"You are free to set your own hours": governing worker productivity and health through flexibility and resilience

Social Science & Medicine
Ellen MacEachenJudy Clarke

Abstract

Flexible work is now endemic in modern economies. A growing literature both praises work flexibility for accommodating employees' needs and criticizes it for fueling contingency and job insecurity. Although studies have identified varied effects of flexible work, questions remain about the workplace dimensions of flexibility and how occupational workplace health is managed in these workplaces. This paper presents findings from a qualitative study of how managers in the computer software industry situate workplace flexibility and approach worker health. In-depth interviews were conducted with managers (and some workers) at 30 firms in Ontario, Canada. Using a critical discourse analysis approach, we examine managers' optimistic descriptions of flexibility which emphasize how flexible work contributes to workers' life balance. We then contrast this with managers' depictions of flexibility work practices as intense and inescapable. We suggest that the discourse of flexibility, and the work practices they foster, make possible and reinforce an increased intensity of work that is driven by the demands of technological pace and change that characterize the global information technology and computer software industries. Finally, we pr...Continue Reading

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Citations

Nov 3, 2011·Journal of Health Organization and Management·Ellinor TengelinLotta Dellve
Feb 9, 2010·Journal of Occupational Rehabilitation·Ellen MacEachenUNKNOWN Small Business Systematic Review Team
Feb 8, 2011·Disability and Rehabilitation·Åsa TjulinKerstin Ekberg
May 27, 2010·Canadian Review of Sociology = Revue Canadienne De Sociologie·Jean E Wallace, Marisa C Young
Apr 6, 2013·PloS One·Cecilia U D StenforsLars-Göran Nilsson
Feb 19, 2010·The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews·Kerry JoyceClare Bambra
May 30, 2020·International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health·Rubén TriguerosJosé M Aguilar-Parra
Sep 22, 2017·Journal of Health Organization and Management·Martin KitchenerSimon Cooper
Aug 10, 2019·International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health·Rubén TriguerosRemedios López-Liria
Dec 2, 2020·New Solutions : a Journal of Environmental and Occupational Health Policy : NS·Sonja SenthanarPhilip Bigelow
Feb 1, 2019·American Sociological Review·Daniel Schneider, Kristen Harknett
Jul 1, 2021·Socius : Sociological Research for a Dynamic World·Scott Schieman, Philip J Badawy

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