Whistle While You Work 1

Whistle While You Work:

Work, Play and the New Economy

Siri Shadduck

Master of Applied Cultural Analysis SupervisorsDepartment of Arts and Cultural Sciences Jonas Frykman TKAM01 Jessica Enevold

Whistle While You Work 2

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank all the teachers of MACA who made this unique opportunity possible. A hat tip to my advisors, for all of their much appreciated help and support. And a thank you goes to my dear friends for their creative input and spirited encouragement.

Whistle While You Work 3

Abstract

Talk about work traditionally has meant an interruption of the finer, more bacchanalian sensibilities. To wit, labor is laborious. But what happens when work becomes play? When play becomes work? This paper is an exploration of the seemingly incongruent marriage of work and play. Often seen as frivolous and disorderly, play is not simply the terrain of toddlers; it is pervasive, for adults play too. The emergence of the New Economy in the late 90’s saw the alignment of culture and commerce. Here buzz words like experience, passion, creativity, and fun went hand in hand with economics. Management and HR departments, awakened to this trendy remix, were keen to adopt levity and play as core values. Employees, as it were, should have fun at work, and moreover, they should like what they do. And how could they not, when working hard is equated with playing hard? Based on an ethnographic account of play at work in a Scandinavian tech company, this thesis addresses how play becomes a convincing and valid means of management; how does it produce insight and innovation? Does play undermine productivity or underwrite it? At what point does play become work?

Keywords: Play, work, organizational culture, new economy, management

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Table of Contents Acknowledgements ii

Abstract iii

Table of Contents iv

Chapter I

Introduction......................................................................................................................................6

preface

Contextualisation: Aim/Questions...................................................................................................7

Overview of the structure of the paper............................................................................................9

Empirical Material..........................................................................................................................9

The Field Site................................................................................................................................10

Method/Methodology....................................................................................................................13

Chapter IIBackground/Theoretical Framework.............................................................................................13

Play.........................................................................................................................................13

The New Economy................................................................................................................16

Chapter IIIAnalysis Part I................................................................................................................................19

Style.......................................................................................................................................22

Materiality.............................................................................................................................25

Space.....................................................................................................................................29

Awareness.............................................................................................................................32

Interfaces...............................................................................................................................34

Website..................................................................................................................................37

Analysis Part II: Performance......................................................................................................5

On Ritual....................................................................................................................................38

Clocks...................................................................................................................................38

Beer.....................................................................................................................................42

Whistle While You Work 5

Affective Nets............................................................................................................................45

Fulfillment..................................................................................................................................48

Chapter Summary.................................................................................................................51

Chapter IV

Concluding Remarks and Further Discussion............................................................................52

Summary of Findings.................................................................................................................52

Reflections.................................................................................................................................53

Take Away Points.....................................................................................................................54

References.............................................................................................................................................56

Whistle While You Work 6

IntroductionPreface

‘Just whistle while you workPut on that grin and start right in to whistle loud and longJust hum a merry tuneJust do your best and take a rest and sing yourself a song

When there's too much to doDon't let it bother you, forget your troubles,Try to be just like a cheerful chick-a-dee

And whistle while you workCome on get smart, tune up and startTo whistle while you work’

‘If work were really such a good thing, then the rich would surely have found a way to keep it to themselves’ ~Haitian Proverb

It’s lunch time. The atrium is lit from above; natural light comes flooding in on sunny days. Most of the time though, it’s overcast and the incoming light is a dull grey. Someone has put on a reverberating pop song, a rush of warbling lalala’s punctuate the mealtime chatter. Meanwhile, a ping pong ball has flown astray and lands a little too close to a tray of sushi. ‘This place is a playground,’ my lunch mate intones. The ball goes off course again; this time it bounces off the wall and lands in the kitchen sink. Game over.

***

On her first day to work at a hip and young advertising firm, Julia is told to come up to the basket—a giant nest-like structure on top of the building. She climbs up several staircases that lead her into an office that seems more like an adult playground. Along the way she runs into a creative brainstorming session which entails being hit by balls, a curious blogger, a birthday party, and finally she arrives at the basket.

‘Hey, Julia! We’re mood showering. We hit you with a ball and you tell us the first thing that comes to your mind about sportswear.’

‘Come, play air guitar with us, it’s all good’

Whistle While You Work 7 ‘I’m doing a video for my blog, what’s your favorite burger in North America..?

‘Is it OK if I take your picture. It’s Tucker’s birthday, party’s about to start’.

‘Hey, want a break?’ You made it, took you a while, having too much fun?~From Portlandia

***

A summer ago I was in Thailand, on vacation. On this particular day however, I was not on a beach, basking in sunshine; I was sitting in a heavily air-conditioned Bangkok office trying to do a Skype interview. There were noticeable connection troubles. The phrase ‘Can you hear me?’ became an almost comedic leitmotif. It was especially ironic as the company with which I was speaking to, or trying to speak to, specialized in cutting edge mobile technology. I had stumbled across ATTI, a technology company in southern Sweden a few months earlier, and decided to write an internship inquiry letter. The website gave me a somewhat dour, prosaic impression and I hadn’t expected to hear back from them. And yet there I was, despite the technical problems, all went well.

Fast forward a few months. I was back in Sweden, standing outside ATTI’s office waiting to be buzzed inside. It would be my first visit. The exterior of the building was a dull stone grey; it stood facing a grave yard. As I was ushered in, I noticed in spite of my dreary impressions, the place was bubbling. Instead of cubicles there were couches, purple ones, red ones, and plush, bean bag chairs to boot. It was very much in line with Scandinavian design; a patina of straight edge exoticism gave the place a cool, hip, but slightly contained air. The employees wore denim, sneakers, and t-shirts. Youth was prevalent. This was hardly the stale, faceless work-mill I had imagined. It looked like people actually had fun. Fun at work, what a fascinating rhythm. The idea that work can and should be fun and playful has become somewhat de rigeur of late, especially within the new media/technology industries. It gives one pause to perpend as to the very essence of work itself. What value does play have in the workplace? How is it experienced? My thesis is an outcome of my investigation into this phenomenon.

Contextualization: Aim/Questions

My objective in this thesis is to realize a qualitative understanding of knowledge work in the

New Economy, wherein aspects of play are introduced to the workplace. I attend to the ways in

which employees experience play at work and at the multifaceted ways in which play is used in

the office. In order to analyze this phenomenon I have focused on a high tech company whose

‘on the cutting edge’ market placement goes hand in hand with a ‘work hard play hard

‘organizational philosophy. My analysis is informed by Schechner’s performance theories along

Whistle While You Work 8with insights from Du Gay, Foucault, Ross, Hochschild, and Sutton-Smith among others. The

paradoxes, inconsistencies and ironies that play presents within working culture are drawn out

and put to work.

The thrust is then to explore the ways in which work intersects with this notion of having fun

and, how more specifically, this constellation of work and play is in the end mobilized to add to

the company narrative and image (ergo inclining back towards production and the market). More

specifically, I wish to look at the ways in which play can be a means of ordering work, and how

it can be situated as a legitimate means of control.

Similarly, I intend to examine how casualness and levity are materially enacted in the workplace

and what that means for the employees and their own subjectivities of work and play. I seek to

locate, or rather bring specificity to actual lived experience of working within a creative industry

and moreover, attend to the affective nets cast and performed in a digital high tech working

environment. Using this framework, this thesis draws upon previous research/fieldwork at ATTI

(a pseudonym). I want to look at the ways in which this encroachment of economy onto life

affects perceptions of work itself.

Thus the main questions to be addressed in this thesis are as follows:

● How is play introduced and incorporated into the workplace--specifically within a

high tech/new media-based company?

● In what ways is it manifested in the materiality of the workspace?

● How is a ludic sensibility performed and subsequently accepted by employees?

● Does built-in play enhance or debilitate work processes? Does it effectively create

sharper intensities of fidelity towards companies and organizations?

Whistle While You Work 9

Overview of the structure of the paper

The makeup of this paper is as follows:

I start with an introduction to the field site and the field work conducted. Subsequently, I define

the terms I am working with, most notably Play and the New Economy, and delineate the

theoretical underpinnings along with the previous research into the aforementioned concepts.

Throughout the thesis, I intersperse my empirical material with theoretical underpinnings. I take

a bricolage approach, mixing empirical descriptions, quotes, etc, with theoretical strands and

when deemed necessary, chapters will begin with a quick introduction of terms and relevant

theories. Chapter I sets up the backbone of the thesis; chapter II introduces important terms; in

chapter III, I delve into a detailed analysis of the material structure of the workplace, and in turn

discuss aspects of performance and ritual which I argue are vital to the maintenance of a playful

office. In chapter IV I discuss my findings and wrap up the paper with a bullet point summary of

my main arguments.

Empirical material

‘ATTI has a certain spirit, don’t know what it is; I have to go back to my office in Stockholm

and get away to appreciate it’. ~ ATTI founder

The empirical material for this thesis stems from my previous internship fieldwork. It

encompasses 3 ½ months research at the technology company ATTI. During that period, I

conducted semi-structured interviews, net ethnography, and participant observation.

Interviewees ran the gamut from founders of the company, engineers, designers, and PR

managers, to those who had worked for the company as consultants as well as students who

wanted to work for them. I also took extensive field notes, recording details of informal

conversations with staff members, daily work processes, indexes of the work culture, e.g.

clothes, shoes, furniture arrangement, break routines, music and office decor, among other

things. Additionally, I analysed the company’s websites: these included the internal web server,

the company blog, their YouTube channel, Twitter feed, and their Facebook page. I looked at

Whistle While You Work 10their internal and external written materials, i.e. brochures and pamphlets, security guidelines,

software instructions, client protocol handbooks, and recruiting materials. I attended several

social occasions and a job fair where the company had erected a booth to entice new talent. The

mainstay of my data comes from my own situatedness-- being there, and observing the

company’s working practices--as Charlotte Davies puts it, ‘The purpose of research is to mediate

between different constructions of reality, and doing research means an increasing understanding

of these varying constructions, among which is included the anthropologist’s own constructions

(2002, p. 6).

The field site

ATTI is a Scandinavian B2B (business to business, manufacturing products not directly to

consumers, but to other companies) technology company, which specializes in building ultra

fresh, state of the art user interfaces, for mobile phones, HUDs (heads up displays, often found in

cars), and television screens for various OEMs and MNOs (Original Equipment Manufacturer

and Mobile Network Operator). Founded in 2002, the company has expanded significantly in a

brief period of time. Back then however, ATTI was the pet project of six young engineers; the

first employees, friends, class mates and relatives of the original six founders, were hired only

after year two. In the following seven years, the company opened up satellite offices in Asia and

North America, employing around 150 people. They proliferated quite successfully. Their

products could be found in millions of phones worldwide. ATTI’s trademark was the

combination of Design and Technology. The two concepts were part and parcel, one did not

function without the other; thus their products not only looked exquisite, they were also bleeding

edge new. The company’s cross functional teams comprised designers, programmers and

engineers. Playfulness, youth, creativity, friendship and fun represented the company’s core

tenets. These values could be witnessed in everything from the brightly colored walls, the IKEA

sofas, and the ping pong table, to the converse shoes, candy bowls and the musical instruments.

The company’s relatively small size is significant for the employees and the brand identity.

Much of the rhetoric in the company’s internal and external literature is focused on community

and togetherness.

Whistle While You Work 11Structurally, ATTI opted for a horizontal organizational culture. It was not top down, but

flattened out in order to foster innovation and promote personal initiative. In fact, they shied

away from a hierarchical schemata, eschewing the typical organizational flow charts delineating

chains of command. As Löfgren notes (2005) ‘..new digital technology, with speedier and more

efficient possibilities of storing, using developing and circulating information... a much more

flexible organization of work and capital, with both a slimming and a flattening of corporate

structures’(p. 1).

It’s the postmodern, post-Fordian schema for maintaining a culture of innovation. There is no

top down flow. Foucault’s ‘conduct of conduct’ formulation is pertinent here--’ to govern is to

presuppose the freedom of the governed. To govern human beings is not to crush their capacity

to act but to acknowledge it and to utilize it for one’s own objectives’ (Foucault, 1994). Letting

the creative juices flow freely is implied in this hands-off managerial style. Similarly, as Thrift

notes, spaces become important in producing new means of body techniques and identifications.

Space, particularly new spaces enabled by technology, creates novel means of performative

embodiment. The characteristic speed and ubiquity that marks such technology is extended to the

user who is hailed and thus directed to act in different ways. I shall look more at spaces,

particularly in regard to knowledge production, later on.

Employees worked independently in cross-functional Scrum teams, a configuration typical

within high tech companies. The project leader, or Scrum Master, guides the work-flow and

oversees the processes behind each project. Daily Scrum sessions or update meetings keep the

project in check. These take place at the same time and place each day, and all participants stand

while reporting their statuses; Scrum sessions are meant to last no longer than 10 minutes. Each

member of the team states what he/she has done and what still needs to be done and relates any

problems which need resolving. A backlog or list of priorities and features is usually written up

and updated daily on a whiteboard.

The CEO approves major decisions but seems to be removed from the day to day activities of the

company. The company’s founders kept offices on the sixth floor. While they were not often

Whistle While You Work 12there they still had considerable sway within the company, often dispensing advice and acting as

the company’s spokesmen at conferences and exhibitions.

Notably, the demographic make-up of the company was profoundly one dimensional. The

overwhelming majority of employees are white Swedish males, between the ages of 20-34,

although for ATTI 34 is on the steep side. Most either do not have children or have recently

become parents.

The company has since been acquired by a multinational corporation.

I would go to the office usually five days a week, from midmorning to evening, as working hours

were flexible. I was given my own computer and desk, where I could observe the team charged

with revamping the website. Their mission: to make it new. The former website was starchy,

stiff, mundane and did not reflect the hip, fun vibe of how the company identified itself. While I

spent most of my time here, I did have occasion to view and observe in depth other areas-

notably, the sixth floor, where the Innovation department along with the founders’ offices was

situated, and the downstairs atrium/dining area. This is where much of the socializing took place.

Office spaces were seated according to affinity; thus you would find engineers working on

automotives in one room, the products team in another, and innovation in yet another.

The work conducted at ATTI entailed sitting (or standing, for those more chiropractically

minded) in front of a computer. Being in front of a screen for long periods each day defines

balance in a certain way. The body technique, of say walking across a room to fetch a stapler is

different when your muscles have been asked to sit in one way, all day. Thus behaviour and

practices, come about, partly, in balance, the act of balancing in a high backed, ergonomically

designed chair, versus the tension of walking down a narrow cabin walkway in an airplane

(Barba, 1986, p.p. 115,117). What I’m getting at is very corporeal, embodied, it’s not simply a

matter of standing behind a programmer and watching him review line after line of code.

Observing, ascertaining daily praxis then is a matter of being in the midst, taking into account

not simply what is typed onscreen or communicated via email, but situating oneself there. Thus,

and then are we able to ask ourselves, for example, what is the relation between workers and

Whistle While You Work 13their job, their superiors and their sense of duty when they are occupied by networks, files, and

numbers--the digital ether. This is being in the field and experiencing it in a manner akin to

those who work and live it each and every day.

Method/methodology

The theoretical underpinning of this thesis takes its shape from a wide swath of critical thought.

Thus, methodologically speaking, I will take up a multifaceted, pastiche approach, relying upon

not one strand of thought, but on many, giving my thesis a more open and broader theoretical

base from which to draw out conclusions and analysis. I intend to focus my analysis with

insights from Schechner, Hochshild, and Thrift among others, along with a number of authors

working with organizational culture. It is true that I rely on Schechner’s performance theories to

give shape to this thesis, however given the eclectic parceling of my paper, one approach cannot

be singled out.

Background/Theoretical Framework

Play

‘All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.’

‘Enduring tedium over real time in a confined space is what real courage is… The truth is that

the heroism of your childhood entertainments was not true valor. It was theatre. The grand

gesture, the moment of choice, the mortal danger, the external foe, the climactic battle whose

outcome resolves all – all designed to appear heroic, to excite and gratify an audience…

Gentlemen, welcome to the world of reality – there is no audience. No one to applaud, to

admire… actual heroism receives no ovation, entertains no one. No one queues up to see it. No

one is interested.’

~ David Foster Wallace, The Pale king

Whistle While You Work 14 A child thrusts a piece of paper at you; it is, notwithstanding two black dots, completely blank.

‘Guess what it is,’ he implores. You aren’t up to snuff with kids’ drawings, and also not quick

enough for the tot’s taste, so he answers for you, ‘an elephant ghost!’. ‘Cute,’ you think to

yourself. The specter is amusing, to be sure, but ultimately it remains a trivial drawing without

significant use-value. And so it goes, in the logic of adulthood, of prosy ledgers, mortgages,

client meetings and fluctuating oil prices, an imagined ghost in elephant’s clothes has no cachet.

At the end of the day, it doesn’t even exist. Period.

Dolls, tin soldiers, jacks, empty diaper boxes, sticks, balls of wax, paper hats, forts, crayons--

these are the things of child’s play. Tradition dictates that play is situated within the domain of

tender youth. Children play. But adults? Adults engage in jest, rivalry, pranks, jokes,

competition, idling and games--ludic activities presupposed to be intrinsically separate from

child’s play. Or is the prevailing consensus a packaged myth? What is play, after all?

Attendance to play beyond the scope of children has been, traditionally, given short shrift, as it is

seen to be antithetical to work. As a diversion from the task at hand, it is beyond the singular ken

of the Protestant ethic. Yet, as Brian Sutton-Smith, a noted play researcher, reflects, ‘The

opposite of play isn’t work. It’s depression. To play is to act out and be willful, exultant and

committed, as if one is assured of one’s prospects.’ Play is not merely a descriptor of childhood

(neoteny describes the predisposition to play even in adulthood) . It is pervasive and unbeholden

to age.

The study of play has ballooned to mammoth-like dimensions. Many have given the subject a

hard ponder and have declared it virtually impossible to define. It is everything, nothing and that

which is in between. Victor Turner reflected (1988), ‘ As I see it, play does not fit in anywhere

in particular; it is transient and is recalcitrant to localization, to placement, to fixation, a joker in

the neuroanthropological act (p. 233). Play is a stubborn beast. It is thus out of the purview of

this paper to examine play in its many theoretical incarnations. Rather, I choose to focus on a

few delineated strands, which take into account that ‘A play theory of any comprehensiveness

must grasp this strange companionship of the very young and the very old, the first waiting to

begin and the second to finish; . . . and such a theory must account also for the invigorated play

of soldiers waiting for battle, or the intensive play of Boccaccio’s youthful fourteenth century

Whistle While You Work 15folk attempting to outlast the Black Plague. In all these cases play seems to have more to do with

waiting than with preparing, more to do with boredom than with rehearsal, more to do with

keeping up one’s spirits than with depression’ (Brian Sutton-Smith, 1997, p. 45). Definitions of

play are indeed myriad and conflicting at times, each transporting with them a sense of

playfulness part and parcel. Again, pinning play down is not an easy matter, but perhaps, that is

the point.

The Dutch historian Johan Huizinga in his seminal work, Homo Ludens, discusses play as ‘not

serious,’ but at the same time absorbing the player intensely and utterly. It is an activity

connected with no material interest, and no profit can be gained by it. It proceeds within its own

proper boundaries of time and space according to fixed rules and in an orderly manner. It

promotes the formation of social groupings which tend to surround themselves with secrecy and

to stress their difference from the common world by disguise or other means.(Huizinga, cited in

Caillois, 1961, p. 4) His description notably excludes play from financial gain; it is an activity

performed for its own sake. Play in both these cases is a mode of beneficial and nuanced

distraction. Yet, meaning is still fleeting. The playing field, so to speak, is unwieldy and

sprawling. Is there a specific locus of play?

Sutton-Smith (1997) tackles the subject from various angles, concluding that ‘play as a

facsimilization of the struggle for survival... the primary motive of the players is the stylized

performance of existential themes that mimic or mock the uncertainties and risks of survival’ (p.

231). Geographer Christopher Harker (2005) prefers to use Richard Schechner’s theory of play

as ‘a continuous bending, twisting, and looping of . . . that for which I can find no appropriate

name, so “action” will have to do’. Schechner differentiates play from playing, which he sees as

more apt; playing is continuous and fluid, a process, whereas play is a concrete act. This view of

play(ing) opens rather than closes and positions playing as akin to becoming rather than being; it

is not fixed but flux. Thus Schechner’s conceptualization is vague enough to be descriptively

spot on.

As it were, play is too embodied and pervasive to curry favor under regimes of explicit

statements and systems of thought. A loose definition of playing as action or performance,

Whistle While You Work 16works to destabilize stark attempts to relay play into easy categorical shelves. To wit, we can

identify instances of play, in the tossing of a ball or in a game of hide and seek; however, at other

times play is elusive.

To get back to Schechner, ‘We need to stop looking so hard at play, or play genres, and

investigate playing, the ongoing, underlying process of off-balancing, loosening, bending,

twisting, reconfiguring, and transforming—the permeating, eruptive/disruptive energy and mood

below, behind and to the side of focused attention. (Why not ‘above’? I really don’t know, it’s

probably just cultural prejudice) (p. 43). Schechner’s definition of play extends beyond the child-

adult divide; it is precisely grainy and fat enough, an expansion of plumpes denken or crude

thinking to be productive. It boils down to the embodied performance; or, in other words it is

“not a limited set of activities but a behavioral orientation to performing any type of activity” (as

cited in Mainemelis & Ronson, 2006). Play is performative-- it is creative, freewheeling,

slippery, dangerous, and contradictory.

In sum, what have we learned? Play is porous. It is notoriously hard to define. To look at a

teleology of play is vexatious. We can locate play in particular spaces and times, but it cannot be

codified. Instead, we should see it as becoming and thus get at it obliquely, from an askew yet

parallel manner to the action itself. In this thesis l therefore approach it in the doing, the

performances of play. ‘Indeed, art and ritual, especially performance, are the home ground of

playing. This is because the process of making performances does not so much imitate playing as

epitomize it (Schechner, 1993, p. 41).

The new economy

‘Make it New!’

In current debates within the social sciences, there has been a turn toward epochalist

explanations of working life and the economical world, spurred by globalization and the spread

of information technologies. It has become new, or so goes the claim. Taking into account these

Whistle While You Work 17epochalist assumptions, I will examine what constitutes the New Economy. What is new about

the new economy? What was old about the old economy?

Picture, for a moment, a factory assembly line. Do you envisage greasy, semi-catatonic workers

lined up picking through nuts and bolts on seemingly endless conveyor belts? As well as being

an image of mind dulling proportions, it is pretty much spot on the epochalist idea of the old or

Fordian economy. Here we have an economy based on use value-- scale, efficiency, productivity.

The New Economy, conversely, conjures images of technology, the whirr and whiz of computers

rather than industrial machines, media, apps, and creative cities. It could be said that the New

Economy is less tangible than the old. It operates on wires and software and icons. Lash and

Urry speak of ‘economies of signs,’ Bauman of ‘liquid modernity,’ Castells of a ‘network

society,’ Florida of ‘knowledge workers and the creative class;’ these concepts form the parlance

of a new economic and organizational metanarrative. The upshot: the New Economy is a

culturalized economy, in which culture, as nebulous as the term is, aligns itself with economic

value; products and services are imbued with meaning beyond their materiality--‘what is

increasingly produced is not material objects but signs’ (Lash & Urry, 1994, p. 4). Thus, a box

of cereal becomes a means toward a happier, healthier lifestyle, and a hotel room embodies hip,

bohemian, counter-culture, its inhabitants donning a concomitant, handy cachet of cool.

In the New Economy, no longer is it enough to view the world through the coolly rationalized

lens of a laboratory microscope. Calculating logic, bureaucracy, stiff labor stratification, and

cubicles have become indicative of stagnation: ‘the move to the centre of the economic stage of

all things cultural and creative has brought forth an understanding that knowledge and know-how

need not only be entertained through the language of science, judgment and technological

innovation. There is room for an appreciation of the ‘softer’ symbolic, aesthetic, more affective

forms of knowledge alongside, or even entangled within, the resolutely cognitive.’ (Allen, 2002,

p. 39) Necessarily, the rhetoric surrounding the ‘cultural turn’ of the New Economy, slipped into

an ecstatic beat; buzz words like glocal, Web 2.0 and cyberspace were reified and their meanings

swelled to take on the zeitgeist, characterized by, like much epochalist idealism, a recurring and

heady optimism. Train an affective spectrometer on any young business venture and it would

easily register the rosy tinted confidence of the day. It was, however, boom and bust, reaching its

heyday in the late 90’s-early 2000’s depending on different narrative takes.

Whistle While You Work 18

Yet the afterglow, the residual affect ‘a new kind of economic sense organ, a temporary

assemblage everyone agrees to agree exist’ or ‘style,’ (a means of making different things

significant and worthy of notice: ‘a style governs how anything can show up as anything’ as it

were, still has a persistent hold (Thrift, 2000; Spinosa et al., 1997, p. 2)). The appeal is simple, it

resides in the business of making business seem more than just business as usual. Thus, a

palpable aura of magic is worked into an elusive (perhaps illusory, as well, taking into account

the Latin root that forms those words--ludos- play)but savory momentum; HR departments and

management consultancy firms across the Atlantic are quick to latch on (Löfgren & Willim,

2005). It is an uptake of faith in the power of creation and human sensibilities beyond the oft-

vaunted brutalism of bureaucracy. As Thrift puts it, ‘In the end, this is what I would call the

New Economy, a successful project to produce a new affective palette for business, a fevered

palette which would give products, markets and particular people a different kind of force, an

assemblage that would produce another kind of sense of the world, a sense of unlimited

possibility made up of different parts of hope joy, curiosity and other euphoric affects’ (Löfgren

&Willim, 2005, p. 133).

In this vein, everything old becomes new again, but with a glossier sheen, a metallic overcoat.

This isn’t about eternal recurrence. But perhaps it is in modern terms, where fleet is fashion and

speed is equally as fast as it is slow. Contradiction is distinction. The New Economy positions

nebulous concepts such as creativity and design as forerunners to the modern Philosopher’s

Stone. Somewhere within these terms, lies the secret to success and if not life everlasting, an

economical viability that refuses to be denied. Technology, with its quick acronyms IT, ICT, is

all pervasive, its software becoming ingrained in our day to day routines. In order to get ahead, to

remain in the game, to innovate and innovate some more, speed is thrust into the throne and the

high tech industry worships at its feet.

We could take the New Economy as a flash-in-the-pan, as each preceding economy could

somewhat rightly be called--new economies, philosophies, corporate agendas, brand strategies

and timely adages pop up only to ebb out time after time. The succession of things new is serial,

like dead-set clockwork. Or we could see the flash as an apt reflection, an inspired reading of

Whistle While You Work 19current organizational strategy and business practices. As technology speeds things up and the

world becomes faster, more precarious, knowledge as the means to innovate, becomes a key

commodity. Youth, speed, creativity, and future fetishization are hailed and propped up as an

adored, necessary cult. Currently, the economy of things turns on being first, so fast, faster,

fastest becomes the rallying call. Tech firms particularly, have to adopt to living in this

‘permanent state of emergency bordering on chaos’ (Thrift, 2000, p. 202). To get on the bleeding

edge, the trigger finger has to be quick, businesses have to be flexible enough to adapt to

changing and tenuous situations. There has to be a certain style to the gait of the these

businesses’ walk.

That being said, bureaucracy, hierarchy, etc have come under specious and unfair scrutiny, as

lacking creativity. Perhaps this sits ill with much of the affective gusto that the new economy

stirs up, but we must not ignore the easy romanticism of this stance. It is convenient to separate

the before and after, thereby valorizing culture as the ‘it’ thing of the here and now. However, we

also must be attuned to the difficulty, if not sheer impossibility of separating culture and

economy in material practice. Culture and economy cannot be construed as ahistorical; culture is

everywhere.

‘It is that if we are to talk about culture at all, then it certainly doesn’t exist in the abstract. It

doesn’t even simply exist as a set of discourses programmed into bodies – although bodies are, to

be sure, crucial in the performances of culture. Instead, or in addition, it is located and performed

in human and non-human material practices. And these are material practices which extend

beyond human beings, subjects and their meanings, and implicate also technical, architectural,

geographical and corporeal arrangements’ (Law, 2002, p. 24).

AnalysisSo it becomes fruitful to look at the intertwining of culture and economy within instances of

historical practice. Looking at an IT firm is an ideal means to delve into the interarticulations of

culture and economy in material working practices. It also goes to illustrate how such rhetorics

do actually shape the field as it is.

Whistle While You Work 20 However much a rarified air surrounds culture qua culture, we must pull back from abstractions

and touch upon the material basis through which culture is practice and performed; for culture is

located in the non-human surroundings and objects that make up the world. Thus, attendance to

architectural enclaves, filled and empty space, technical artefacts, corporeal arrangements and

the scattering of dinnerware on the living room coffee table, for instance, is requisite. Here I

want to look at office space. In this case, a rose is a rose is a rose, isn’t fully precise. Although,

office spaces tend to be similar, constructed in patterns that are more or less universally kindred,

each office is above all and actually, a constructed space, wherein a set of practices and

relationships are set up and performed. There are offices and there are offices; one can’t fish

around in the heavens and find some Platonic form for that which is an office. We must give

way to the baroque and look at the detail, or as Law (2003) puts it ‘This, then, is the crucial

move of the baroque imagination at work. It is an imagination that discovers complexity in detail

or (better) specificity, rather than in the emergence of higher level order [on Leibniz and the

baroque see Deleuze (1993) and again Kwa (2002)]. It is an imagination that looks down rather

than up.’ The baroque imagination uncovers material heterogeneity and seeks to find ‘ponds

within ponds, without limit’ as. ... each simple substance has relations which express all the

others, and consequently it is a perpetual living mirror of the universe.' So we look down to get

at the implicit, the fleeting, the indirect--the complexities which make up the concrete. I am

arguing here for specificity to shed light on both the particular and the expanded picture.

Looking down, to look up.

In this vein, I will look at the stuff of life—or in more hefty terms, the heterogeneous materiality

which produces social life. More pointedly, I seek to discover what sort of material culture is

requisite for producing affective affinities. How does material culture co-produce and transform

everyday practices? To do this I go back to the physicalities of the office: what role do things

like paper, screens, and coffee pots play in creating an office space? I will take a synoptic look at

certain ubiquitous items and qualities and then attend to the ways in which they shape behaviors

and create, as well as limit, social relationships and practices. Attention is paid to the importance

of space as a series of conditioning environments to ‘cook’ and prime affect. How new devices

like mobile phones and the internet act as new kinds of neural pathways, transmitting faces and

stances (as well as discourse) as put forward by Thrift; therefore, the ways in which space and

Whistle While You Work 21materials in space provide myriad opportunities to forge new reflexes. Later on, I uncover the

ways that the body is not fixed, but rather transmits and receives in response to material and

social culture.

The office spaces are configured for groups, not individuals. The office I have in mind is the

home of a cross-pollinated bunch--web designer, programmer, engineer and interaction designer,

plus myself. It was set up in the same fashion as the other offices, but was customized by the

erstwhile inhabitants. From my own notes: ‘On the back wall: a single white shelf, jutting out

with steadfast grace, not a trace of metal, neither nails nor hinges to disturb its singular

suspension; lining the shelf, a row of tiny toy figures, the sort you’d pull out from a Kinder egg

when your existence was more tender in age. Beyond that, to the center left, a poster, the bulk of

it white, with red, yellow, blue, and green lines radiating through it, words packing the remaining

spaces to form a gentle, yet crisp credo on What Makes Good Design. Two windows, with the

automatic shades drawn to the midpoint, flank the illustrated manifesto’s right side. Books,

whose spines pronounce ideas like 3D, Graphic Design, and Engineering but also Travel and

Language, sit idly on the waxy white window sills, next to that, a pot of leafy plants, (the real

deal, not those convenient plastic imitations which quietly besot Chinese restaurants and motel

lobbies), and at the end of the row, a softly lit colored lamp, round and squat in shape, recently

acquired from IKEA. Computers, mostly boxy, black PCs, although a pair of white Mac laptops

can be found too, litter the desks, commanding much of the workspace real estate—screens next

to screens next to screens. Colored felt tip pens, empty coffee mugs, water glasses, cough syrup

bottles, business cards, fluorescent pink and yellow post it notes, touch phones, bowls of glossy

candies, notepads, robot figurines, and more toys, expand across and colonize what little empty

territory they can.’

This is an office which is messy, jerry-rigged, and plausibly incoherent. It does not speak of

privilege, command nor does it speak of luxury. There are no large wood desks and no leather

swiveling chairs, objects of distinction popularly shown in movies and to which we accord merit,

accomplishment, and financial success.

Whistle While You Work 22I want to look at the props, the material actants in the play, thus the way objects actually result in

ways of behaviour. Take chairs for instance. Swivel chairs, put us at ease, we are relaxed,

movement is made fluid by wheels and a rotating chair back. Orthopedic cushions relax the

muscles, while conditioning the body to sit properly.

Style

So then to start, first a style, (again recalling Thrift (2002), ‘Style is one of the keywords in the

social sciences and humanities at present, suggesting the need to understand a change in the style

of engagement governing a repertoire of practices’) which gives the place a certain modulation, a

pitch which you can only get at in being there, inhabiting this particular space . The presence of

color is telling; it relays a message, an anticipation. This isn’t a monochromatic, drably attired

office. Color is explicit--it’s in the posters, the notes the plush cushions that adorn the common

areas, the lamps, and even the pens are vibrant greens and pinks rather than the standard blue or

black. Color for ATTI is a means of commerce and also quality of life. Aesthetic value is relayed

from the office to the design of the products. It reflects an economy of play, and it creates a

chromatic politic too. Consider Rimbaud’s (1973) synaethesian panegyric, Voyelles, wherein

each vowel is associated with a color: ‘A , black velvet jacket of brilliant flies which buzz around

cruel smells/gulfs of shadow... I purples, spat blood, smiles of beautiful lips/in anger or in the

raptures of penitence...U, cycles, divine vibrations of viridian seas/Peace of pastures seeded with

animals, peace of wrinkles/That alchemy prints on great studious brows.’ Colors, then, make up

an aesthetic choice, they assume a gravity; this choice represents a politic, testifying to how one

does something, in an adverbial sense. The bold, optimistic color palette which overlays the

office space asks of those who are in the midst to be bright, clean, cool and happy. The design

and color scheme were deliberate; money was spent on these details and color could easily be

seen as a barometer for the company’s values, attitudes and level of communitas. Color speaks to

a narrative, investments, opinions and beliefs. A perky color palette is resonant with future faith

—faith in their own knack for modern plasticity, to shape the things to come-- which is

consonant with the demands of ‘fast companies’ and to the capitalistic imperative ‘enjoy’. The

future is created in the shape, texture and tone of the office space.

Whistle While You Work 23We can also consider sound, especially in terms of giving or relaying a style. What does work

sound like? Or to get at it from a different angle, what does working playfully sound like? Can it

be conceived of in terms apart from the proverbial bells and whistles of the assembly line? What

does a certain sound ambiance do to attention? To look at the case in hand, at this office, the

ambient sound is not merely filled with the clicking of a computer mouse or furious typing. Most

often, the offices are enlarged, sonically speaking, with music. Rove around the floors and you’ll

hear an eclectic compilation of notes sounding from various offices; if it isn’t blaring from

personal speakers, individuals can be seen wearing large sound-blocking headphones (a trope of

the programmer, energy drinks and/or coffee, headphones and an intense absorption by the

screen). So, music fills the working environment. Contemplating a design quandary is different

when listening to Bach or the National, and also very different from listening to idle voices and

whirring computers, for instance. The character of a task can be seen in a more flattering light

when the tune is one that agrees with the worker; thus ‘whistle while you work /Put on that grin

and start right in to whistle loud and long’ sings of truth. Employees can crank up their favorite

tunes and consider ledgers, technical bugs, distribution, and color schemes in a more attenuated,

comfortable manner. Music, along with the digital stream, the ping of new SMS messages,

Facebook status updates, Twitter tweets and so on become understood as a part of the ambient

architecture, which is experienced through habit. As much as it could be seen as a distraction, it

becomes rather a state of distraction, in Benjamin’s sense, and thus, comes to make up a

component part of one’s embodied being, of one’s habitus. It’s a condition, being musically

inspired, or accustomed at the least, which one comes to expect. It primes affect in a particular

way. Listening to music puts employees at a state of ease; it also gives silence a more punctuated

weight. Thus, when the music becomes a distraction, pressing mute is either a decision signaling

seriousness or relief.

Muzak, developed in the 1920’s to make office work more agreeable, interestingly toted the

slogan ‘Muzack fills the deadly silences’. It was meant to silence, so to speak, the awkward hum

of too much silence and also the distractions of machines, air conditioning, and employee

chatter. Muzak, was dictated by the management and led to a controlled ambient environment;

workers were meant to hear the music, but not listen to it. It was not an individual choice.

Whistle While You Work 24I contend that what music does is to contribute to this aforementioned ludic style, as it points to

inconspicuous cracks, holes in the net, pockets of fresh water, of air. It points to the sheer lack

of totality, of an overwhelming and total system of control. Working is porous. It is not fixed.

We can refer back to Schechner’s net image of play. There are leakages, the unforeseen, the

subversive, the sacred and obscene buried in that which makes up the everyday, the working day.

We can take it up as the Lefebvrian moment, which disrupts and contains possibilities, openings

rather than breathless totalities and closures. It is the instance of being there and nowhere else.

Thus we find fissures/cracks of liberation, of overturning moments which replay as a possibility

each and every day.

Significantly too, the proliferation of music in the work place, and the deliberate allowance of

music, plays into this aestheticization of everyday life, the interlacing of economy and culture. It

shows how such devices articulate and shape organizational thought. Sociological theories are

performative in that they do create and develop fast companies in as much as they describe them.

The rhetorical output of social scientists does not simply lie outside life as it were, it is not

merely decorative; it can and does shape reality, as managers and organizational leaders take up

these epochalist leanings and incorporate them into actual office practices.

Whistle While You Work 25

Figure 1.1 Post-It Notes (ATTI website)

Materiality

Consider too the Post-it note as a potentially ludic technology. Pink, acid green, yellow, tangy

orange, these bits of adhesive paper are the quintessential creative brainstorming work tool. They

are small and ephemeral. What can you fit on a post-it note? Not much at all. Whatever is written

on a post-it note is meant to be discarded, sooner rather than later. A post-it note holds out the

promise of lucidity, conviction and thrift. Short and directed scribblings and words mark their

surfaces. Yet despite their size, entire projects are outlined, rehearsed and directed using them.

They embody the fast, ‘state of permanent emergency’ ethos of the New Economy. To wit, firms

must be hierarchically flat enough, flexible enough and agile enough to cut it in the global

marketplace; they must, using their resources and time in the most efficient way, be able to

Whistle While You Work 26adapt to the unexpected and thereby produce cutting edge products with intrepid speed. A Post-

It holds out possibilities. At the same time, it is also decidedly lo-fi and one could easily argue

that there’s something playful and nostalgic about these pieces of paper. They are fast and slow

at the same time. Again, possibilities are opened, totalities are broken up.

Figure 1.2 Office (ATTI website)

In contrast, computers are high-tech, they are able to store incredible amounts of information,

and connect users from one corner of the globe to another; they contain a multitude of

possibilities. In the same beat, distance and time are leveled. At this office, as in many others

computers are all networked. There’s an internal server, a private intraweb for communication

about anything ranging from the latest projects, to proposed outings, game days, and even

anonymous complaints. Computers are what make this company tick. Work cannot go on

without them. So what does it mean to sit in front of computers all day? It means being trained

to the visual. It means being absorbed in one space. Notably, the computer gives way to more

than just the job at hand. Whilst going through lines of code for example, one worker will

Whistle While You Work 27inevitably also have open a music player such as Spotify, messaging programs, such as Skype,

the internal web site, both personal and work email accounts, online newspapers and other

various entertainment sites. As a matter of fact, as a computer allows for an almost labyrinthine

network of information and social relations, distraction is easy. Apropos, for light diversion,

small breaks, most don’t get up and walk away from the computer; instead they’ll look at a

YouTube clip or read a blog. In other words, they do not actively seek something completely

different. One reason for this is that the screen flattens communication, making it easier to

interact. Why venture across the hall, when you can share a video clip via Skype? It’s more of

an effort to walk around. In this sense, interaction is contained, it’s disturbed; it tends toward the

superficial. The computer then, creates both absences and extensions of space. Any one person

can throw ideas back and forth about a certain scripting problem with someone 2,000 miles

away; at the same time, the same person doesn’t engage in face to face conversation with

someone in the same room, because he or she is 8 feet away. The relationship becomes one of

human and machine. Interaction is mediated by interfaces. Interfaces edit the ways in which

people communicate, so that what is said or done is locked up in a frame that doesn’t allow for

slippages or nuances because it is so programmed. It becomes habit, then, that people address

each other in terms of what the framework permits, without thinking twice. Conviction is carried

in material objects and indeed in the soft, nonmaterial objects that pervade our screens (Shove,

Watson, Hand, 2007).

If we look at the software, too, we notice similar contradictions. The widgets and programs that

run on this computer are geared to make their users more efficient. Thus it becomes easier to

write an email rather than call someone—email is concise, you leave out the umms and ohs

which are characteristic of so many phone calls. Similarly, chatting online rather than going

down a floor to discuss a project, because the topic of discussion is located in a digital file,

becomes the way things are done. Filling out a time form, for example, demands that employees

choose a description of what they’ve done; therefore, things not allocated for are not done,

officially. It begs the question what counts as work. The form limits function as much it tries to

alleviate specific problems. Within each instance of software is an innumerable set of

perspectives and philosophical commitments, without which the software wouldn’t exist.

Whistle While You Work 28Technology implies a expressly locked-in system, in other words. It presupposes certain

behaviors and precludes other uses.

Computers and computer software make up the actual working tools of the office. Computers are

accomplices in self absorption as well. They deplete and also deny public space. Notice that

people using computers tend to ignore those in their own physical proximity. Computers make

play not only possible because they are as transfixing as they are-- so that any interruption or

distraction holds out ludic possibilities-- it also makes play necessary.

Figure 1.3 Office Space 2 (ATTI website)

In these descriptions, the goal is to lay out the materialities which underpin and shape the social

and cultural demeanor of everyday life at the office. They are indexical of what is allowed, what

is normalized, encouraged, intended and therefore practiced. The mix of sound, computer

Whistle While You Work 29screens, online messaging services, scraps of paper, red ink pens, etc, affect and create

relationships that concretely form systems of interaction and practices which, in this office, are

specifically geared, crafted and in the end lend themselves to play. In other words, casualness

and also levity were taken into account and manifested in the details of the material arrangement

of the office. Taken separately, objects implicitly demand specific actions; looking at them as a

network, as a set of socio-technologies, they enact the social by conditioning behaviors and

extending a set of rules, guidelines for being in a particular place. Thus: ‘Place your coffee cups

in the dishwasher after use,’ Do not walk around with prototypes when clients are in the

building,’ ‘Do not stray from the traditional company name font,’ and so forth. Some rules are

implied while others are written into company memos.

Space

Part of the system of interactions is necessarily the building, the space of its rooms, the hallways

and beams that make it up. Thus as we see that objects fill the office space in significant ways,

we must also consider how the space itself necessitates closer assessment. The spatial layout, i.e.

the location of public and private office spaces, floors, and meeting rooms, etc., influences the

occurrence and structure of interactions. Thus today, it is fashionable to construct offices which

promote creativity through circulation (Duffy, 1997). The ‘new office’ operates on easing the

flow of communication, allowing for knowledge sharing and learning. Avoided are the type of

hyper-fragmented, isolated cubicle set-ups. Spaces must be flexible, for work is flexible.

ATTI’s offices span six floors. Each floor is structured as a kind of arcade, with offices running

along the sides of the middle corridor, which is interrupted by long white columns. The building

itself is old; there is one elevator and a winding staircase which often proves to be faster. Each

floor is self contained. The offices range in size but each has glass walls which are usually

covered in stickers, post-notes and other usually, cheeky, tongue in cheek pictures, geared at

poking fun at the work at hand, and creating a system of in the know jokes and allusions. Despite

technological advancements, i.e. despite the fact that video conferencing and other mobile

digital technology makes it easy to communicate, anywhere, anytime, face-to-face time is

deemed vital, such that real space encounters are built into the layout of the office spaces. For

example, coffee stations are located in the common areas on each floor; however there is one

espresso machine located in the atrium/kitchen. Encounters thus occur within a floor around the

Whistle While You Work 30regular drip-coffee; however for something different, employees must venture downstairs

beyond their normal working space. In this way, the trafficked space, through which it is

required to move in order to go from one office to another is designed as a meeting grounds.

Besides coffee, of which copious amounts are drunk daily, each common space has couches,

tables, fridges and often white boards on the walls. This is where everyday conversations,

spurious griping, and even the odd but felicitous confrontation occur. It is through these

encounters that one seeks to eliminate the creation of ghettos in personal bodily experience— to

deny passivity and introversion as it were. It is the office version of the public realm. According

to Sennett (2008), ‘The most important fact about the public realm is what happens in it.

Gathering together strangers enables certain kinds of activities which cannot happen, or do not

happen as intensely, in the intimate private realm. In public, people can access unfamiliar

information, expanding the horizons of their knowledge. Markets depend on these expanding

horizons of information. In public, people can discuss and debate with people who may not share

the same assumptions or the same interests.’ Different voices offer different ideas. The public

realm is a hot-spot of social interaction and where awareness, of people, their activities and

contexts is geared to be high.

In sum, we come to see that things, material things, particularly in space, as a part of space,

working with and inside space make meaning; as much as people use them to create meaning,

objects also expressly mean, as actors in and of themselves. They condition social awareness,

affect, knowledge, and the handing over of experience. To take up another example: a dirty cup

persuades one to place it in the dishwasher at the end of the day, where perchance you will meet

so and so and discuss a problem of, say, optics. This may or may not initiate an email exchange

or a Skype conversation. The problem may be solved or not. But it is elaborated upon and ideas

are exchanged.

Awareness

Another interpolation of theory may also be pertinent here. When thinking about things, and how

they impact behaviour, it becomes germane to speak of awareness then, a much vaunted concept

in HCI human computer interaction as well as Computer Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW)

Whistle While You Work 31research studies. Both CSCW and HCI studies look at practices centered around the computer

and how engagement affects work and productivity, among other things. In this context

awareness can be defined thusly: “Awareness involves knowing who is ’around’, what activities

are occurring, who is talking with whom; it provides a view of one another in the daily work

environments. Awareness may lead to informal interactions, spontaneous connections, and the

development of shared cultures – all important aspects of maintaining working relationships

which are denied to groups distributed across multiple sites” (Dourish & Bly 1992, p. 41).

Awareness, then, plays a part in the dispersion of knowledge, which is often lateral or oblique,

rather than direct. Problem solving comes about through peripheral insights, fostered by casual

encounters, as much as it does through direct involvement. Or, to heed a more literary stance, to

"All profound distraction opens certain doors. You have to allow yourself to be distracted when

you are unable to concentrate" (Cortazar, 1986).

Similarly, it could be useful to think of work as performing certain tasks to produce certain

products-- not about craftsmanship, of writing a sentence, or a line of code, for instance, but

about coordinating human activity to open conversations, to what is said. Most actions are

engaged through speaking, through conversations. Speech acts--language conveys

commitments-- thus weigh heavily in interactions. People act by comparing assessments and

promises. Conversational space is necessary, for talking becomes a matter of doing.

The work of Wilhelm Dilthey can also be interpolated here, in fruitful fashion. For Dilthey,

interaction or ‘lived experience’ is a matter of the intermingling of affect, thought and will which

is dependent on what we as humans observe and react to and also the cumulative wisdom, the

communitas which comes about through participation in cultural and social performances (as

cited in Turner, 1987, p. 19). Experience is socially bound.

In the same vein, knowledge should not be seen as a commodity, or object that can be placed in

the common space to be shared, but as deeply process-oriented and interpersonal (Nonaka &

Takeuchi, 1995). Knowledge sharing and creating consists of a process; if we are thus to focus

on the practice of knowledge dispersion, we must acknowledge that it consists of continual and

Whistle While You Work 32ongoing achievements that are produced and reproduced. And it can be prodded, engineered in

certain styles, say ludically, abetted by an environment, expectations and culture that are up to

par.

Social awareness and therefore knowledge sharing as such can be fostered and created through

deliberate configurations as well as ludic practices. This arrangement, awareness as playfully

mediated, can be witnessed in the material design and set-up of ATTI. The offices were

specifically construed to encourage casual interactions and playful intervals. Interestingly,

because play is endorsed through material objects and space, it becomes a routine in and of itself.

Thus, on the one hand, play is meant to go against the grain of routine; however, it ends up

actually gunning for it, as well, in one fell stroke. Later on, I will argue that this dialectic is

worked out through rituals and performance.

In sum, however, I’ve argued that material objects have increasingly greater purchase on our

lives; they are more often than not, more than just scenery. Their values and the ways in which

people describe such objects, especially in the rhetoric of the times, reflect, shape and even

change how lives are conducted. So how is this played out in terms of actual doings and goings

on? In terms of practice, in terms of relations between people and objects and the spaces in

which actions take place? To investigate this, I’ll go back to ATTI.

Interfaces

A new set of mobile phone wallpapers (essentially interactive backdrops for your mobile screen)

are being developed. They are the first to be delivered directly to customers, rather than to

mobile businesses who distribute the wallpapers as part of their own phones. This time the stakes

are different. These wallpapers will show off what the company can do. The concept with

descriptions and pictures is placed on the internal web server, ATTIweb. This is a forum where

you can see what everyone is up to. Employees each have their own logins can post updates,

briefs, photos, etc about what they are currently working on. The latest updates show up n the

main page newsfeed. Members can set up their own categories, for new projects or for activities.

Each department, e.g. sales, innovation, web team, etc. has its own section. There are also

sections for games, coffee break suggestions, complaints, interns, code names, guidelines,

Whistle While You Work 33security, and so on. This is basically the internal repository for ATTI knowledge sharing, the go-

to place for finding information and engaging in information sharing. It is here that comments

about the quality of the wallpaper effects, how well they work or not, the text, the release promo

video and the look/graphic design can be made. After comments and suggestions are made on

the site, developers fix any glitches and finalize the graphics. The text, which consists of

descriptions that will be placed in the press release and blog entry, is sent out to several people

from marketing, innovation, and communications, two days before the release date. Drafts are

edited and resent. Some suggestions are taken up, others are discussed but discarded. As the

deadline approaches, the involved parties communicate via Skype about the wording and

grammar of the text: ‘We need to make the text shorter, without losing the message,’ ‘Wouldn’t

‘soothing’ be a better word or is there another synonym?’ ‘Does this humor work for an

international audience?’ A trip upstairs to the developers’ office, and you’ll find that while

working out the final version, they are playing a variant of ‘guess the artist,’ one member of the

three person team plays a song and the others must come up with cover versions by different

artists. As the working day is ending, employees head home and continue working on the end

draft via Skype. The wording is important and they want to make sure they get it just right. How

is a consensus reached? Although the CEO and marketing VP may have a look at the text, in the

end it is a few employees from Products and the developers who decide that the text is right. It’s

not about a direct word from above. Rather, after hours, the team comes up with a document that

is short, descriptive and engaging. They won’t work far into the night, but until something just

right is drafted and deemed appropriate. When the wallpapers are released on the blog, success

is gauged by comments and by web exposure. The number of links on other blogs and hits on the

home blog are counted and tabulated. Although users do note that the wallpapers do not work at

first--problems with the links as well as compatibility issues-- the reception seems to be

welcoming. One of the founders sends out a company-wide email with links about the release

and a word of congratulations to everyone who worked on and contributed to the project. With

mentions on several big tech blogs, it is deemed a success. Meanwhile during coffee breaks and

lunch, employees have loaded the wallpapers on their own phones and test them out.

Notice the circulation. The primary mediators in this wallpaper case, if we are once more

attendant to objects, are based on software and computers. Skype, emails and a web forum create

Whistle While You Work 34the forms through which the job is initiated, inspected and agreed upon. Small autonomous teams

minimize bureaucratic entanglements. The entire consensus building process has become a

matter of specific and enclosed frameworks. Communication is achieved by being boxed in and

opened up, much like a package or gift--the small windows of the chat box, the rectangular

receptacle for penning emails, these are reductive, but in the same instance, able to contain

multitudes . The message is teased into being, prodded out and combed into a neat agreement,

playful, concise and vivid. Conversations are legitimized via the software. Functional

delimitations garner more conclusive endings; for, if these discussions were to take place strictly

in actual tête-à-tête meetings, there would be a gap of meaning (conversations cannot be easily

remembered at all times, for one, and it is always easier to talk about something when the

referent is there, which is what technology quite nicely allows) and economy. Using Skype

allows people to work where it is convenient for one, and it also is fit for shorter messages.

When speed is at the behest of the company rule, such strictures become opening. They allow for

rapid decisions in a casual way. Rather than boiler room pressure, there is an elasticity at work,

which is only allowed by the berth or leeway of the objects at hand. It is thus a means to work

quickly, but also in a manner that works without imposing bureaucracy. The after-thought

courtesies, e.g. the thank yous and acknowledgements lend to the ludic possibilities in a ritual

sense. I will speak more about this in the next section.

Website

But for now, another empirical exercise. The website, before I came to ATTI, as mentioned

previously, was functional, but nondescript. It did not speak of individuality or distinction. It did

not speak of much at all, a European technology company, yes, but not much more than that. The

revamp, makeover, 180 switch up of the site, was thus a vaunted, yet understated deal. The

company was growing and wanted to put out a face that was of a piece with its values, being

youthful, open, fun--qualities which were decidedly invisible if non extant on the old site. What

defines a company? How does one give it a face, a voice, a head, a heart? What does a European,

a Scandinavian company do to go worldwide, to adopt values of sheer capitalism, of globalism,

of being in the know, without losing its consummate local edge, its communitas, its essence? The

task then, became one of rewriting the text--what does the company do anyway? Who are they?

What services do they offer?--and it was also necessary to create a more vivid graphic profile.

Whistle While You Work 35Spruced up visuals and sharp, concise descriptions--these were the goals. A small team was

charged with the job; they had their own office and sat side by side; it was a tight knit endeavour.

Scrum meetings were held in the mornings. Background graphics were conceived, laid out then

redone. Materials from the Products department were reviewed and pieces of text were trussed

together from existing descriptions. Some items would be viewed by the VP of marketing, but

much of it was put up unfiltered. In the end it would take them more than six months to complete

the task. As a new website was not the highest priority on the company’s to do list, there was not

much interference from the higher-ups, thus decisions that should have been made earlier on

were simply not. Other more urgent tasks, upcoming conferences and product launches, for

instance, came up, which meant the site got short shrifted from time to time. But it wasn’t simply

a matter of priority or order. Freedom to do as one wished, to experiment, to stretch boundaries,

was in fact too much. The playful, experimental ethos espoused by the company, needed

structure in order to work. As one frustrated team members put it, ‘This isn’t like Kindergarten

anymore with recess and toys, someone needs to take responsibility’. In the end, when the final

draft was ready to be reviewed and launched (after numerous pushed back launch dates),

chocolate candy eggs were offered to those who would venture down and give their critiques of

the site. A gesture to the new, youthful spirit of the site, which reflected the company’s own

playful, friendly values, it was. However, it was largely an empty gesture, as the forever delayed

website launch had become somewhat notorious. Its failure to launch highlighted what some

perceived as favoritism by the CEO, lack of guidelines, and a sense of pervasive chaos.

Certainly, employees agreed, it was fun to work there, but at the same time this leeway, the fact

that many didn’t seem to know who worked in their department, the fact that finding a person’s

office or seat was a running joke as it was problematic, and the lack of perceived oversight and

accountability, counterbalanced the ludic mood.

The same circulation could be observed as with the wallpaper case. Communication was handled

via face to face conversations, given the team members’ immediate proximity. Skype and email

were also used frequently to share files and also to joke and gossip in a semi-secretive manner.

Music was played; there was even a short-lived theme song. Post-its with new layout ideas,

along with 8x12 print outs of text and visuals were duly posted on the glass walls. Copious

Whistle While You Work 36amounts of coffee were drunk. There was camaraderie, jest, teamwork and fun. It seemed that

things were going swimmingly, until the timeline betrayed the mood.

What made the difference? Where did things go awry? To start, we must look at what can be

observed: the affective nets are cast and drawn. Fun as an affect is there certainly. However, for

one, simplification allowed by the constellation of programs like Skype and email, made things

more complicated. It could have allowed for centering, a strategy for making a statement, for

making a streamlined communication flow. But it did not, not for lack of trying nor conviction,

but because, I would argue, certain codes, performance cues were missed.

Furthermore, I would say that we are getting at the business of serious play, of what I’d term

bureaucratic play, play which is performative. Bureaucratic play is conditional and functional. It

requires, of course, employee buy-in, but also, a willingness and flexibility on the part of the

organization, of the bureaucracy. It allows for a sense of heightened interaction, but not in

excessively authoritative or orthodox ways-- it can’t be explicitly worked out in drills. It’s a

toolbox, a means to endorse and enhance company values. Bureaucratic play is not a totality, it’s

more of a framework which nudges and gives way to discovery, camaraderie, jest and creativity.

It advocates tight alliances between fun and corporate culture, as it plays off this idea that

business is where it’s at, not just pop culture. It is also a type of ritual performance, with

requisite roles to be fulfilled.

In a nutshell, (a rather large one, at that) it could be said that the former scenario worked as an

example of an ‘in order to’ situation --the actors performed in order to get things done within a

semi-scripted performance. The latter, a more naive and exploratory act, can be described as an

‘in such a way as to’ scenario. The actors were bucking the trend, going beyond the given

parameters and getting in over their heads. In spirit it was apt, however, in actual deed and word,

it was not in line with the script. To do something ‘in such a way as to’ means concision and

economy are foregrounded by a sense of unbounded liberty. The principle actors took liberties

that went beyond what was sanctioned in the organizational schema. Their actions were not

sufficiently clued up on the sanctified performance cues. For, to be free or to be seen as free, one

has to be able to know and to make choices. In this sense choice is a means to actualize freedom.

Whistle While You Work 37However, wrapped up in having the ability to choose, one must also be aware of what it means to

choose, what and why the pervasive expectations are what they are. And such expectations are in

not only the rulebooks and contracts, but also comprised in the everyday office culture. Thus, it

is useful to look at how this is performed.

Analysis Part IIPerformance

What I want to argue is that performance, and more specifically the performance of rituals, and

play rituals, forms and bounds relationships. Play hard, work hard becomes a matter of playing

the right roles and in turn lending to an affect of playful camaraderie and thus to the

communitarian ethos of the workplace. As one person put it, ‘you can’t just come in and read the

materials, the guidelines; to know how things work at ATTI, you have to be there. ATTI is

special, not like other companies’ (J. D., personal communication, October 24, 2010).

In tandem with performance, I will look at ritual qua ritual and the ways that rituals are enacted

and performed, for the two are part and parcel. Ritual is homologous with theatre--the

extenuation of behaviour, the rhythmic articulations of the body, the condensed gestures, and

arrangement of objects, these are the markers of performance and ritual as performed.

Performance theory has enjoyed circulation within organizational studies of late. Management,

clients, employees, customers, are outfitted with roles and scripts. In a sense, all the world is a

stage; but there are many simultaneous stages, scenes and actors and each is interwoven to form

a web of theatres, so to speak. An overview of the performance school would necessarily

include Erving Goffman’s (1959) sociology which sees organizing as like theater, in a

metaphorical sense. For Goffman, the social, i.e. all interactions between and amongst

individuals are groups are staged. People, as actors, prepare themselves, with make-up, props

and all, backstage; the performance, consisting of social routines and interactions, is played out

on the main stage. He argues that interactions are conceived in terms of the framework of that

which individuals ‘give’ and ‘give off,’ meaning what is expressed verbally and what is not, ergo

body language. The audience must always interpret the congruence between these two

expressions (their exact or inexact veracity) and respond in kind. Everyone is thus a player on the

world’s stage. Pine and Gilmore, in their espousal of the Experience Economy, similarly argue

Whistle While You Work 38that ‘work is theater and every business is a stage.’ Czarniawska (1997) takes a look at how

organizations enact, theatrically, their identities through forms of role-playing.

Going back to performance theorist Richard Schechner (1988), we find that his view of the

quiddity of performance is multifaceted, polymorphous, and he takes more than one stab in

defining it: performance is ‘ritualized behaviour conditioned/permeated by play,’ ‘twice behaved

behaviour,’ delving into ethology and animal behaviour, he links play and performance ‘I believe

play is what organizes performance, makes it comprehensible...One of the qualities of play in

higher primates in the wild is the balance between its improvisational quality and its orderliness:

in fact, play is the improvisational imposition of order, a way of making order out of disorder’;

furthermore, he develops a binary continuum of efficacy/ritual-entertainment/theater and labels it

performance. ‘Performance originates in impulses to make things happen and to entertain; to get

results and to fool around; to collect meanings and to pass the time...’ (p.p. 99, 157).

On ritual

Schechner (1988) places ritual in direct line with performance-- ‘Ritual process is performance’

(p. 342). He further elaborates, ‘The interactions that rituals surround, contain, and mediate

almost always concern hierarchy, territory and sexuality/mating. ...ambivalent symbolic actions

pointing at the real transactions even as they help people avoid too direct a confrontation with

these events’ (p. 231). Rituals, it must be noted, are result oriented. They allow results to be had

in a deferred manner. A ritual performance thus is a means to negotiate conflict without engaging

in a direct head to head showdown.

Clocks

In ritual performances, therefore, it is the absence of the all too real that renders its presence. For

example, let us look at the notion of time, which has been conceived as the ultimate taskmaster

in the working world, particularly in the case of technology companies where speed is key.

Modernity has, in line with the Enlightenment’s espousal of rational science and technological

progression, been driven by metered clock time. The logical ticking of the clock has ordered the

way we live, work and play so much so that we’ve become inured to its workings. The

Whistle While You Work 39mechanistic, mathematical abstraction that time became was represented wholly by the clock in

order to impose order on an otherwise disparate and intuited concept; timescapes are culturally

bounded, thus the cyclical times of various Eastern viewpoints, linear Western time, and static,

timeless Zen time are iterations determined not by science, but by lived culture. Time is as time

does, it is generative, performative, and the ways in which it is nested, contrived, condensed, and

exaggerated, influence daily practices. Thus, the feting of future time, as is homologous with the

New Economy, acts as both a counterbalance to the industrial clock and as an exaggeration

thereof. It is in this future fetish, when time becomes intertwined with a particular culture or

attitude, in this case, that which is unattainable and always at arm’s length, that certain lapses

and instances of disengagement come to the fore.

The future forecloses the now; future time thus becomes too close as technologies compress time

creating instantaneity, creating a demand for rapid feedback and response. The concept of now,

especially within fast companies, is constantly narrowed, made abstract because it is always

now-- the future is now. As Löfgren (2005) opines, in the New Economy it is imperative to

‘communicate the fact that you are a fast innovative and creative actor on the market, one who

already has a claim into the future’. So it’s about coming out ahead, being ahead of the times, at

all times. Being fast means not being in love with the moment but being in love with the future

moment, the instant future and also, finding an ideal in something that is almost inaccessible.

This is a stance that borders on the Utopian, as looking around the corner for something not yet

found or known is also an acknowledgment of being out of sync with the unruly and

unprogressive now. Time is out of joint, decoupling in temporal rhetoric, the individual from the

lived environment. Paul Virilio (1997) is even more explicit when he writes that "the

teletechnologies of real time…are killing 'present' time by isolating it from its here and now, in

favor of a commutative elsewhere that no longer has anything to do with our "concrete presence"

in the world…"(p. 10).When the future now is lauded to such a degree, in the narrative structure

and the ambient discourse, ritual becomes a grounding element. It makes time static, or arrested,

giving employees respite, pause. In simpler terms, time today is experienced as being out of,

pressed for, and simply not enough. The enactment of ritual works to attenuate time making it

more comprehensible, more meaningful. It brings things closer to the natural moorings and

makings of the world.

Whistle While You Work 40

At ATTI, work time is ordered by computers; time flows according to the machinic order. Clock

time via the machine is eminent. However, work is interspersed with sanctioned and expected

social interactions, so that the maxim ‘time flies when having fun’ becomes true. The company,

in that sense, allows its employees to carve out their own timescapes via rituals of coffee, eating,

Friday drinks, morning breakfasts, massages, and also flexible working hours. Teams often hold

their own weekly coffee breaks, with cakes and pastries bought or home baked by one member

on a rotating basis (these are worked out on the internal web server). They convene in the

common areas, fire up the coffee pots, bring up fresh milk from the main kitchen and engage in

conversations both work (complaints and compliments are dealt with in equal measure) and non-

work related. Coffee and cake, simple things, nevertheless, they act as both a type of social glue

and as centering devices. The contrast--fast work, reflected in the endless amounts of coffee (in

the office I observed, there were white board tallies of how many cups of coffee each person had

drunk in a given day, and there was a designated ‘pot watcher’ keeping watch for newly brewed

pots: ‘I drink between 5-10 cups of coffee a day, but I never have any on the weekend,’ ‘Watch

out for the coffee vultures, they gather around the pot before it’s even done-- they just put their

cups under to catch the drip,’ ‘I’m down to just two cups a day, my doctor said I shouldn’t

drink so much.’ Coffee is a precious commodity here; the original office design designated one

spot for coffee collection in order to encourage face to face encounters; however employees

ended up bringing their own thermoses from home) circulate through the building, with the slow,

meticulous chewing of sweets and the relaxed postures, as bodies are positioned on couches,

facing other people rather than screens. In turn this is of a piece with the office uniform--

sneakers, often Converse, or simply house slippers, t-shirts, and jeans. Coffee breaks such as

these highlight a heightened sense of interaction--they make the body visible in a different way,

such that attitudes, postures, mannerisms and timings are more drawn out, eased. The same goes

for spontaneous acts of play: giving out candies, throwing balls, shooting toy guns, engaging in

ping pong sessions, and the like--these form the ritualistic ethos of fun at work. This is ritual: "a

stereotyped sequence of activities involving gestures, words, and objects, performed in a

sequestered place, and designed to influence preternatural entities or forces on behalf of the

actors' goals and interests" (as cited in Turner 1977a:183). Rituals are storehouses of meaningful

Whistle While You Work 41symbols by which information is revealed and regarded as authoritative, as dealing with the

crucial values of the community.

Rituals as routines put into abeyance the matter of the all too real, and places the contentious, the

restive, the disagreed upon into spaces of liminality, in order to be grappled with in a symbolic

manner. It gives space. It imparts distance. And distance is comforting. Indeed Turner places

ritual in the liminal-liminoid (where liminoid are similar to liminal rites, but are not obligatory in

the same way, they are thus, liminoid activities are analogous to leisure and art1) line-up--he sees

it as interstitial, a threshold, betwixt and between, much in the same vein as he views play. It is a

subjunctive stance--working with possibilities, ifs, openings, leeway. The betwixt and in

between becomes pronounced when labor and leisurely acts are blended or when one is

superimposed on the other. Apropos, whenever a culture constructs itself through play activities

by imagining an alternate image of itself, this alternate image draws direct attention to the

liminal-liminoid aspects of the culture being constructed. Interestingly, this refocusing of

attention can produce ‘revolutionary strivings for renewed communitas’ (Roos, Statler, & Viktor,

2009, p. 93) Thus feelings of we-ness are enacted for the preservation of the company through

play. The resulting spontaneous communitas dissolves boundaries that have kept people shut off

and out from one another.

So, we can say that rituals stabilize identities by enacting their inversions. It is tantamount to

embracing the cause in order to flaunt or more bluntly, to screw the cause. In these instances of

liminality, there is a break in the prevailing structures and patterns of behaviour, rules aren’t

abided by and people act in opposition to the expected norms. Going against the grain, reinforces

the proverbial grain and solidifies social relationships in one fell swoop. Or to bring in Schechner

1 In tribal societies, liminality is often functional, in the sense of being a special duty or performance, required in the course of work or activity; its very reversals and inversions tend to compensate for rigidities or unfairnesses of normative structure. But in industrial societies, the rite du passage form, built into the calendar and/or modeled on organic processes of maturation and decay, no longer suffices for total societies. Leisure provides the opportunity for a multiplicity of optional liminoid genres of drama and sport.. which are to be seen as Sutton-Smith envisages play as experimentation with various repertoires.’ In the so called ‘high culture’ of complex societies, liminoid is not only removed from a rite du passage context, it is also individualized’ (Turner 1982, p. 160).

Whistle While You Work 42(1988) again, ‘the bottom line is solidarity, not conflict. Conflict is supportable (in theater, and

perhaps in society, too) only inside a nest built from the agreement to gather at a specific time

and place, to perform--to do something agreed on-- and to disperse once the performance is over

(p.189). Communitas is retrieved in ludic interludes. Instances of play aren’t simply social

occasions, for all work tends towards the social; rather, it is in the enacting of this alternate

image that creates a framework of togetherness. What appears to a detached observer to be a

straightforward employee get-together can actually contain a multitude of meanings and contexts

that can transform the seemingly mundane and trivial into something altogether different. It isn’t

the purely subjective emotional and cognitive flows that such interactions elicit and rework that

is the defining mark here. In actuality, all these exchanges are witnessable forms coming out of

social settings and everyday interaction; they are couched in and made meaningful through

socially shared practices.

Beer

Another empirical example: Friday beverages, aka beer night. At this company, beer and cider

are kept in stock in the kitchen/dining hall; for each bottle taken, employees are expected to

contribute a small set amount and place it in a jar for that purpose. The honor system works well

here. Although employees can have a beer after work anytime, Friday is the culturally sanctioned

sipping day. Before work is over even, many bring a bottle up to their desks and wind down their

day, talking about weekend plans, noting things still yet to be done, clearing away empty coffee

cups and entering more casual Skype conversations, filled with jokes, odd links to humorous

videos, cartoons, etc. After they officially log and clock out, they file downstairs to the kitchen,

where there’s food, music, and of course, more beer. People are looser, more relaxed. They

socialize, mingle, play ping pong. Talk, of course, is not all golden, gripes about the company are

aired, conversations turn acerbic, sometimes with hints of bitterness, irony and a sense of

restiveness, but these unsavory notes create cohesion in dissension. Even if one disagrees, and

there will be disagreement, an affective flow is created. It leads to difference, but therein lies the

crux. There are many ways of feeling and these gatherings create an affective well that is shared,

even if the sentiments are varied and even contradicting. For example: one employee, a computer

tech, on his work: ‘It’s Friday night, I’ve already got 20 emails in my inbox and I’ll have at least

double that amount by tomorrow. A lot of the time, it’s from the bosses, the CEO, they have

Whistle While You Work 43computer or system problems and I’m one of the only ones who can do the job. But right now,

I’m drinking, enjoying; I may answer the mails when I get home, or I may wait’ (T.T., personal

communication, Novermber 23, 2010). Another employee, an engineer, who had recently come

back from a stateside conference: ‘So they paid for us to sit around and explain the product and

attend the parties. We got to drink free Bacardi at Universal Studios. The best part was that the

Norwegian cheerleader squad was staying at our hotel, so every morning I could see them

practicing by the pool. It was great...I wish they would send other employees over too, so that

they could see what’s actually going on outside of the office’ (K.K. personal communication,

November 23, 2010). And from yet another employee: ‘I’m a designer. Look at my clothes, I’m

the only one who dresses well here.’ His friend: ‘Oh ok, but we engineers get paid more.

Designer: Yeah, but I have more fun’ (personal communication, October 25, 2010). This banter,

in this setting, as casual and off hand as it is, exemplifies how ATTI’s employees simultaneously

engage in fun and reconcile differences.

Performance, particularly in this workplace context, creates an aesthetic structure, a poetics,

which keeps the praxis, the day to day doings, from falling apart. It is meant to divert and

assuage conflict, to ‘frame and control... to transform the raw into cooked, to deal with the most

problematic...human interactions (Schechner, 1988 p.191). Nevertheless, conflict does occur.

Schechner, citing Victor Turner, identifies four actions that form the key components of social

drama:

‘1. breach of regular, norm governed social relations. 2. Crisis during which there is a

tendency for the breach to widen. 3. Redressive action ranging from personal advice and

informal mediation or arbitration to formal judicial and legal machinery.. to the modes of public

ritual...4. the final phase.. reintegration(as cited in Turner, 1974, p.p. 37-41). Office social

dramas are preempted by incorporated rituals of play and incursions of leisure which enhance

employees’ company allegiance and their own sense of well being. However, conflicts do erupt,

such as the website ordeal, discussed earlier. The breach occurred when the launch date was

pushed back for nearly 5 months, it was exacerbated as more time passed. In the end, when a

new layout was suggested by one of the founders, the previous 7 or 8 designs were thrown out

the window and a last minute change took place. The redress came in meetings with the CEO.

Whistle While You Work 44These were preceded by email exchanges with the team leader. However, it was a little bit too

late. The result: one person was fired, and the website design would soon change yet again. The

situation would have been resolved in a more amiable matter, had the actors not upset the

performative balance of play and work-- had they not fallen out of line with the given cultural

parameters. Apropos, looking at Stanislavski, the renowned actor and director, and his method--

actors are not meant to ‘play an emotion’ but rather ‘the given circumstances’ (1988, p. 342).

The given circumstances--what is there and presently available, what is workable and also what

is expected.

In acting, actors play-act, they do emotions but are not actually in the grips of such emotions. If

we take this to the office, we may say that employees are meant to act in certain ways, ludically,

in the case of ATTI, even if one is not playfully inclined per se. It’s a framework that

nevertheless affects those involved. Take, for instance, an actor that is meant to be acting angry--

he may be portraying an unreal emotion, a lie as it were, but still the performance is enough to

affect, to move the audience. Or to take another tack, regarding a painting by Bronzino is a

different beast from contemplating Brigitte Bardot--different aesthetic expectations, different

affective stances conditioned by disparate social norms. Hochschild, extending on Stanislavski’s

notion of ‘emotion memory’ defines ‘deep acting’ as the process whereby we conjure feelings

that we ought to feel to play correctly, our given roles (1983). She explains how ‘emotion

managers’ mainly in the service industry use deep acting techniques to shape how their

employees should feel in order to be effective in their work. Stewardesses, for example are

conditioned to be friendly and helpful, whereas doctors should be calm and unfazed. Hochschild

further differentiates deep acting, wherein feelings themselves are modulated, from surface

acting, which entails mere changes in facial/body display-- inner feelings in the latter instance

are neither changed nor affected. This can lead to emotional dissonance, a discrepancy between

what one feels and how one acts. Faking it may be a means to get through the day, but it is not

ideal for the workplace, as dissatisfaction can lead to poor job performance, resentment and high

turnover. Emotion management goes hand in hand with employee buy-in. It is a device for

organizational control.

Affective Nets

Whistle While You Work 45What I’m getting at here is that emotions are not simply inward or subjective states; they are

bounded by the social. Emotional responses are culturally scripted and directed (performed).

They can also be effectively bought and commoditized, to a significant degree. Emotions can be

shored up, pressed out in latent, but powerful ways. We find here an espousal which

encompasses the basic premise of the Experience Economy; after all, it thrives on emotion-- for

what is an experience or Erlebnis, if not an emotionally bound occurrence. Emotion, thus, can be

harnessed and transformed into the equivalent of a value added logo. The economical

implications of this are worth looking at, especially in terms of workers’ subjectivities. If their

own emotionalities are traded on in the global market, how can they retrieve a sense of agency?

I would argue that affinal with this ludic organizational style and the tenets of modern capitalism,

there is a playful collusion. Agency of this type falls more in line with a steady cantering than a

full out charge; it is the agency of interceding on behalf of another, of acting for another. This act

is not one of sovereign ruler but of being instrumental to spur action (Thrift, 2010). In this

configuration, complicity for the well being of each entity is entailed. It’s a sort of affective-

ontological waltz, of a piece with the ‘mother knows best’ plus ‘what’s good for the employee is

good for the company’ affirmatives, but in a more attenuated, nuanced sense.

The crux of the matter is that at ATTI, workers are encouraged to be friendly, creative, and

jovial--this is fostered by having an all pervasive play atmosphere. Play becomes part of the

employees’ habitus. Or in the words of Goffman, ‘when they issue uniforms, they issue skins.’

Anchored in a few pounds of flesh and soul, it should be added, if we are to take into account

deep acting.

What I’ve been heretofore explaining is that ATTI play has performative value. We can take it

as means of working things out, ritualistically, to confront organizational and social ills in a

symbolic manner, to work through conflict. However, at the very same time, it is a means of

maintaining social order. Echoing Mother Courage’s tagline – ‘Hey, I’ve got to get back into

business. Hey, take me with you’ (Brecht, 1963). We must get back to the business at hand--the

matter of being in business. The commercial rein is never far off; and the pendulous

intermingling of affect and cash cuts a sharp figure: ‘I’ve been working on testing for days, it’s

Whistle While You Work 46so boring but I try to look happy or at least busy while the boss is around. The client is really

getting antsy about getting this done. They’re breathing down our necks. We’ll get it done, but I

wish they’d give us some space’ (D.D., personal communication, November 2, 2010)

Work has traditionally been considered a necessary exertion; it is not, typically the locus of

enjoyment but rather the means thereto; fulfillment is had in making one’s livelihood, living

from the fruits of one’s labor. However, with the interpolation of fun and games at work, there’s

a burgeoning imposition of an infrangible code of behaviour. Work, have fun, have fun at work,

while you work. The dividing line between work and play is wizened and thus the teleology of

fun gets muddled. What does it mean when these two purportedly unequal values are given the

same worth, i.e. when work is equated with fun? In other words, if you hold two values as the

same, which one is better or worse? How does one valorize and hold dear one or the other? The

lack of difference makes a difference in that it may dilute both values. Work can become less

work-like and play less enjoyable. Employees complain about the lack of order, the constant

chaos-- ‘Experience the chaos of ATTI on all floors,’ ‘Do it yourself or it won’t get done,’ ‘I

have no idea who works in my department.’ However, they also decry the encroachment of too

much rigidity and structure (‘customer projects tend to get repetitive and perhaps automatic; it’s

limiting and not that much fun’), of not being able to take breaks or have access to massages

because they simply have too much to do and not enough time to do it.

We could conceive that work at the end of the day is work, even when it is mixed in with

intervals of play, or a bit of leisure. However, rituals, particular ludically-infused rituals, may be

seen as a means to enhance employees’ sense of interaction, but not in unduly prescriptive ways;

paradoxically they inure participants to institutionalization, while at the same time creating a

tandem, but sanctioned routine. Play, when positioned as bureaucratic play, as a means to an

end, can easily get at routine. For, if play becomes part of the everyday work practice, how can

it retain its fresh, fun appeal? If play becomes institutionalized, employees are likely to see it as

akin to office furniture, always there, perhaps comfortable too, but nothing to write home about,

making no difference, in other words. Fun turns into a bottomless pit; initial enthusiasm is

quickly succumb to worry and burn out. It’s a spiral staircase: daunting but pleasurably so, at

first take; persistent and never ending at second.

Whistle While You Work 47

However, it’s necessary to take into account the fact that, there is a tenuous balance. The fun

workplace is first and foremost a workplace and employees are quick to point out that fact. Even

when the normative gaps between what is considered work and play are ritualistically smoothed

over, work still maintains its preeminent standing. Work comes out on top. As iterated before,

play as ritual performance has a multitude of functions, not least of which is to strengthen

company values. Through play, employees are bound together as a community, rather than

existing as a disparate group of workers without strong affiliations. Furthermore, the fun

workplace bears out both myths of independence and romanticism (of the ideal office that

actually helps employees self actualize). Where more and more work has become a means of

distinction, a venue for self identification, getting a sense of pleasure out of what one does is as

important as the pay check. Employees are enticed by the prospect of ‘not business as usual’. At

companies such as ATTI, work is conflated with self fulfillment and also well being. Happier

workers, so the story goes, work better. They are thus given extras, massages, breakfasts, and

toys, in order to enhance their sense of satisfaction and concomitantly their sense of

accomplishment; having a job that is not simply a job, ergo a means to money, confers

employees with feelings of merit and enjoyment. ATTI is a company that believes in fun as a

vehicle to step-up creativity and thus innovation. The aforementioned sweeteners are meant to

boost creative output and thus give the company an edge on the competition in a notoriously

tough global market. The tenets of an affective economy are evidenced here. As described

earlier, employees’ sense of well being is achieved through affective conditioning. Fun is meant

to transgress traditional workplace norms, while at the same time effecting a measure of control.

At one end of the spectrum, management panders to its employees, giving them means beyond

mere cash, so that they may invoke a sense of company loyalty, and therefore, work better as a

company whole. Workers are governed by their passion for the company. These hand me down

benefits are meant to trickle back up especially in the financial sectors. It’s a system that’s

geared towards pleasing both sides of the equation-- the bookkeepers and everyone else.

Fulfillment

The play-performance turn gives itself to elaboration as a legitimate form of control because it

fits in with employees’ expectations which are molded in part by the overarching company

Whistle While You Work 48narrative. It’s a narrative which importunes the importance of fun, friendliness, creativity and all

around good times in conjunction with professionalism and cutting edge skills. In the end it’s not

a simple matter of doling out questions of practicalities, e.g.: Does a ping pong table help

employees work better? Does morning bread? Do free massages? Does Wii? These individual

things have no relation to the nature or quality of work in and of themselves. Rather, it is in the

way that they are incorporated into the company discourse, and how they are enacted in day to

day practice that bears weight. Employees themselves appreciate the benefits of bread and beer;

the very appeal of a more casual, relaxed workplace, one that prides itself on being different, on

not towing the corporate line is a considerable factor in employees’ decisions to work at

ATTI--’I could have gone to work with X company and I would have had to get up at 6 AM

everyday and wear a suit to work, and I probably would have made more money, I would have,

actually; but I’m still young, I’d rather be able to come to work at 10, eat breakfast for free, and

take a quick nap in the game room during my break if I want to. Take away my breakfast, and

I’m out’ (K.K., personal communication, October 20, 2010). There’s a sense of having your

cake, icing and all, and eating it too.

ATTI has taken the capitalistic imperative ‘Enjoy!’ and brought it into work, encroaching on the

affective registers of well-being, of free flowing ideas and camaraderie. They tell their

employees to ‘take it easy’ (but not too easy) and they do. Employees are affectively inculcated

to the casualized new media office. Get paid to enjoy your work -- this motif has become

something of an ecumenical act as companies solidify commitments through emotional

management. Put a twist on the cajoling adjuration, ‘Don’t sweat it’ and it becomes an

enticement; do not (let them see you) sweat, or in other words do not show your laboring, instead

turn it into play. Work is turned into something comestible, possibly something beautiful. Is this

a new take on ‘false consciousness’? Is it, in other words, a structuring structure that enables

employee buy-in, and consequently a good ideology, a faith that can be believed in? One

consequence of the play-work set-up is that employees’ personal, emotional lives become

inscripted, roped into the company brand; their non-work lives are situated as value adding

components because ATTI’s values are about community, of being part of a closely knit whole,

rather than being a faceless corporate entity. Their website depicts people lounging around,

sipping on cider, looking happy--this is their brand, in a nutshell. Thus, we find a conflation of

Whistle While You Work 49production and consumption; ATTI workers are invited to buy-in and consume the ATTI ethos in

order to create higher production values. Play could be seen as a gimmick to maintain social

order. On the one hand, it could be argued, the massages, the beer, the ping pong, etc. make

employees worry less about organizational structure, client deadlines, glitches in the products,

and lack of resources or direction, etc. However, if employees had really not accepted and

subscribed to the ATTI work-play culture, the effort would not hold up. Employees co-create the

atmosphere of the company, the mirthful brand and conviviality and also their own buy-in at the

same time. For, in the end, it was these values that first attracted them in the first place, and it is

these very same values that they wish to perpetuate.

I want to suggest that there exists a balance of both structure (management) and the everyday

lifeworld of the employees. The working body is governed through play, as an economy of play

and concomitantly happiness make up the company’s operative tenets. However, it is not the

mere top-down imposition of deep-seated economic motivations iterated in a friendlier manner

that we find here. Looking at the situation demands an askew glance. The ludic organizational

set up functions because there is collusion. Employees continuously co- and re-create the brand,

the company’s precepts, its ethos, its value, through (re)making its meanings. Meaning is

realized and produced through their own consumption of the brand. This is also reflective of the

incursion of pleasure and play in the public sphere especially with technologies that demand a

sort of ludic attention span, i.e. precisely the types of products ATTI produces--interactive

wallpapers, apps, and games--- again we witness the blurring of consumption and production.

Employees thus single-handedly ape and shape the growing cultural mode of production. It is not

then, the Habermasian system that controls and colonizes with an unwavering, adamantine grasp.

Rather we could see it as the foray of the lifeworld into the system . If we take the post modern

idea of mediated self narratives, of hobbies and distinction (the notion that your free time

interests, which in the realm of knowledge-based labor often collides, confer distinction, that

they show others who we are and what we believe in), of conceptions of well being and free will,

then employees make choices about their workplace as it ascribes to their own conception of

how they see themselves, of how they choose their identities and how they choose to lead their

personal lives. Indeed, their lives, both on and off the clock, are partially mediated by cultural

inscriptions in the workplace, such that Hochschild’s ‘managed heart’ is quite resonant.

Whistle While You Work 50However, complicity is found there too. Interchanges between structure and lifeworld create an

auspicious commingling.

It’s at times a wary pact, but in the end it cuts both ways, and there is an easy agreement.

Employees are implicated and yet that is not necessarily a bad thing. Management can and does

garner this affective net and propel it in meaningful and productive ways. It becomes a matter of

employee buy-in, mixed in with some compromise, a bit of awe and yes, sometimes even

contempt. Eventually routine falls into place and the duty to play actually becomes palpable. Yet

even a somewhat unpalatable routine can be put to thoughtful, intelligent ends, especially in an

atmosphere where openings, via play, are encouraged. What matters is that there is continual

redress, a process-oriented mindset which is open to and sensitive to anomaly, to purposefully

attenuate and change the way things are seen and understood. There must be in place a

mechanism for purposeful disorientation, of making strange or priem ostranenie, a means of

looking at matters in an askew fashion, in other words, an openness in structure, rather than

rigidity. Employees can be discouraged, self-mocking, contemptuous but also full of heart and

indulgent, because they are allowed to; they are given leeway. At the end of the day, after

developing lines of codes, designing power point slides, or say writing a interminable research

paper, there’s nothing quite as satisfactory as a cold beer, a game of pool or perhaps, a cool glass

of fresh milk on your tongue. At the end of the day it’s about feeling part of something--

cooperation, rather than exploitation-- it’s about feeling free to explore ideas, about a native

sense of play in the work environment. This goes beyond hallways and chairs, although those are

significant too; it has to do with affect, with regimes of doing that are performance bound, where

cues are welcome and necessary to work processes. In the words of one programmer, the fuse,

the force of ATTI’s esprit de corps, its mandate, is what could reasonably be called its flexibility,

its youthful plasticity:

‘What’s great about working here is they give you so much slack, I mean they give you so much

slack you could hang yourself with it. It’s good, it really makes you feel happier. You can’t work

with someone staring over your shoulder, it’s bothersome and doesn’t help. If you don’t have

someone keeping tabs on you all the time it makes you more creative, you get to put more into it.

Really, no one likes Big Brother. I don’t need clients breathing down my neck; I know how to do

Whistle While You Work 51my job and I’ll get it done, it’d be better if they weren’t so strict. But here it’s different. I like the

fact that here it’s about team work, here, you have common goals, there’s a real family feeling.

You get that with start-ups a lot. It’s a shame when they grow too big and too fast and become

impersonal. I mean when it gets down to it, you can bring work home, but you can’t bring home

to work’ (P.P., personal communication, January 9, 2011).

Summary of Chapter

A tentative summary of this chapter could be filed down to Charles Schulz’s popular phrase,

wherein we examine whether ‘Happiness is a warm puppy’. Or perhaps rather we should put a

musical bent on the matter and go with the Beatle’s version ‘Happiness is a warm gun.’

In this chapter, I argued that ATTI positions play as fun, and thereby rigs up an ostensibly

effectual affective net which pushes towards communitas and also company loyalty. This is

achieved in several intertwining ways. Bureaucratic play (non-autotelic play, or play which is

meant to encourage an end) cultivates communal and even familial-like ties amongst employees;

it does so by fostering an atmosphere of intense interaction--participation and creative thinking

are encouraged, leading indirectly to emotional satisfaction and fulfillment. Play allows staff

members to relate differently to their work, their co-workers, and to the way in which they see

and measure the value of the company. Furthermore, it is performative; employees and

management have erected frameworks of expectations, how each should act. Affective

conditioning (often through ritual performances)--or emotional management--inscribes ways of

feeling and acting. This aids in cultivating the ethos of the company in such a way that we find

there’s a receptive feedback loop in place. Employees are conditioned to the ‘Be happy, have fun

at work’ dictum, however, they themselves must buy into it first and foremost in order to make it

work. Employees are extensions of the brand, of the company culture; as much as ATTI

inscribes play and fun into their manifesto, and by turns, their staff, employees themselves

expect it and come to embrace it--thus ‘be the change you want to see’ comes true. A duty to act

emerges. The twin imperatives of produce and consume are the evident ideals: work hard and

play hard--consume what you produce and vice versa. Play is not seen as a waste of time, but

rather as a necessary means to a better, more productive work day, and in turn, a greater sense of

Whistle While You Work 52personal achievement through identification with the company ideals. In the same vein, corporate

culture becomes something that is, something that is acted, and not something you simply have--

it cannot be imposed. To wit, the company, its employees, the office space, the materials in the

space, the company narrative, codes of behaviour, and ideas, all form a network, one which

must be constantly performed in order to hold up.

Concluding Remarks and Further DiscussionHere I intend to discuss the value of play in work and how it can be used as a means to further

organizational coherence and also strengthen employees’ sense of self satisfaction and

fulfillment.

A further discussion of the applicable value of the conclusions will also be added later on.

Summary of findings

In this thesis I have attempted to examine the concept of play in the workplace--how is it

enacted and embodied, what it mean for employees, its impact on work regimes, and the ways it

is effective as an organizational tool. In looking at the materiality of the office space, I’ve noted

that play can be incorporated and encouraged by certain artefacts, white boards, for instance,

and certain spatial arrangements-- e.g. centrally located lounge areas. Furthermore, I would argue

that while there is no one locus of play, it cannot be situated in a ping pong table nor can we

attribute it to a plastic ball gun-- the socio-material network that these things create is important.

Where high technology is pervasive, low-tech artefacts become necessary complements. Coffee,

post it notes, tete a tete rooms, these give way to more interaction. The materials of the office

successfully encourage play and lend to a convivial atmosphere when they lead to increased

communication and interchange amongst employees.

Reflections

In a sense, ATTI’s form is dictated by its function--developing screen technology. What is the

purpose of a screen, if not to display? Performance is implicit in the nature of the beast. The

deployment of play not only helps to ward off the rather unsexy work of testing and

programming, it also harnesses a communitarian aura-- whereby sexiness is brought back by

Whistle While You Work 53latching whole-heartedly onto a riot of colors, in the form of toys, games, and music. Play is an

effective social glue--it inculcates employees into the company culture, and gives them a sense

of identification. It also serves to ground. Tech companies are evermore pressed to release new

products with increasing frequency; they must act in kind with their competitors, with their

customer’s desires and above all market pressure. Business is sped up. This forward looking-ness

precludes the ugly duck syndrome; products are not given the time to mature into something

magnificent, they have to be ready to go without much production time. The New Economy

relies on speed, flux, and ‘making it new’, but also on routine, scheduling and constancy in the

form of brand identity. Play, I’ve argued accords a sense of ballast, keeping employees rooted in

the face of velocity. It creates familiarity and camaraderie through invoking and creating rituals;

and this is why play becomes a profitable organizational tool.

And that’s the real ghost in the machine-- this fruitful uncanniness- an organizational

bureaucracy that’s trussed up enough to make you feel cozy, comfortable, at home; at times this

set-up seems to resonant with the American songstress Sheryl Crow’s song ‘If It Makes You

Happy (It Can’t Be That Bad’). I think what can be said is that these conditions are meant to

make one comfortable, but there is the extant and niggling consideration that this is a hair-

trigger step away from being genuinely stirred and thrust into happy worker mode via

meaningful arm-twisting. However, as I’ve noted previously, it does take two to tango--

employees create their own buy-in, shaping the company and its values in their own ways. As

such it isn’t mindless acceptance or false consciousness, it creates a becoming balance actually, a

favorable workplace.

Whistle While You Work 54

Take Away PointsAs my conclusions are, at times, theoretically dense, I would like to put forward some take away points that can be distilled from the previous material and end my thesis on a more result-oriented note.

● Play cannot be directly dictated or institutionalized, lest it lose its appeal and become something other than play. It can be used to create closer bonds and an esprit de corps in line with the company’s desired brand identity. In this way, play can be part of a bureaucratic mandate, however, it must be noted that employees play for their own sake, to enhance their own situation.

● Companies can condition a playful, fun working environment through inscribing it into the company ethos and mission statement, by creating playful spaces and encouraging their employees to have fun. In this way they create rituals and ways of acting that continuously recreate the play nexus. Focus on practice means that play/work are continual ongoing accomplishments.

● Play rituals creates new relations--how people cooperate and imagine themselves in roles with other people. Thus, new dynamics and a higher sense of interaction is established; there are also more possibilities for the cross pollination of ideas which in turn leads to greater innovation.

● Organizational Identity: The question of what the company is or more significantly who

is the company encompasses the organization’s overall cultural identity--meaning the employees and how they relate to each other, to the company as a whole and how they create meanings for themselves. Creating a cohesive collective identity becomes vital to fostering innovative and creative work.

● Of equal importance, is a company narrative to believe in, one that reflects and roots the identity of the company. The narrative should define, among other things, a common cultural knowledge, company myths, rituals, traditions, roles, codes, and ideals. This strategic of intent, or mission should create meaning for the employees and establish company direction.

Whistle While You Work 55

● In a play-influenced environment, employees feel more engaged and feel that they are learning. Learning, necessarily, is important for innovation. Learning influences emotional, social and cognitive dimensions of individuals; this could be construed as a type of company wisdom-- there’s a sense of learning the ropes, and thus the company culture--how things are done, how they can be done, and also, importantly how things can be changed, adapted, when necessary. It helps to ‘encourage individuals to adopt an attitude of openness, poise and curiosity that refuses to be satisfied that the goal of learning has been achieved, even as they imagine solutions to problems that may not yet exist in reality. (M. Statler et al., 2009, p. 104).

● Learning can be staged through explicit design of memorable events such as learning performances.

● Organizations should encourage this state of mind, so that new perspectives, ideas, and goals may be explored. Moreover, they should make sure employees have access to necessary resources to learn what they need to know to make decisions and to contribute to the learning environment. It is important that the patterns of circulation are noted so that the way in which people learn can be facilitated. Face to face time is especially valued in this endeavor and should be encouraged.

The upshot of this is that play can be a very powerful and useful tool in organizational management provided it is tempered with structure and leadership. It is possible to create a playful work place that encourages the not just business as usual mindset, one that reinforces ties amongst employees and loyalties to the company. Further research should look into the effects of a playful workplace on employees personal lives, and further if these practices lead to infantilisation processes.

Whistle While You Work 56

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