a relatively well-developed information and communicationsinfrastructure, where there is a highly edu-cated and computer-literate workforce, andwhere reasonably rapid change can be facili-tated in work organisations and in labourusage. Evidence from the UK and some fromthe US for the development of the virtualorganisation and various forms of teleworkwill be examined.

An age of transition—theevidence for virtual

organisationsWhat is the evidence for the existence of neworganisational forms, such as the virtualenterprise or the elusive office? Research atthe organisational level shows that there hasbeen little development of totally virtualorganisations, and where they exist, most arefound to have been restructured throughincremental rather than revolutionarychange. There is disagreement about whatconstitutes virtuality and many organisationsare only variations of traditional organis-ational models[52]. Companies with flatstructures, a degree of adhocracy and team-orientation tend to label themselves as vir-tual. Cited examples of ‘true’ virtualityinclude Reebok, Nike and Puma, all sportsclothing companies where the use of com-puter networks within and betweenenterprises is of central importance, as is theexistence of a small hub or core which net-works with many other enterprises to pro-duce and market the product. Reebok’s onlyemployees are designers. Campbell[53] alsoadds Dell, Gateway, Benetton and IKEA tothe list, because they focus on core valueadded processes and alliances with suppliers

Telework and the information age 55 Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 1997.

in order to respond quickly to the changingmarketplace. Huws et al.[54] describe a simi-lar organisational trend, which they call the‘elusive office’:

. . . organisations will increasingly cease to bedefined in terms of the numbers of people theyhave on the payroll, and the types of activity beingcarried out under their direct control, but in termsof the activities which they control indirectly,through a network of contracts with smaller sup-pliers, with central control over such functions asproduct image, distribution or sales . . . Theoffice—the site where information is generated,processed and exchanged—has ceased to have anyfixed geographical boundaries. (p. 220)

Barnatt[55] calls such firms dynamic net-works, not virtual organisations, as for him,virtuality is essentially about the loose coup-ling of free agent individuals to a lean manage-ment centre. He emphasises that it is thedrawing together of freelance, self-employedworkers across space and time which givesthem the fastest possible response to thechaotic business environment. Virtual organ-isations, according to Barnatt, add value notthrough the combination of land, labour andcapital to produce goods and services, butthrough translating information into knowl-edge, which can then be used to mobilise tra-ditional resources when clients demandthem. The case of a virtual management con-sultancy that he describes has all these fea-tures, and he predicts a future where:

. . . with a free agent mentality having alreadybeen bred into a significant proportion of thepopulation by those who have allowed them tobuy out of the welfare state, it may only be a mat-ter of time before quite a few portfolio individualscome to expect to purchase their own job on theirown terms (p. 14).

Similarly, Negroponte[56] predicts that bythe year 2020 the predominant grouping ofworkers in advanced Western economies willbe the own-account self-employed. A futureof atomised individuals bearing the risk ofgenerating sufficient income flow andoperating in a global labour market is there-fore predicted for the majority. This contrastswith current UK statistics which show thatcurrently the self-employed make up only13% of the total workforce, numbering justover three millions, of whom two million orso are self-employed without employees[57].Nevertheless, this form of employment hasexpanded unambiguously in the UK over thelast one and a half decades, and the incidenceis now higher than most of the EU Member

Page 6: Telework and the Information Age

States. There is evidence that the growth inthe numbers of the self-employed withoutemployees in the UK is associated with thedecline in employment opportunities in themainstream labour market, larger numbers ofwomen in the labour market, and also sometax advantages of self-employment ratherthan entrepreneurial ‘pull’[58]. The numbersof self-employed are predicted to grow by800,000 by the year 2006, mainly because offurther outsourcing by large companies[59].How much of this growth is related to tech-nological change is unknown.

In terms of the dynamic network versionof the virtual organisation, the evidence isthat the use of network technology in manu-facturing and in services in the UK has ledto the development of flatter structures, func-tional integration and some cross-functionalteamworking[60], but the effects on organis-ations in the UK of telematic links betweenfirms are not as yet significant, with thepossibilities of change potentially great butrelatively unexploited[61]. Huws cites theexample of electronic networking betweenthe small textile and clothing firms in North-ern Italy (much cited in the flexible specialis-ation literature), which created a synergisticeffect. These alliances, however, were nottechnologically but socially and politicallydriven, demonstrating the dangers of crudetechnological determinism[62].

An age of transition—the evidencefor telework

Projections of the exponential growth of tele-work in the 1980s in the US and the UK havenot been realised[63], though there are moremodest indications of its percolation into awider number of sectors and occupations inthe UK[64], in addition to the ‘first wave’ ofteleworkers who tended to work in IT andtelecommunications. Telework encompassesmany spatial and temporal patterns of work,class positions and forms of employment,and the following sections of the article dis-cuss some of these.

Employed teleworkers

Despite predictions that the future ‘symbolicanalysers’ will be exclusively self-employed,research shows that teleworkers are stillembedded in traditional hierarchical organis-ations. Huws’ national study of employed,homebased teleworkers concluded that about

56 New Technology, Work and Employment Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 1997.

six per cent of firms used telework and onlyone in 200 employees were teleworkers[65].A Reed/Home Office Partnership study[66]found 13% of British employers usinghomebased telework. Studies carried out inthe mid-1990s still find small numbers whoare teleworking. Data from other Europeancountries shows differential development ofhomebased telework in each country, withless in the UK than Nordic countries, butmore in the UK than most EU member states.Studies agree that overall there is a smallamount of this kind of work[67]. However, ifwe move away from the exclusive emphasison ICT homework, the most interestingdevelopment is call centre work whichappears to be a growth area of employment.The European Commission[68] estimates that130,000 people are employed Europe-wide incall centres. The UK alone has at least 5,000centres where workers provide informationto remote customers, or provide services suchas travel bookings, direct banking andinsurance[69].

Self-employed teleworkers

It is impossible to estimate numbers orgrowth trends of self-employed teleworkersin the UK, as there is still no watertight defi-nition. Some of the two million own-accountself-employed in the UK may be teleworkersbecause of the technology they employ,including unknown numbers of freelanceconsultants and other professional group-ings. Felstead[70] using national figuresidentified about 300,000 traditional home-workers, but also found that the majority(67%) were self-employed clerical and sec-retarial workers some of whom could also bedefined as teleworkers. He concluded thatthe figures are likely to be gross underesti-mates, and that there has been a considerablegrowth in the numbers of homeworkers sincethe early 1980s. The limited research whichhas been carried out into self-employed tele-workers in the UK has used a sectoral oroccupational case study approach, whichcannot be grossed up to provide national esti-mates. Two surveys of freelance teleworkers,one of 371 editors and proof-readers in bookpublishing[71] and the other of 200 trans-lators[72] showed a trend of growth in thiswork form. There is also evidence for agrowth in outsourcing of IT services butavailable survey material was concerned

Page 7: Telework and the Information Age

with outsourcing to specialist companiesrather than self-employed individuals[73].

Homebased telework

Much of the discourse on telework in the UKhas centred on homebased telework. It can bebroken down into three main groupings[74].Homebased teleworkers may be employeeswho work at home for part of their workingtime, or secondly totally homebased. A thirdcategory is freelance telehomeworkers.

Those who are homebased for part of theirworking week tend to be male, withemployee status and relatively highly skilled.They tend to enjoy the combination of work-ing in an office and at home, and generallydo not suffer isolation. Huws’ study[75]found that these teleworkers were often care-fully selected by line managers as reliableand trustworthy. The extent of such work isdifficult to gauge, because many of thesehomeworkers are teleworking on an informalbasis, and the evidence is based on case stud-ies of firms where the incidence may wax andwane. These teleworkers are close to thepopular notion of information age workers,as they are usually well-paid, with relativelyscarce skills, with high trust relationships andsome degree of autonomy over where andwhen they work. They are usually ‘off-line’teleworkers, who link up to company com-puter networks as and when necessary[76].

However, there are employees who com-bine home and office work whose rights to‘ownership’ of physical space at work arebeing eroded. ‘Hot-desking’ is becomingmore widespread in occupations where tele-workers are expected to visit clients, such asconsultants and technical managers. Thecomputer company Digital have cut costs bygreatly reducing their office space with desk-sharing and drop-in centres instead of dedi-cated space for employees. Anderson Con-sulting is one of several consulting firms whohave ‘hot-desking’ arrangements. A variationis ‘hotelling’ where client companies provideworkers with access to computer networksand office facilities, rather than the employer.

In contrast to the previous category, thosehomebased for all their working time andworking for one employer are generallywomen doing low-skilled clerical work suchas data entry, typing or questionnaire coding.Despite their dependence upon one employerthey are often treated as self-employed andpaid by results. There is also a minority

Telework and the information age 57 Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 1997.

doing more skilled work, and some areemployees. These teleworkers have much incommon with traditional manufacturinghomeworkers[77], with low pay, unpredict-able work loads and unsocial hours. Suchworkers are isolated, and often excludedfrom trade union representation[78]. Exactnumbers are, again, impossible to estimate,but the National Group on Homeworkingbelieve that there are more than one millionhomeworkers in the UK, and Felstead calcu-lated that more than half of those who appearin national statistics were doing clerical work.The evidence is that this type of routine‘back-office’ telework is expanding, not con-tracting. Not all such work is conducted ona self-employed basis, and in some cases tele-workers have similar terms and conditions toon-site workers, at least at the outset, thoughthere are instances of employers using themove to homebased work to unilaterally alterhours of work or introduce compulsory over-time[79]. A recent example of a move tohomebased telework is at Scottish Widowswhere 20 insurance homeworkers are provid-ing administrative back up for the head officein Edinburgh[80]. Typically, such caseexamples still involve small numbers.

Freelance homebased teleworkers, who arefree to contract work with as many clients asthey wish, are another group working in theirown homes. Some are in occupations wherefreelance work is a tradition, and dependenceupon ICTs is relatively recent[81] but othersare in jobs created by information and com-munications technology. Some have becomesmall business owners[82], but many remainone-person businesses. The evidence is thatworkers have become freelance in the 1980snot because of the attraction of self-employ-ment, but because of cost-cutting throughdownsizing amongst employers and theincreased use of outsourcing. Where theworkforce is predominantly female, clientemployers may tend to use the freelanceworkforce as a skilled, low cost resource[83].Some freelance organisations are being cre-ated as virtual, for example Huws’ case of thetranslation agency. Such organisations arerare in the UK.

Mobile telework

Mobile telework is on the increase, with someworkers in traditional occupations, such assales representatives, using ICTs to enhancetheir productivity or eliminate or reduce the

Page 8: Telework and the Information Age

need for office space. Others are workerswhose jobs have become more mobilethrough the re-engineering of organisationsto become more ‘customer-focused’, coupledwith the opportunities offered by the tech-nology[84]. These workers tend to be maleand full-time, and are predominantlyemployees. One example of a new group ofmobile teleworkers is British Gas Serviceworkers, who now receive daily work sched-ules directly into their vans. Their managershave home computer networks to track thelocation of their staff through the software.This has enabled British Gas to reduce thenumber of offices from 120 to 37[85]. Themove to mobile work was compulsory.Employers are using ICTs to increase pro-ductivity or reduce costs of such staff in theseways, involving quite high numbers insome cases.

Remote site telework

Teleworking on remote sites includes directcustomer interface (call-centre) work, or theprocessing of correspondence, mortgageapplications and credit card payments. Thetechnology facilitates remote work betweensites locally, regionally or globally. Typicallythe jobs are of low skill, and the suburbanis-ation of such centres can tap into a pool ofmarried women seeking local part-timeemployment[86]. Some of the retail bankshave set up remote sites to deal with backoffice work from branches on twilightshifts[87], others have opened 24 hour, directtelephone banking centres in remotelocations, such as Natwest Bank at SalfordQuays. The banks appear to be creating anew deskilled workforce in these centres,where there is no longer a need for qualifi-cations, and direct banking staff can betrained in three weeks[88]. There is a highintensity of work, closely controlled by thetechnology. Call rates are monitored and thesoftware prompts the correct words andphrases to be used with customers. Typicallyit includes shift and night work. The bankingtrades union BIFU reports that workers inthese centres are sometimes excluded fromthe better employment policies which accrueto branch workers, the jobs are ‘careerless’and the workforce treated as peripheral andeasily disposable[89]. Such work is also vul-nerable to geographical displacement off-shore as there is a great deal of competition

58 New Technology, Work and Employment Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 1997.

from developing countries where employ-ment costs are lower.

Looking at UK telework as a whole, betterqualified, professional and technical tele-workers are more likely to be given some dis-cretion in their work, and are more likely toremain part of the internal labour market ofthe firm but many teleworkers, regardless ofclass position, appear to be more vulnerablethan conventional staff to erosion of termsand conditions, if they are remote from theworkplace. They may be excluded from thesocial dialogue and may have fewer opport-unities for progression than their on-sitecounterparts, due to their lack of visibility.Trades unions find representing teleworkersmore difficult than conventional staff unlessthey are in a strong position, or whereemployers are willing to enter into compre-hensive collective agreements, such as is thecase with British Telecom[90]. Existing bar-gaining arrangements are not always suitablefor handling technical change[91].

There is evidence that UK employers areusing telework to cut costs by deskillingwork or eroding terms and conditions ratherthan to create post-modern, empowered tele-workers. Homebased and mobile teleworkand ‘hot-desking’ are enabling firms toreduce costs by the disposal of office spaceand there is an increase in offshore teleworkwith firms outsourcing IT work to cheaperlocations such as Bangalore, India[92]. Econ-omic pressures and global competition seemto be drivers for accelerated technologicalchange, but not necessarily with the out-comes for work and employment predictedby the gurus of the information age.

The popular literature also tends to be gen-der-blind. It concentrates almost exclusivelyon the highly-paid elite of teleworkers whoare generally male. There is an implicitassumption in the discourse that routine or‘back office’ workers (usually female) willdwindle[93] or be moved offshore. There isan occasional exhortation that the technologyshould not be used to create a new army oflow-paid, disadvantaged women workers.Usually, there is no mention of gender at all.Studies of gender and telework[94] show thatthe gender segmentation of the labour marketis being recreated in the UK teleworkforce,and even where similarly qualified men andwomen are found in high tech occupations,an income differential between the sexesemerges.

Occupational class position is also

Page 9: Telework and the Information Age

important in analysing how telework isimplemented. Where women and men haveskills or experience which is in short supply,telework can be liberating and well-rewarded[95]. These workers are often pro-fessionals who have a high degree of discre-tion in their work and are treated as respon-sibly autonomous. This contrasts with theroutine data entry clerk or the call centreworker where the technology is used totighten managerial control, and surveillancetechniques are used to increase the pre-dictability of the performance of the workersand to intensify work.

To sum up, the take-up of telework in theUK, as in Europe, is currently low and grow-ing only slowly. There is as yet no evidencethat the coming of the information age isreducing the amount of routine work such asdata input or word-processing but it may beeasily located in cheaper areas or offshore.Teleworking has variable outcomes for work-ers in terms of quality of work life, and thereis clear evidence of the perpetuation of labourmarket segmentation and the continuedimportance of gender and class divisions inthe teleworkforce. ICTs are being used todeskill work as well as to facilitate distrib-uted high discretion jobs, and electronic sur-veillance can be used to enhance and inten-sify managerial control.

Information age or high-techcapitalism?

In this concluding section, a summary of themain predictions of the information age writ-ers is compared with what is happening sofar in a broader context. It must be borne inmind that if we are moving to a revolution-ary new age, we may not be very far alongthe way. The information superhighway isnot fully in place, the Internet being only itslow tech precursor, and although some formsof digitised media are coming on stream,such as television channels, a lot of the poten-tial services do not as yet exist. The con-clusions drawn are therefore tentative, andare put forward to suggest further areas forserious study and research.

First, at the macro level of analysis, whatis the evidence that the information age willre-energise the economies of Westernsocieties? Overall there is not enough evi-dence for any conclusions to be drawn,except that there may be a primacy effect—economies may benefit by being the first to

Telework and the information age 59 Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 1997.

develop a sophisticated ICT infrastructure,but others may catch up. Developing econ-omies may be able to compete more easilywith industrialised countries in the infor-mation age than they have been in the indus-trial age because the required infrastructureis far less costly, so that the information agemay not defuse the ‘global threat’ to theWest. There is also a ‘locked-in’ effect whichmay apply to societies as it appears to do atcompany level[96] whereby once there isheavy involvement in a particular technologychoices from then on are inevitably nar-rowed, and a certain ‘logic’ must be followed.

The question of whether the informationage creates high quality jobs and reducesnumbers of routine jobs still remainsunanswered. There is some evidence thatthere has been an increase in technical jobsto design and support new ICT infrastruc-ture, but at the same time many jobs in theUK telecommunications industry have beenlost over recent years, making it difficult toestimate the net result. There is evidence thatroutine jobs may be increasing, but there mayalso be a displacement effect which is clearlyvisible in the retail banking sector, whereremote offices are being created in parallelwith the closure of bank branches[97]. Arelated issue is whether the information agewill increase the net number of jobs overall.Boddy and Gunson[98] conclude that net-worked technology may destroy jobs, whichreverses their previous findings for com-puter-based technology. There may be somenew jobs created, but overall there may be‘jobless growth’ in the economy. A complicat-ing factor is the economic cycle, as employersin a recession are more likely to use tech-nology to reduce job numbers, whereas in aboom period they may concentrate on retain-ing scarce skills through enhancing telework-ers’ time and location flexibility. Economicfactors also make it difficult to predictwhether telework will lead to employerschanging the contract status of remoteemployees to self-employed. There is also thepower of belief in the ideology of ‘excellence’which values enterprise and self-employmentand tends to denigrate conventional employ-ment. This can be just as strong an influenceon managers’ decisions as any ‘logic’ of tech-nology.

There is some evidence that network tech-nology has an effect on organisational struc-ture. Boddy and Gunson found clear evi-dence of changes within firms. They found

Page 10: Telework and the Information Age

no evidence that it affects relationshipsbetween firms with the caveat that it may betoo soon to tell. Virtual organisations withouta physical location and only a temporary‘structure’ may be a rarity, but this may bebecause of these very attributes, making themvery difficult for social scientists to identify,used as they are to studying factory or officelocations where workers are co-located.Research needs to distinguish between theeffects of technology on existing firms, andhow new enterprises are affected. The role oflarge companies and MNCs in the infor-mation age is another area neglected in theliterature.

The effects of the information age onwomen in the labour market appear to takethe form of perpetuation of the existing hori-zontal and vertical divisions with the bulk oflow-skill, low-paid telework jobs done bywomen, and most of the high status, well-paid jobs done by men. Working in the homedoes not break down existing segmented sexroles as Toffler[99] predicted but mayreinforce them. There is also no evidence thatit breaks down class divisions. The statusbarriers remain, and in general the elite ofteleworkers tend to have a significantly dif-ferent experience of work to routine workers.However, remote workers may all share anincreased vulnerability to cost-cutting byemployers, and may all tend to be excludedfrom features of the internal labour marketsuch as opportunities for promotion.

To conclude, if we are in transition to anew age, will it inevitably have benign andprogressive outcomes? According to Bell aswell as most of the recent writers, both aca-demic and popular, the information age willbe a new utopia, with collaborative knowl-edge workers enjoying intrinsically satisfyingwork, economic prosperity and democraticaccess to information. Alternatively, the evi-dence discussed here suggests that it is justas likely that the outcome could be rather dif-ferent, with a polarisation of jobs betweenhigh quality and low-skilled, and a scarcityof employment because of jobless growth,resulting in an elite of ‘information-rich’ anda mass of ‘information-poor’. The greatestchallenge of the new age may be how toensure that its potential benefits are sharedby all classes.

60 New Technology, Work and Employment Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 1997.

References

1. Negroponte, N., Being Digital, Hodder andStoughton, 1995.

2. Bell, D., ‘The Social Framework of the Infor-mation Society’, in Forester, T. (ed) TheMicroelectronics Revolution, Basil Blackwell,1980; European Commission, People First: Chal-lenges of Living and Working in the EuropeanInformation Society, Colloquium, 30 September–1 October 1996.

3. McLoughlin, I. and Clark, J., TechnologicalChange at Work, Open University Press, SecondEdition, 1994.

4. Freeman, C., Clark, J. and Soete, L., Unemploy-ment and Technical Innovation, Frances Pinter,1982.

5. Bell, D., The Coming of Post-Industrial Society,Penguin Books, 1973; Bell, op. cit., 1980.

6. Pollert, A. (ed), Farewell to Flexibility? BasilBlackwell, 1991.

7. Piore, M. and Sabel, C., The Second IndustrialDivide: Possibilities for Prosperity, Basic Books,1984; Handy, C., The Age of Unreason, BusinessBooks, 1989; Barnatt, C., Cyber Business: Mind-sets for a Wired Age, Wiley, 1996.

8. du Gay, P. and Salaman, G., ‘The Cult(ure) ofthe Customer’, Journal of Management Studies,29, 5, September 1992.

9. Focus, The Observer, 4 August: 17, 1996.10. ‘Labour on Net’, The Guardian, 5 October, 1995.11. Bangemann, M. et al, Europe and the Global Infor-

mation Society: Recommendations to the EuropeanCouncil, Brussels, 26 May, 1994.

12. Freeman et al., op. cit., 1982.13. In McLoughlin and Clark, op. cit., 1994.14. In McLoughlin and Clark, op. cit., 1994.15. DTI, Computer Supported Co-operative Work: a

decision maker’s briefing, Department of Tradeand Industry, June 1995.

16. Tapscott, D., The Digital Economy: Promise andPeril in the Age of Networked Intelligence,McGraw Hill, 1996.

17. Barnatt, op cit, 1996.18. Drucker, P., ‘The Coming of the New Organis-

ation’, in Salaman, G. (ed) Human Resource Stra-tegies, Sage, 1992.

19. Huws, U., Korte, W. and Robinson, S., Telework:Towards the Elusive Office, Wiley, 1990.

20. Bailyn, L., ‘Freeing Work from the Constraintsof Location and Time’, New Technology Workand Employment, 3, 2, Autumn 1988.

21. Barnatt, C., Virtual Organisation in the SmallBusiness Sector: the Case of Cavendish Manage-ment Resources, draft unpublished article, June1996.

22. Birchall, D. and Lyons, L., Creating Tomorrow’sOrganization: Unlocking the Benefits of FutureWork, Pitman Publishing, 1995.

23. Drucker, op cit, 1992; Barnatt, op cit, 1996.24. Bertin, I. and Denbigh, A., The Teleworking

Handbook: New Ways of Working in the Infor-

Page 11: Telework and the Information Age

mation Society, The Telecottage Association,1996.

25. Handy, C., The Future of Work, BasilBlackwell, 1985.

26. Barnatt, op cit, 1996.27. Negroponte, op cit, 1995.28. Handy, C., ‘Trust and the Virtual Organiza-

tion’, Harvard Business Review, May–June,pp. 40–50, 1995.

29. McGrath, P. and Houlihan, M., ‘Conceptualis-ing Telework: modern or post-modern?’ Papergiven at the Conference New International Per-spectives on Telework: From Telecommuting to theVirtual Organisation, Work and OrganisationResearch Centre, Brunel University, 31 July–2August 1996.

30. Jackson, P., ‘Information systems as metaphor:innovation and the 3Rs of representation’, inMcLoughlin, I. and Harris, M. (eds) Innovation,Organizational Change and Technology, ThomsonBusiness Press, 1997.

31. Drucker, op cit, 1992.32. McGrath and Houlihan, op cit, 1996.33. European Commission, op cit, 1996.34. Legge, K., Human Resource Management: Rhet-

orics and Realities, Macmillan Business, 1995.35. Birchall and Lyons, op cit, 1995.36. Barnatt, op cit, 1996.37. Jackson, op cit, 1997.38. Grenier, R. and Metes, G., Going Virtual: Moving

your Organization into the 21st Century, PrenticeHall, 1995.

39. Tapscott, op cit, 1996.40. Birchall and Lyons, op cit, 1995.41. Gates, B., The Road Ahead, Viking, 1995.42. Birt, J., ‘Gateway to the BBC’s Future’, The

Guardian, Features, 24 August: 27, 1996.43. Bangemann, op cit, 1994.44. Mitchell, H., ‘Telework, Teletrade and Teleco-

operation: New Work Opportunities for Eur-ope’, Paper given at the Congress on Telework:Chance or Challenge for Europe, European Tele-work Congress, Luxembourg, 26–28 June, 1996.

45. Millar, J., ‘Implementing and Managing Flex-ible Working’, Paper given at the Colloquium onThe Home as an Office, Institution of ElectricalEngineers, 29 February 1996.

46. Drucker, op cit, 1992, p. 192.47. Child, J., Organisation: A Guide to Problems and

Practice, Second Edition, Harper and Row, 1984.48. Boddy, D. and Gunson, N., Organizations in the

Network Age, Routledge, 1997.49. Guest, D., ‘Right Enough to be Dangerously

Wrong: an analysis of the In Search of Excellencephenomenon’, in Salaman, G. (ed) HumanResource Strategies, Sage, 1992.

50. du Gay and Salaman, op cit, 1992.51. Bell, op cit, 1980; Toffler, A., The Third Wave,

Pan Books, 1981; Handy, C., The Age of Unrea-son, Business Books, 1989.

52. Appel, W. and Behr, R., ‘The importance ofmodern information and communication tech-nologies for the formation of virtual organis-

Telework and the information age 61 Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 1997.

ations: an analysis by means of the transactioncost approach’, Paper given at the ConferenceNew International Perspectives on Telework: FromTelecommuting to the Virtual Organisation, Workand Organisation Research Centre, Brunel Uni-versity, 31 July–2 August 1996.

53. Campbell, A. ‘Creating the virtual organisationand managing the distributed workforce’,Paper given at the Conference New InternationalPerspectives on Telework: From Telecommuting tothe Virtual Organisation, Work and OrganisationResearch Centre, Brunel University, 31 July–2August 1996.

54. Huws et al, op cit, 1990.55. Barnatt, op cit, 1996.56. Negroponte, op cit, 1995.57. DTI, Small Firms in Britain Report, Department

of Trade and Industry, HMSO, 1994.58. Rubery, J., ‘Precarious Forms of Work in the

United Kingdom’, in Rodgers, G. and Rodgers,J. (Eds) Precarious Jobs in Labour Market Regu-lation, ILO, 1989.

59. DFEE, Labour Market and Skill Trends 1997/1998,DFEE, 1997.

60. Clark, J. (ed) Human Resource Management andTechnical Change, Sage, 1993; Boddy and Gun-son, op cit, 1997.

61. Boddy and Gunson, ibid, 1997.62. Huws, U., Social Europe: Follow up to the White

Paper—Teleworking, European CommissionDGV, Office for Official Publications of the Eur-opean Commission, 1995.

63. Gillespie, A., Richardson, R. and Cornford, J.,Review of Telework in Britain: implications for pub-lic policy, Newcastle Programme on Informationand Communications Technologies, CURDS,University of Newcastle upon Tyne, 1995.

64. Huws, U., Teleworking in Britain: a Report to theEmployment Department, Research Series No. 18,October 1993.

65. Huws, ibid, 1993.66. Reed/The Home Office Partnership, The Shape

of Work to Come, Reed Personnel Services, 1995.67. Brewster, C., Hegewisch, A., Lockhart, T. and

Mayne, L., Flexible Working Patterns in Europe,Issues in People Management No. 6, Institute ofPersonnel Management, 1993; EIRR ‘Telework-ing in Europe: part one, European IndustrialRelations Review, May: 17–20, 1996.

68. European Commission, op cit, 1996.69. Teleworker, The, ‘When I’m Calling you . . .’,

October/November: 14–17, 1996.70. Felstead, A., ‘Concepts, Definitions and Esti-

mates of the Extent and Characteristics ofHomeworking in Britain’, Paper presented tothe 17th International Working Party on LabourMarket Segmentation Conference, University ofSiena, July 1995.

71. Stanworth, J., Stanworth, C. and Purdy, D., Self-Employment and Labour Market Restructuring: thecase of freelance teleworkers in book publishing,University of Westminster Press, 1993.

72. Huws, U., Podro, S., Gunnarson, E., Weijers, T.,

Page 12: Telework and the Information Age

Arvanitaki, K. and Trova, V., Teleworking andGender, Institute for Employment StudiesReport 117, University of Sussex, 1996.

73. MSF, The Outsourcing of IT Services: Leading Edgeor Bleeding Edge? A Guide for Members, MSFInformation Technology Professionals Associ-ation, 1996.

74. Huws, op cit, 1995.75. Huws, op cit, 1993.76. Bibby, A., Trade Unions and Telework, FIET,

downloaded on 4/2/1997 from website: http://www.eclipse.co.uk/pens/bibby/fietrpt.html,1996.

77. Huws, U., Key Results from a National Survey onHomeworkers, National Group on Home-working, Report No. 2, 1994; Stanworth, C.,Working at Home—A Study of Homeworking andTeleworking, Institute of Employment Rights,June 1996.

78. BIFU, Homeworking: potential applications andpossible consequences for BIFU, Revised Edition,Banking Insurance and Finance Union, 1993.

79. Labour Research, ‘Home is Where the Com-puter is’, October 1995; Stanworth, op cit, 1996.

80. Teleworker, The, op cit, 1996.81. Stanworth et al, op cit, 1993.82. Judkins, P., West, D. and Drew, J., Networking

62 New Technology, Work and Employment Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 1997.

in Organisations—The Rank Xerox Experiment,Gower Press, 1985.

83. Stanworth et al, op cit, 1993; Huws et al, opcit, 1996.

84. Huws, op cit, 1995.85. Labour Research, op cit, 1995.86. Huws, op cit, 1995.87. Cressey, P. and Scott, P., ‘Employment, Tech-

nology and Industrial Relations in the ClearingBanks: is the honeymoon over?’, New Tech-nology, Work and Employment, Autumn: 83–96,1992.

88. BBC2, Working all Hours—Brave New Work,broadcast on 30 September 1995.

89. Huws, op cit, 1995; Stanworth, op cit, 1996.90. Stanworth, op cit, 1996.91. McLoughlin and Clark, op cit, 1994.92. MSF, op cit, 1996.93. McGrath and Houlihan, op cit, 1996.94. Phizacklea, A. and Wolkowitz, C., Homeworking

Women: Gender, Racism and Class at Work, Sage,1995; Huws et al, op cit, 1996.

95. Phizacklea and Wolkowitz, ibid, 1995.96. McLoughlin and Clark, op cit, 1994.97. Cressey and Scott, op cit, 1992.98. Boddy and Gunson, op cit, 1997.99. Toffler, op cit, 1981.