My article: “The post telework condition” has been published by the journal of E-working.
Abstract
“His weariness is that of the gladiator after the combat; his work was the whitewashing of a corner in a state official’s office”. Franz Kafka.
The idea of the office seems to be engraved in our consciousness: the dreadfulness, the numbness of the office floats through Franz Kafka’s stories like the smell of mould in the old offices his characters are trapped in. The office of today appears not to be able to get rid of its rather unpleasant reputation. Thus today, a large number of the office workers, given the opportunity, jump on the chance to work from home. But the division between working in an office or at home starts to blur. As an increasing number of people work in what I would like to call: “a post-telework condition”. Technology makes it possible to work anywhere, anytime, and thus many people spread their working hours in client’s offices, in planes, trains, at home as well as in “the office”. Somehow we still have and need offices, but what is their role today?
In this paper I will investigate the changing role of the workplace amid the other confetti of transitional spaces people use as their working environment. In order for companies to attract and retain high quality staff they need to take a renewed importance of the workplace into consideration. The role of the office today is to act as a catalyst in company culture creation as well as team building, collaborating, learning, and knowledge sharing. The paper will show that both the perception and the idea of the office are going through tremendous changes. The clear division that existed between telework and office work is blurring as we are witnessing the emergence of a post-telework condition in which the corporate workplace will regain a renewed importance. Finally a case study will be presented that takes all these issues into consideration.
You can read the full text here.
The international ITA workshop will be in Krakow, Poland this year. I will not be able to join in person but I will be making a live video presentation. This year’s theme will be “ICT-supported collaboration and flexible working perceived as vehicles for stimulating local development, supporting entrepreneurship and building a fully inclusive Information Society.”
The tittle for my presentation is “What does regionalism mean today”, in this presentation I want to address the (new) meaning of regionalism today. Cities, and especially larger cities, are known due to their importance in the global economy, or due to their cultural, political or religious importance. The hierarchy and importance of a city acts as an attractor which has been the main drive for the growth of cities. A city is nothing more than a grouping of architecture, and architecture are man-made structures that support human activity. Thus initially regionalism was defined by its architecture, as architecture was the very expression of the region, not only as an expression of the activities that formed the attraction of the place, but also as the materials that were used to construct the architecture which would come directly from the regional context. Today all of this is changing. Success of a city and of a region today depends on the success of its attractors. If in the past the attraction grew slowly and depended on a hierarchical system, today the attraction can be created (almost) overnight. Think of Bilbao in Spain, the construction of the Guggenheim museum has placed this sleepy little town on the global map, or Dubai which is moving from a camel market place into a global city within a few years, or the Chinese manufacturing cities that have and are popping up like mushrooms in the Chinese countryside.
Thus regionalism today is defined by forcing the importance of the hierarchy in both the immediate as well as the global context. Thus regions, small as well as larger cities will strive and compete to become a dot of importance (of fill in the gap here) on the transitional world map.
