More work-related blog research...

For the second month in succession is a new research article on work-related blogs.

It's by Abigail Schoneboom again.

The title of the article is Workblogging in a Facebook age.

The abstract is as follows:

In keeping with this journal’s recent attempt to revive worker narratives as a means of understanding social questions, this research note reflects on the significance of workblogging as a window on the labour process.

The article reflects on the impact of emerging social networking tools such as Facebook, as well as factors such as increased surveillance and blog searchability, on how and where workplace stories are told.

It assesses some of the problems of conducting research in a rapidly changing blogosphere and argues that researchers must sustain trusting relationships with bloggers, as well as staying abreast of emerging social networking practices, in order not to lose sight of these important recalcitrant voices.

For more details of the said article click here.

New work-related blog research

A new research article by Abigail Schoneboom on work-related blogs has just come out.

It has been published in the New Technology, Work and Employment journal.

It is entitled: Sleeping giants? Fired workbloggers and labour organisation.

The abstract reads as follows:

This paper argues that the Waterstone's fired blogger incident performed a labour organising function in terms of garnering pro-labour media attention and encouraging critical discourse.

Looking at the blog's distinctive features and evolution, it evaluates the strengths, limitations and potential for recurrence of similar high-profile incidents.

For more details click here.

Doctor of work blogging

Abigail Schoneboom has put her PhD on-line.

The subject is work blogging.

The title and abstract:

Hiding Out: Creative Resistance Among Anonymous Workbloggers

Anonymous workbloggers -- employees who write online diaries about their work -- are often simultaneously productive workers and savage critics of the organizational cultures in which they toil.

Looking at how bloggers indulge their creative and political aspirations while "hiding out" in office jobs, this research assesses the potential of blogging to transcend individualized cynicism and contribute to the critical transformation of work.

Broadly surveying media and organizational responses to the workblogging phenomenon, and engaging in ethnographic study of anonymous workbloggers on both sides of the Atlantic, my dissertation explores the relationship between emerging networked technologies and resistance.

Considering workers as authors, it documents the diversion of significant creative and intellectual resources away from the labor process.

Situating workbloggers within a rich tradition of iconoclastic literary and artistic responses to work, it explores whether embedded writers, in spite of their ambivalence about the alternative, can constitute an effective counter-hegemonic force.

From the following link you can access the full PhD as well as three papers based around the doctoral thesis.

Do you skive at work?

That's pretty much the question asked by Abigail Schoneboom, a researcher from the USA.

As such, if you do any of the following on work time - avoid work or a duty when you shouldn't - then follow this link to reveal that little bit more about how you go about shirking official responsibility.

Also see image.

Work blogs as creative resistance

It's a first as far as I'm aware, but the first academic article on work blogging has just been published.

It's written by Abigail Schoneboom and published by the journal Ethnography (subscription required).

An abstract of the article follows:

Anonymous workbloggers — employees who write online diaries about their work — are often simultaneously productive workers and savage critics of the organizational cultures in which they toil.

This research focuses on a small group of white-collar workers from the Greater Manchester and Lancashire area, who risk their jobs by writing publicly about their office experiences under assumed identities.

Countering the notion that resistance to corporate culture leads to `confusion and emptiness' (Willmott, 1993: 538), this study contributes to the recent revival of interest in worker misbehavior and recalcitrance.

By focusing on workers as authors, it addresses a shortcoming in the existing critical literature, which treats informal employee resistance as an intellectually and artistically unsophisticated phenomenon.

Drawing parallels with the lives and work of authors such as Franz Kafka and T.S. Eliot, it evaluates whether embedded writers, in spite of their ambivalence about the alternative, can constitute an effective counter-hegemonic force.

It's called Diary of a working boy: Creative resistance among anonymous workbloggers.

Hopefully my work will becoming out some time in 2008, as well as another paper I have planned for a conference in March.

Work-related blogs as creative resistance

Work-related blogs get quite a bit of attention in the popular media and last year saw three (that I know of) turned in to books.

Last week while Googling around for any further reports or mention of "work-related blogs", "employee blogs", "job blogs", "workblogging", etc. I came across an interesting piece of work on this very matter by Abigail Schoneboom.

The working paper is called Diary of a Working Boy: Creative Resistance Among Anonymous Workbloggers and can be downloaded here.

It's particularly ironic for myself as I'm just about in the final stages of finishing my second working paper (really a better version of the first!) on work-related blogs, for a conference in Amsterdam next month - a paper that I will put on-line after I've presented it.

A quick summary of the study follows:

...the study aims to understand the intersection between workblogging, creative writing, and social change, capturing the appeal of humdrum office jobs to aspiring writers and activists who pursue their emancipation clandestinely within the organisation.

I particularly like a further line from the abstract:

In an era where employers increasingly seek to improve worker productivity by nurturing a strong organisational culture based on informal bonds and self-management, workbloggers use their writing to buffer themselves against the company’s attempt to secure their hearts and minds, making fun of management gurus and celebrating ways to reclaim time while appearing to be hard at work.

Well worth a read!