Computer-Mediated Communication and the Virtual Workplace: the Social and Political Processes of Change

Abstract

Over the past 40 years there have been numerous studies into the effects of information technology on the organisation and control of work. With each new cluster of innovations, new popularised descriptions and predictions emerge. These are often followed by the more academic research-based account which typically questions simple media images or the long-running technological determinisi position. The widespread media discourse on virtuality has once again rekindled a common conception of technology as determining society and the future of work. In this article, we seek to question these type of technological determinisi accounts in a more critical examination of the virtual workplace as an emerging organisational form. In so doing, attention is given to the increasing use of email, video-conferencing and virtual teams. It is argued that, whilst new popularised accounts tend to dominate public discourse, in practice there is a complex dynamic interplay between technology and social processes in the transition to newforms of work organisation. In drawing on new empirical material from Shell, BP, Conoco and the CSIRO, the article concludes that the outcomes of technology are shaped by social and political processes that may recreate the divisions of an unequal society within these new and emerging forms of work organisation.