Much has been made of the mobile phone’s role in micro-coordination,14 the way it ofers greater flexibility of schedules and control over timing, thereby saving time. Even making calls during dead time, which might sound like an escalation of the pace of events, might also relieve stress. The pattern reported above does indeed suggest that a major use of the mobile phone is for the temporal coordination of family afairs. Given the increasing complexity of managing the logistics of everyday life, the mobile phone may be the ideal tool for our contemporary times.
In a rare study, Emily Rose examines the specific ways in which employees engage in personal communication during the workday for these purposes. Instead of just noting the occurrence or not of such communication, she explores the intricate practices people devise in order to influence the extent and form of the connection between their work and personal lives.15
The mostly male engineers interviewed valued the ability to attend to matters that contributed to the organization of domestic life, as well as drawing on family and friends for personal and professional support. Equally though, they acknowledged that the unfettered flow of personal life into work was undesirable. Concerns included receiving unwanted communications and inappropriate messages and revealing too much of one’s personal life to colleagues.
As a result, the employees deployed a range of strategies in a bid to exploit the benefits of personal contact during the workday while minimizing the downsides. They did this by managing, restricting or otherwise controlling incoming personal phone calls, texts and e-mail. This was achieved largely by granting prospective interlocutors access via specific modes. Some of these modes, such as e-mail and SMS, were favored because of their asynchronous properties, granting the receiver much greater freedom regarding when they respond. Moreover, in open-plan ofices, the most discreet means of interacting typically is computerbased e-mail, whereby personal communication can be disguised as a work task.
Chapter six
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