With Special Guest Ella Hafermalz
We continue our series of episodes related to the social change being spurred by the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic that has brought about rapid and immediate social change. In this episode, we explore the social and emotional impacts to the worker on having to work from home. For some workers, the concept of telework is hardly new. But many other vocations place great value on regular social contact with clients and customers. These include teachers, doctors, lawyers, public servants, and many others. The sudden thrust to teleworking for an unknown period of time has raised questions as to how these workers are coping with the new normal.
One of the classic critiques against the prevailing narrative of the time was Tom Forester’s “The Myth of the Electronic Cottage,” an article from Futures in 1988, republished in Computers & Society in 1989. A scholar who published numerous books and articles on computing ethics and the oncoming threat of cybercrime, Forester’s perspective was cautionary yet not alarmist — presenting evidence that psychologically, socially, and technologically that people and their environments were not only unpreparedness for mass telework, but perhaps would never be.
We welcome back former cast member Ella Hafermalz whose scholarship in workplace isolation inspired this episode!
Read With Us:
Forester, T. (1988). The myth of the electronic cottage. Futures, 20(3), 227-240.
To Know More:
Anderson, B., (2006). Imagined communities. Abingdon: Routledge.
Bailey, D. E., & Kurland, N. B. (2002). A review of telework research: Findings, new directions, and lessons for the study of modern work. Journal of Organizational Behavior. 23(4), 383-400.
Hafermalz, E. (2020). “Out of the Panopticon and into Exile: Visibility and Control in Distributed New Culture Organizations.” Organization Studies, 0170840620909962.
Whittle, A., & Mueller, F. (2009). ‘I could be dead for two weeks and my boss would never know’: Telework and the politics of representation. New Technology, Work and Employment, 24(2), 131-143.
Winchester, S. (1998). The professor and the madman. Penerbit Serambi.
