Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

Popular and academic analyses of automation in work predominantly focus on paid labour, sometimes forecasting how many jobs may be lost or investigating how new types of jobs are being created through such technological change. This article takes a different approach by considering what automation implies for the valuation of work. The starting point is that contemporary office automation is not exclusively aimed at working activities themselves but rather is increasingly directed at the infrastructure that allows work. Two infrastructural elements are identified where office automation is occurring: “tenant experience applications” that aid in the flexible occupation of office buildings, and “productivity tools” that support the organisation of office tasks regardless of location. This shift from automation targeting what work is done to how that work is done raises the question of work valuation. Plural regimes of valuation are at play in contemporary office automation, through which a myriad of interested actors emerge, extending beyond the employer and the worker. The value of flexibility thus occurs not singularly nor even primarily in the production process, but rather is achieved in the financial valuation of various aspects of office performance as well as in the social (re)definition of work.

Keywords

Automation flexibility infrastructure office valuation

Introduction

Popular and academic analyses of automation in work predominantly focus on paid labour, sometimes forecasting how many jobs may be lost; or investigating how new types of jobs – both “skilled” and “unskilled” – are being created through such technological change (Altenried, 2022; Wajcman, 2017). Whether critical or supportive of such changes, these studies of automation in work tend to centre their analysis on some combination of labour, production or both. At issue in the former labour-centric view is how automation changes conditions of work for the worker, for example through upskilling or deskilling. Meanwhile, in the latter production-centric view, the focus is on how automation alters the efficiency and productivity of a defined production process. Although recognising the importance of such questions, this article takes a different approach, instead considering what automation implies for the valuation of work. Through a focus on the office and office work in England, it shows how examination of what is being automated and to which ends sheds light on emerging targets of valuation in work and the developing techniques for their measurement. The starting point for this approach is a recognition that contemporary office automation is not exclusively aimed at working activities themselves but rather is increasingly directed at the infrastructure that allows work. Specifically, the article identifies two infrastructural elements where office automation is occurring: “tenant experience applications” that aid in the flexible occupation of office buildings, and “personal productivity tools” that support the organisation of office tasks regardless of location. These software are symptomatic of the demand for automating technologies that manage and produce circulations of office workers, demonstrating how the target of office automation is shifting from the tasks done at the office to the infrastructures allowing spatial and temporal flexibility in office work (Richardson, 2023).

It is this shift from automation targeting what work is done to how that work is done that raises the question of work valuation. As with industrial workplaces, the development of automating technologies for the office has historically been justified through the promise of increased value creation for the employer, resulting from enhanced productive output. However, by targeting infrastructure, the value expected from contemporary office automation is only indirectly linked to work output. Instead, in today’s office work, value is promised in the capacities to shape how work is undertaken, specifically the possibilities for spatial and temporal flexibility of working activities. So rather than understanding value as singularly derived from or intrinsic to work itself, the automation of office infrastructure invites investigation of valuation as a practice, in order to grasp this state of affairs in which worth is differently ascribed and achieved (Chiapello, 2015). Through such a pragmatist approach to value (Muniesa, 2011), the article identifies frequently less perceptible yet plural regimes of valuation at play in contemporary office automation. These regimes provide distinctive orders for the attribution of value in office automation by taking into account and assigning worth to different aspects of work’s flexible spatial and temporal structure. A myriad of actors with interests in office automation surface through attention to such valuation processes, actors who include but extend beyond the employer and the worker. The implication is that value of flexibility in today’s office work encompasses more than that accrued through the flexibilization of paid labour.

Since the 1980s, the term flexibility has been used to refer to changes to the structure of paid labour, changes that were intended to increase the value derived from production processes (Pollert, 1988). The contemporary automation of office infrastructure indicates in contrast how the socio-technical condition of flexibility is generating value not singularly nor even primarily for the production process, but rather is engaged by the financial valuation of various office assets as well as more subtly underpinning a redefinition of the social value of work. In order to develop this thesis, the first section describes how, as information technologies increasingly required and encouraged flexibility in the latter decades of the 20th century, the targets of office automation have turned towards less structured tasks, then eventually to the automation of the infrastructures that enable office work to take place. This shift to office infrastructure became more visible during the Covid-19 pandemic. Contemporary office automation allows office buildings to function as infrastructures for flexible occupation through tenant experience applications, while mobile productivity software have become infrastructural for organising tasks on-the-go beyond the office as fixed physical site. The second section outlines some operations of these contemporary automated infrastructures. It draws on a study involving evaluations of real estate company documents, reviews of grey literature on property technologies, participation in webinars of software companies and a database of relevant software products. It argues that contemporary automation of office infrastructure indicates a changing basis for valuation in office work in which the object of valuation is not solely work output but also the capacities to flexibly structure how work is undertaken. The conclusion suggests that these plural regimes of valuation at play in the office demonstrate the shifting social role and economic structuring of work flexibility.

Office automation and the emergence of office infrastructure

Automated technologies that manage the flexibility of office work have been thrown into relief in England, as in other countries, by the Covid-19 pandemic. As a result of social distancing orders, workers who would usually go every day to an office building were forced to undertake their office work at home. Most were using software for the organisation and communication of work information with their geographically dispersed co-workers, software (including now common applications such as Zoom) which was either completely new to them or previously infrequently used. This situation posed with more urgency two interrelated problems that had been bubbling away beneath the surface of discussions about the future of office work for well over a decade. One concerned the purpose of office buildings, given that it is possible and often even favourable to work in other locations (Fogarty et al., 2011); and the other highlighted the issue of the “bleed” (Gregg, 2011) of office work into other activities when digital technologies at least theoretically make it possible to work anywhere, anytime. Neither of these were new issues, with the office itself having been through numerous reinventions including in the digital age (Saval, 2014), and the overflow of the office into the home understood as an essential vector of the work geographies of new mobile technologies (Jarvis and Pratt, 2006; Schwanen et al., 2008). However, the near absolute vacuum of workers in office buildings and the widespread challenges of maintaining boundaries in home working during the pandemic have motivated further development of apparent solutions to these issues. To match these evolving geographies of working, office buildings are now increasingly being made flexible to support mobile workers, at the same time as there is an increase in the volume and variety of software that provides some structure to otherwise potentially boundless working space and time.

Such alterations to workplace geographies that intensified during the pandemic encourage analysis of the office as infrastructure. In the last decades of the 20th century, office technologies were increasingly intended, through forms of automation, to shape the various capacities that allow office work to be done, rather than directly targeting tasks themselves. As this section will demonstrate, such a switch in the target of automation hinged around the changed materiality and role of knowledge or information in office work. Although offices were always sites for organising information, the expanding role of computers from the late 1970s onwards both increased the amount of information and transformed its medium, thereby requiring an alteration of the existing mechanisms that enabled information storage, access and circulation in office buildings. By the 1990s, “infrastructure” was the term being used by certain social scientists to describe these technologies and techniques for making information utilisable in organisations (Bowker et al., 1996), at the same time as organisational action in the office became increasingly dependent on information as infrastructure (Star and Ruhleder, 1996). Information infrastructures in this double sense were therefore a prerequisite for capacities to act in an office, gradually taking on a foundational role even though they were still frequently understood to be merely of ‘technical’ rather than strategic organisational importance (Barley and Orr, 1997). One origin for this infrastructural turn was what was claimed to be a “revolution in the office” (Zisman, 1978: 1) in which various computing technologies were said to be automated. This section will firstly flesh out some of the history of this earlier period of office automation, before secondly showing how the targets and purpose of automation during this time subsequently became central to the infrastructural qualities of the contemporary office.

Office automation histories: less structured tasks, more human productivity

Similar to other sites of production, the history of the introduction of technologies to the office has been in part one of machines taking over repetitive, highly structured tasks in order to improve efficiency. From early on though, technologies were involved in the analysis of information produced in the office, particularly concerning numerical calculations, with machines such as the “comptometer” carrying out basic mathematical functions for accountants in the early decades of the 20th century (Yates, 2000). These earlier information analysis tools were extended through the “office automation concept” (Haigh, 2006: 19) of the late 1970s and early 1980s, although the function of information analysis was by no means explicit in the attempts to define office automation at the time. In fact, definitions tended towards a rather imprecise specification of office automation that lacked a “theoretical base that ties everything together” (McLeod and Jones, 1987: 87), for example describing “the use of integrated computer and communications systems to support administrative procedures in an office environment” (Olson and Lucas, 1982: 838). Despite or perhaps because of this vague definition, office automation was “the highest profile and most hyped development innovation of corporate computing during the second half of the 1970s and the first few years of the 1980s” (Haigh, 2006: 19). It was even described as a “movement” (Schmidt, 1997: 138) that would not only allow office work to be performed more efficiently, “but the concept of office work itself [would] be altered” (Olson and Lucas, 1982: 838).

Justification for these claims can be pinned to the definition of “automation” as it applied to new computer technology. Concerning this technology in 1952, John Diebold had coined the term automation as that which “based on mathematical formulation of a basic theory of communication and control, made possible the construction of self-regulating and self-programming machines” (Nolan, 2000: 227). Thus, as Zisman (1978: 15) explained, “the technology of automation implies a different kind of knowledge and a higher degree of knowledge, than the technology of mechanisation”, what he called “the knowledge of office procedures.” So although in both mechanisation and automation there was a shift in action from human to machine, with the latter this shift was framed as concerning not simply the physical undertaking of the task but also the control of when (and where) a task should be executed. This was astutely described by Zuboff (1985) who noted that new information technologies had differing implications for work tasks. One was certainly to “automate”, which she suggested (somewhat contrary to the distinction in the definition above from mechanisation) meant the replacement of human effort with a technology that enabled the same work to be performed at less cost and with more control. The other was to create information, which she termed “to informate”, through the automation process:

Any activity, from a clerical transaction to spraying paint on an automobile, if it is to be computerised, must first be broken down into its small components and analysed so that it can be translated into the binary language of a computer system. (Zuboff, 1985: 8)

As such, Zuboff was less describing two separate implications but rather proposing that one action – to automate – necessarily led to the other – to informate.

Office automation implied, then, a different relationship between humans and machines at work. Rather than an operator of a machine, the office worker was increasingly a “user of a computer” in which “he [sic.] communicates with it to accomplish a task” (Bardini and Horvath, 1995: 59). The idea was not (only) to “replace workers with computers, but also to leverage workers with computers” (Nolan, 2000: 240), meaning that the justification by businesses for investing in new office technology shifted from the “lowering of clerical labour costs” towards “an assumption that computers should be used directly by professionals and managers to make them more productive” (Haigh, 2006: 19). Indeed, as a precursor to the more contemporary productivity lexicon outlined below, productivity was already being used at this time as a descriptor of software, with for example the publication Business Week noting in 1984 there had been an explosion in the number of “productivity applications” that now comprised some “200 or more word processors, 150 spreadsheets, 200 database programs and 95 integrated packages that offer at least three functions” (Campbell-Kelly, 2001: 108). As well as software, the workstations in office automation systems also included “personal applications” that held “the capability for streamlining individual administrative tasks” for the use “by individuals at their own discretion” (Olson and Lucas, 1982: 839). Office automation at this time was, then, beginning to target the space-time structure of work, shifting from “highly structured” to “less structured” domains of activity (Zisman, 1978: 21) with the hope that workers could be afforded more autonomy to manage their “productivity” when computers were offering support in decision making.

The importance of office infrastructure

The growing recognition of infrastructure as the decisive basis for office work by the 1990s was partially a response to this earlier office automation movement. Instead of solely targeting the undertaking of tasks, office automation had deliberately involved the use of computing to shape task structure, and in doing so foregrounded the role of information not only as the object of a task but also as its subject. Thus, the technical advances associated with the period of office automation from the late 1970s onwards made the figure of the “knowledge worker” – already conceived in the 1960s (Drucker, 1966) – a more practical reality as work with information processed and analysed by computers became increasingly prevalent in an individual worker’s office tasks. Both the “knowledge of office procedures” (Zisman, 1978: 15), but also increasingly knowledge as the malleable content of tasks, implied that information should be understood “as the intellectual infrastructure” for diverse work functions that would allow observation of “patterns of activities in new ways” (Yates, 2000: 198). Therefore, information as infrastructure did not simply concern “data flows and work routines” but also impacted organizational cultures, with computer-based information systems interacting with the “structural and institutional arrangements” of office work together with the “assumptions, frames and mental images people have while enacting” that work (Ciborra and Lanzaara, 1990: 149). More specifically, the cultural change in work implied by this recognition of computer-based information infrastructure was a shift in the spatial organisation of agency and control (Star and Ruhleder, 1996).

Indeed, studies of infrastructure in organisational contexts gained an explanatory weight in both social and computer sciences through the desire to understand control in the apparent “flexibility” enabled by new office information and communication technologies:

With the rise of decentralised technologies used across wide geographical distance, both the need for common standards and the need for situated, tailorable and flexible technologies grows stronger. There is no absolute centre from which control and standards flow; as well, no absolute periphery. Yet some sort of infrastructure is needed. (Star and Ruhleder, 1996: 112)

Infrastructure was conceived as that which resolved the tension between the required continuity to achieve organisational goals and the perceived productivity gains from the increasingly individualised or “flexible” use of information technologies. The study of infrastructure was able to address two problems posed by these flexible technologies to the existing office automation concept. The first issue concerned the question of technology use and how this might differ from assumptions in their design. A growing body of research was demonstrating the contingency of technology use when examined within their organisational contexts, challenging rationalistic assumptions underpinning office automation in which tasks and artifacts could be understood as “discrete entities” that are necessarily “well-defined” and “well-structured”, in order to be automated (Star and Ruhleder, 1994: 253, 254). In this regard, Lucy Suchman’s (1987) Plans and situated actions was a definitive study that refuted the idea that human use of office technology was:

The sum of repetitive procedures that encompass all possible meaningful cases and that then can be easily automated and executed by mobilising the least amount of intuition and competence by the involved actors. (Cabitza and Simone, 2013: 498)

Instead, Suchman’s ethnographic work demonstrated the impossibility of delimiting all cases of activity in advance, advocating therefore for the study of technologies in their contexts of use, which was always one of interaction, not only between human and machine, but also between machines and between humans.

The second problem posed by flexible technologies to the prior office automation approach concerned these relations between actors involved. The focus in office automation had been decidedly on the accomplishment of tasks and procedures by individuals, or at most small groups. By the late 1980s, an alternative approach to office information technologies was being developed called Computer Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW) that focused on group processes rather than individual tasks (Carasik and Grantham, 1988). CSCW developed as a response to the interactive and networked capabilities of new technologies that enabled group activity, concerning which “technologists” had thus far little expertise (Grudin, 1994: 19). It is within this context then that the influential studies of infrastructure by Susan Leigh Star and colleagues occurred, addressing in combination the problems of both information technologies in practice and their relations in organisational contexts:

An infrastructure occurs when the tension between local and global is resolved. That is, an infrastructure occurs when local practices are afforded by a larger-scale technology, which can then be used in a natural, ready-to-hand fashion. It becomes transparent as local variations are folded into organizational changes, and becomes an unambiguous home – for somebody. This is not a physical location nor a permanent one, but a working relation – since no home is universal. (Star and Ruhleder, 1996: 114)

From this perspective then, infrastructure named the complex rendering of structure and agency that was developing in new information spaces: it created the standards to make information utilisable in individual practice in offices, not determining these practices but rather allowing for potentially idiosyncratic local usage that itself relationally produced a collective basis for organisational action. From their conception, the information infrastructures for office work in these studies of the 1990s were, almost by definition, subject to automation.

This was because a variety of necessary targets for automation were present in the intricacy of the infrastructural double movement that paired the “intimate and flexible use” of information with the “standards and continuity” making information usable (Star and Ruhleder, 1996: 112). These were primarily computer-based infrastructures of information processing that themselves “focused on improving the technology of information processing as a source of productivity” (Castells, 1996: 17). Attempts to automate then were sometimes but not necessarily directed at work previously undertaken by humans, but always with the aim of enhancing the infrastructural capacities to create the (space-time) conditions for office work insofar as it concerned information processes. A key area for infrastructural automation was cooperative work within computer networks, whose space-time flexibility created various challenges. Such work was constituted by the “interdependence of multiple actors” whose individual activities change “the state of their individual field of work” but also therefore “change the state of the field of work of others” and demanded interaction through this changing state of the common field of work (Schmidt and Simone, 1996: 158). In order to facilitate cooperative work therefore, the development of what Schmidt and Simone (1996: 183–184) termed at the time “computational coordination mechanisms”; infrastructure that through information processing could automate aspects of interaction that were necessary for situated action, but that were also themselves “malleable in the sense that users are supported in defining [the computational coordination mechanism’s] behaviour.” The principle of a (to some degree malleable) mechanism for coordinating work structure rather than for undertaking a work task is a common basis for the variety of technologies comprising contemporary automated office infrastructures that condition the spatio-temporal flexibility of working activity. It is this shift in contemporary automation from office task to office infrastructure that indicates a change in the valuation of work, discussed next.

The valuation of work and contemporary automated office infrastructure

The targets of automation in work historically and today undoubtedly illustrate the distribution of productive effort between human and machine, and thus frequently the impact on labour market structure, in terms of the number, type and quality of jobs. It is such impact on labour market structure that underpins many popular and academic accounts of the social and economic implications of automation. However, as the histories of office automation show, the targets of and therefore justifications for automation in work have changed over time, so much so that the office now exists (at least theoretically) more as an infrastructural assortment of hardware, software and data that can be activated to produce a workplace flexibly with regard to time and location. In detailing this contemporary condition of the automated office, this section takes a pragmatist approach to value to argue that the social and economic implications of such automation are bound up in frequently less perceptible practices of valuation of work, rather than those focused on the value derived from observable changes through automation to the amount of human labour, typically in the number of jobs. As well as the value created through the output of the productive effort that conventionally benefits the employer, the automation of aspects of office infrastructure points to a broader set of actors assessing value according to different criteria, many of which neither directly relate to the work undertaken nor result in value that profits the employer. The automation of office infrastructure thus implies that there are plural regimes of valuation at play in contemporary office work, perhaps contrary to common understandings of the purpose of automation.

Indeed, work automation is typically intended to ensure a more valuable production process by increasing outputs in conjunction with a reduction in human labour costs. The promise of more value therefore at least in some way motivates the introduction of automating technologies in a work process. Yet contemporary office automation technologies neither singularly nor directly increase the value generated from the production process because they intervene in the spatial and temporal conditions of work by targeting office infrastructures. If a motivation for automation nonetheless remains the generation of value, then this implies that value must also be achieved through the operations of office infrastructures that enable spatio-temporal flexibility, as well as in the undertaking of office work itself. To understand this situation of plural value generation, it is helpful to approach valuation as a practice, over and above value as an attribute. This means that rather than intrinsic to an object or situation, value is formed through practical valuation activities, organised as regimes that order the attribution of worth by:

(i) identifying and selecting which objects should be paid attention (and thus what escapes attention), (ii) qualifying what is valuable – ie the viewpoint from which objects are appraised (iii) estimating their “worth” within the chosen framework. (Chiapello, 2015: 16)

Thus, value is constructed (and so defined) through these regimes of valuation, combining in seemingly the same act the “appraisal of the characteristics of something in terms of its value and the setting of that thing for the purpose of making it valuable” (Muniesa, 2011: 31). In short, value is in no small part formed through performative valuation practices. This pragmatist approach therefore provides some conceptual tools to deal with work situations, including those of the contemporary office, where value is neither singularly nor necessarily distinctly appraised within the productive process. Attributed to John Dewey’s philosophy in the first half of the 20th century, such a pragmatist understanding of value predates more recent knowledge and financial economies but is nonetheless well suited to the intangible or “virtual” qualities of their operations. As Muniesa (2011: 27) argues, valuation in financial professional practice has precisely these performative qualities in which value is accounted for in “an active and practical manner” so that it is “formed for the purpose of business”, rather than necessarily derived from a tangible object. In the case of contemporary offices then, examining valuation practices sheds light on the forms of appraisal and measurement that are motivating infrastructural automation, which simultaneously indicate the range of actors and interests shaping flexible office work, together with their numerous forms of value generation. An implication of this is that the value of flexibility in contemporary office work must not be singularly understood in relation to paid labour. Flexibility is valuable in and of itself, understood as the socio-technical functions to produce differentiation in the space and time of office work.

This flexibility not only allows (more) value to be attained through the performance of different space (e.g. that of office buildings or the home office) but also results in a repositioning of value concerning work. Instead of emphasising the value in work, derived from selling labour in exchange for income, the value of flexibility lies in the boundaries of work; the capacities to switch between work and other activities. Before expanding on this value of flexibility in the conclusion, the remainder of this section outlines the plural regimes of valuation in operation across two types of infrastructural automation contributing to contemporary flexible office space (see Figure 1, which draws on Chiapello (2015) above): firstly in technologies aiding the flexible occupation and access of commercial office buildings and secondly in productivity tools that are supporting the organisation of office tasks regardless of location. In both cases, the object of valuation is not a work output, but the flexible spatio-temporal ordering of office work enabled through this infrastructure, meaning that the viewpoint from which these objects of valuation are appraised can include but necessarily extends beyond an employer. The methods underpinning this study involve textual and content analysis. To examine automation in office commercial real estate provision, the section draws on analysis of business media including webinars, grey literature such as consultancy reports, together with text, visual and video content from the websites of commercial real estate companies. For productivity tools, observations are based on a survey of productivity software on an online application store, as well as online reviews and blog commentary. These methods in no way pretend to provide an assessment of all activity concerning these infrastructural developments, but rather to give a sense of the general direction of travel.

Figure 1.

Regimes of valuation for office work.

Valuing the flexible office building: infrastructures for the occupation of commercial office space

Instead of gradually becoming obsolete when faced with a workforce that would rather put in their hours at home or elsewhere, office buildings are increasingly becoming infrastructures for flexible occupation, for which digital technologies are used to automate various aspects of their access, use and operation. Beyond office work output then, the object of valuation integral to these infrastructures is flexible office space, for which measurements of circulations through or “engagements” with the office building are central to the appraisal of worth. The flexible occupation facilitated by these infrastructures implies most basically that individual workers, and thus by extension companies, require some combination of part-time, irregular or short-term use of office space. This is of course not a new demand, even if it is more widespread since the pandemic. Not only have serviced offices providing degrees of flexible usage been in existence since the 1980s, but in the last decade, coworking spaces and then “space as service” offices have become more prevalent, catering directly to mobile workers (Richardson, 2021). The pandemic though demonstrated unmistakably the possibilities (as well as the problems) of working away from an office building, and subsequent studies have shown that many workers in England would like to continue to work from home for portions of their work time (ONS, 2022; Work after Lockdown Survey, 2022). An implication of these changes to spatial patterns of working is a higher degree of unpredictability in office occupation on a daily basis (e.g. volume and duration of occupation), which creates challenges when trying to ensure the optimum building operation for different usage patterns. It is for this reason that technologies that allow office buildings and their managers to respond at least partially automatically to the challenges of flexibility are increasingly valuable.

Perhaps the most novel aspect of automation for flexibility is the creation of what are called in the commercial real estate industry “tenant experience apps” (TEA); software that is designed to operate on handheld devices (i.e. mobile phones) of the different users of a given office space, building or set of office buildings. Although such apps serve different purposes for different groups, they unite their users through an interest in the arrangement and coordination of a given office space, frequently in real time. TEA have three main objectives for office workers. Firstly, and most basically, they allow use of the physical space, potentially through automated access to an office building when barcoded entry is required, but also through showing availability and allowing booking of facilities, from desks to rooms. Secondly, they frequently provide a portal to access or book various “lifestyle” and “wellness” benefits such as exercise classes, hospitality and retail options nearby (and sometimes within) the office; or online access through the app to magazines and newspapers. Thirdly, TEA provide a purportedly simple and swift means for workers to give feedback concerning their working environment, often through responding to small surveys on the app designed to capture “employee sentiment”. Thus, TEA encourage office use on a flexible basis by enabling workers to have an overview of services available at any given time in the building and to book or make use of these at short notice. In doing so, the software also positions the building a point of connection for its different users, regardless of their employer, sometimes even by providing an instant messaging tool within the app. TEA are then intended overall “to activate” the office building; the language used by landlords and property managers to describe increased (offline and online) interactions with a given office address.

For flexible office space then as the object of valuation, there are a number of viewpoints of appraisal, the two most significant of which being the property manager and the employer. Neither of these two categories are entirely self-evident: the property manager generally denotes the company with whom a lease or agreement of office usage is made, and this company may or may not own the building. The employer, meanwhile, denotes the party taking out the lease or agreement of usage (i.e. the tenant) and could be anything from a large multinational company to a self-employed worker, although the latter are certainly minor players in terms of capital expenditure. Both viewpoints, though, are estimating the worth of flexible office space according to what is being called in the commercial real estate industry “engagements”:

Companies are competing to attract and retain tenants, and employers are competing for talent in a tight labour market. Data shows that landlords are seeking to increase tenant engagement (via technology investments and dedicated staff) in order to boost long-term retention. For employers, maintaining high levels of employee engagement is critical in preventing workforce turnover. (HQO, 2022)

Property managers have thus adopted “tenant engagement strategies” that aim to increase the interaction of people with office buildings by ensuring a “consumer-first experience”, according to TEA provider company HQO (2021). The rationale is that “ability to provide valuable experiences” is now the crux of the “success of the physical workplace” (HQO, 2022), and unsurprisingly HQO claim that TEA, with their “digital-to-physical” (HQO, 2021) capabilities, are the method of achieving this.

In facilitating flexible access to the office building for an otherwise potentially dispersed workforce and providing offers that improve workplace experience, TEA are said to “win customer loyalty” in a market environment where the physical office building alone is not enough to encourage occupancy agreements and then usage (HQO, 2021). The target of automation via this software is predominantly therefore the acts of arrangement and coordination of space usage, activity which might otherwise be undertaken directly by property management teams. Such automation in the organisation of space usage adds a novel goal to the existing list of elements in property management that have long been automated, most of which pertain to control of the material environment of an office building (McGuirk et al., 2019). Building management systems that automate air conditioning and heating, security systems and ventilation amongst other office building operations, have been in existence for decades, utilising a “broadcast” method where standards (e.g. for temperature) were set and sent from a central source to a mass of receivers (Starosielski, 2021: 32). As early as the 1980s, these systems were resulting in the moniker “intelligent buildings” to denote the automation of systems for environmental controls (Johnson, 2007). By the 21st century though, such “buildings with brains” (Richter, 2007) were increasingly understood as smart for their “built in flexibility” (Lecomte, 2019: 133), meaning that they had the capacity to adapt their “operation and physical form” according to information gathered internally and externally (Lecomte, 2019). The most recent building systems allow personalised management of the office environment, via “digital self-control” (Starosielski, 2021: 36) that frequently occurs through TEA.

In the typical trade-off of the digital era, personalised control comes at the expense of personal data that ideally feeds into the creation of what is called a “digital twin”, a term which has made its way into commercial real estate from engineering to describe real-time modelling of a physical asset that allows it to respond to and predict issues in its use (e.g. Deloitte, 2018). Property managers are thus provided with significant amounts of data on the use of the office building through TEA. In a similar fashion to the creation of large datasets on individual consumer behaviour that are also used to predict and shape consumption patterns (Mackenzie, 2018), this data provides often novel granular information on worker behaviour for property managers that can be combined with other “smart building” data to “enhance user experience, increase productivity, reduce costs, and mitigate physical and cybersecurity risks” (Deloitte, 2018). Such TEA data bypasses the employer, insofar as it can provide a more accurate picture of patterns of use of individual workers, but simultaneously offers a way of demonstrating to employers (i.e. tenants and prospective tenants) the value of the office building as a workplace investment. Engagement as a framework of worth comprises not only metrics of the number and type of usages of the building, but also the attempts mentioned above to measure worker experience through employee sentiment surveys. Thus, the techniques of TEA that – frequently via automation – facilitate and encourage engagement with the office building, simultaneously also collect data that then performatively demonstrate the value of the building as an infrastructure for flexible workspace.

Valuing productivity on-the-go: infrastructures for the organisation of office tasks

The spatial flexibility of office work within and beyond an office building is made possible in no small part by handheld mobile devices. With high-speed internet connections, these devices not only allow geographical flexibility but also provide – through a myriad of “personal productivity tools” – infrastructures for managing the organisation of personal work tasks in an increasingly automated manner. For this infrastructure shaping how (mobile) office work occurs, the object of valuation is productivity on-the-go. Productivity is adopted as a general category by software retailers (see the Google Play and Apple App stores) and technology marketers to describe mobile software applications that claim to aid in the effectiveness and efficiency of “getting things done” (Gregg, 2015; Mackenzie, 2008). Thus, in online mobile application stores, it is possible to find an array of different software under the productivity label, from that which offers word processing capabilities to those aiding with project management. At stake though in the descriptor is a more general and now largely taken-for-granted logic of personal productivity in which individuals are encouraged to describe and view their activities according to a lexicon concerning the effectiveness of individual effort that was previously reserved for industry as a whole. The appraisal of value for such productivity tools is therefore primarily from the perspective of the employee or worker who uses this software on portable handheld devices, but also potentially of those in their social network (including beyond work) who also benefit from a smooth flow of tasks.

When pertaining to the individual knowledge worker who frequently has little quantifiable input or output in their work (Dieumegard et al., 2004), productivity is invariably judged according to an easily numbered measure: time. That is, productivity software are frequently engaged in automation that delimits, schedules and sequences time windows, including through “intelligent scheduling assistants” who not only fill calendars but can even in some cases carry out tasks like answering emails and phone calls (Wajcman, 2019a). As infrastructure, personal productivity software therefore manage the spill-over of office work from a fixed location, by both enabling and seeking to resolve the problems of the spatial flexibility of working activity. In providing a portable means of organising and patterning work activities, they replace some of the structure of the office that was achieved through the “articulation work” undertaken by often invisible office workers (Clement, 1993; Star and Strauss, 1999) who took care of “the continuous efforts required in order to bring together discontinuous elements […] into working configurations” (Suchman, 1995: 407). Historically, the structuring of a day in the office involved communicative and coordinative labour that was overwhelmingly the role of women as typists, secretaries and assistants who configured people and information to ensure that the “real work” could take place (Gustavsson, 2005). Personal productivity software and their attempts at automation are therefore part of a broader shifting gendered division of labour in which the automation of tedious tasks was claimed to free up women’s time (Cowan, 1983; Davies, 1982), but which, thanks to the reconfiguring of the sexual contract under post-Fordism, are no longer tasks that are automatically considered to be the responsibility of women (Gregg, 2018: 92).

The notion that productivity software replace previously “subservient” (Gregg, 2018) human labour is encouraged by the designers of certain applications. Trello, an app for project management, explicitly evokes such subservience through its “robot” called “Butler” (the name given to the male servant in a wealthy household) that can “reduce the number of tedious tasks (and clicks) on your project board”, including through automating common actions, “surfacing” upcoming deadlines and scheduling teammate assignments. The framework of worth for productivity is therefore typically organised around metrics concerning task completion on a given day or sequence of days. The assumption is that there are multiple and sometimes competing tasks that are demanded from different sources and that these, through the software, are (automatically) prioritised and surfaced (meaning the worker is reminded when they should undertake them), and then ideally checked off when completed. The belief that automation will deliver more time for office work is thus central to the design of productivity software (Wajcman, 2019b). As logistical media with a visual language that emphasises smooth functioning and simplicity, tools such as Todoist claim to “declutter” a busy schedule and “capture and organise tasks the moment they pop into your head” and so “build lasting habits”. The apps are thus intended as a means for navigating the temporal conditions produced in part by the spatial flexibility of office work. For a variety of reasons, locational flexibility does little if anything to relieve time pressures but rather frequently creates new ones that require more complex coordination and prioritisation of competing activities, including those that are not included within office work.

Productivity apps attend to this situation by offering holistic management of activity, regardless of whether such efforts are associated with paid work or not. For example, returning to Todoist, in promoting the app, the company deliberately uses images of sleek lists of “non-work” activities like a “Workout Plan” with subtasks including the specific exercises “20 air squats, 20 pushups” and so on. Trello, meanwhile, boasts that it can give users perspective over all their projects “at work and at home”, whilst displaying a screenshot of a “project board” entitled “Healthy Living”. By providing temporal order to office tasks regardless of location, personal productivity software are automated office infrastructure that respond to workspace flexibility. Task completion as the central measure of productivity therefore implies the capacity to “manage time” in such a way that all tasks allotted to a particular duration are undertaken. Productivity tools that directly target and measure this task completion can then overlay other types of applications that aid in complimentary areas of work activity, such as note-taking tools and cloud syncing software. Given their emphasis on task completion through the decentralised management of work, productivity tools are frequently described as passing responsibility from manager to worker (e.g. Moore and Robinson, 2016). As this valuation process also demonstrates though, in using a framework of worth for measuring task completion, the software enacts an automated infrastructure for the flow of work through presenting what has been done and what is to be done. This is then in part the valuation of workflow, or the circulation of tasks with a view to their completion, to some degree external to which tasks are actually undertaken and their outcomes.

Conclusion: the value of flexibility

The case of automation and labour examined through the office is one in which technologies increasingly target the infrastructures for work as much as the work itself. Contemporary automated office infrastructures enabling flexibility – both in the usage of office buildings and in the ordering of office tasks regardless of location – build on a longer history of office automation aimed at the structuring and ordering of work tasks using digital information and communication technologies. Distinct from prevailing perspectives on work automation that focus on the impacts on the number of jobs and the productive output, this view from the office points to plural regimes of valuation that motivate and measure the design and implementation of automating technologies. Rather than value as a given attribute of work, a pragmatist approach foregrounding valuation practices indicates that it is the capacities of these automated infrastructures to flexibly structure work space and time that are appraised and measured, demonstrating that value is created in the coordination of working activity. As much as a discourse or a condition of employment, flexibility then exists as a material, socio-technical condition that extends beyond work, and to which forms of financial and social value are ascribed.

The story of flexibility in post-Fordism has been largely concerned with how value could be achieved by the employer through limiting the costs of labour input by flexibly matching it to changing demand for productive output (Gertler, 1988; Pollert, 1988). From a critical social science perspective, one of the most documented implications of this flexibility has been the precarity of labour, particularly in terms of employment contracts and income. The valuation of automated office infrastructure for flexibility extends this narrative. Rather than the implications of flexibility for production, automated office infrastructures indicate how flexibility as a socio-technical condition – in which space-time can be easily modified and differentiated – carries and is shaped by financial and social value. Regarding the former, flexibility is part of the value of the office and office work as a site for financial investment. This financial valuation of flexibility is most apparent in the office building, although venture capital investment amongst other modes of financial valuation also structure the supply of productivity software. One of the key selling points of TEA is that they improve the performance of the building as an asset by providing data for informed decision making, and at the same time demonstrate return on investment. Considering the requirements for office buildings to function financially is certainly nothing new. As Pryke (1994: 239) noted “a commercial office […] can be ‘worked’ in several ways and thus turned into a (quasi-)investment asset” that, given the pressure to find occupiers for a large space, required the incorporation of “‘flexibility’ into the buildings” (Pryke, 1994: 242).

Contemporary automation technologies such as those discussed above that can create “intelligent ecosystems in real estate” (Siemens, 2021) provide this flexibility through their capacities to coordinate and report on circulations into, out of and within the office building. It is this infrastructural capacity to manage circulations activating office buildings that is increasingly a basis for their valuation as assets. In turn, the requirements for such financial valuation encourage measures supporting flexible use. Today’s office automation that invites an understanding of the office as an infrastructure in this implied financial sense of “a single asset class that has no specific history or material form” (Bear, 2020: 46) therefore foregrounds the production and performance of workplace circulation where this previously had a minimal role in work. Concerning social value, flexibility is a prized quality of office work in a broader context in which the capacity for social relations to be easily modifiable yet controllable in space-time is the norm. The ability to coordinate the place and time of office work at short notice contributes to a broader (ideal) logic of flexible yet orchestrated everyday logistics of social life (Gregg, 2018). As office infrastructures, productivity software manage such flexibility necessary for social value by automating elements of space-time coordination that enable the circulation of work beyond and within an office building. Equally, by incorporating techniques that measure and monitor the flow (of tasks) required to achieve this social value, productivity software incentivise flexibility.

The flexibility of office work supported by these infrastructures is neither universal nor necessarily positive, it is rather a social structuring mechanism that distributes – invariably unevenly – capacities to act at a given time and place. Yet because of its social value, work flexibility is frequently deemed attractive enough to pay for on the part of the worker (or employer), either in terms of costs of workspace or via lower wages and reduced social securities, although the latter of which are usually forced upon workers using flexibility as a justification. The social value of flexibility therefore demonstrates other measures of worth for flexible work beyond that of the monetary income derived from it, and in turn provides one rationale at play in the changing material role of work in social structure. Although the wage undoubtedly remains important, the case of automated office infrastructures demonstrates through this social value of flexibility how work is no longer a guarantor of a fixed social positioning or status as “contingency becomes necessity” (Cooper, 2012), with the distribution of opportunity increasingly dependent on relations to assets rather than to work-based income (Adkins et al., 2020). Flexibility’s social value is one of a variety of other forms of valuation associated with work that are not necessarily directly related to income or the conditions of work, indicating instead the importance of the ability to (spatially) condition work, to (re)position and demarcate work boundaries.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

Lizzie would like to thank the editors and reviewers for their constructive comments on the article. She is grateful to the editors of the special issue “Situating automated infrastructure”, particularly Weiqiang Lin and Tina Harris for reading the first draft of the article, and Dylan Brady for his work in organising the symposium at NUS.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Lizzie Richardson is an economic and cultural geographer researching and teaching at Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Her research focuses empirically on geographies of work, with a particular interest in the spatial implications of digital technologies.

References

Adkins

Cooper

Konings

(2020) The Asset Economy: Property Ownership and the New Logic of Inequality. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Altenried

(2022) The Digital Factory: The Human Labor of Automation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Bardini

Horvath

(1995) The social construction of the personal computer user. Journal of Communication 45: 40–65.

Barley

Orr

(eds) (1997) Between Craft and Science: Technical Work in U.S. settings. Ithaca, NY: IRL Press.

Bear

(2020) Speculations on infrastructure: From colonial public works to a post-colonial global asset class on the Indian railways 1840–2017. Economy and Society 49: 45–70.

Bowker

Timmermans

Star

(1996) Infrastructure and organizational transformation: Classifying nurses’ work. In: Orlikowski

Walsham

Jones

, et al. (eds) Information Technology and Changes in Organizational Work. Boston, MA: Springer US, pp. 344–370.

Cabitza

Simone

(2013) Computational coordination mechanisms: A tale of a struggle for flexibility. Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) 22: 475–529.

Campbell-Kelly

(2001) Not only Microsoft: The maturing of the personal computer software industry, 1982–1995. Business History Review 75: 103–145.

Carasik

Grantham

(1988) A case study of CSCW in a dispersed organization. In: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems – CHI ’88. Presented at the the SIGCHI conference, ACM Press, Washington, D.C., United States, pp. 61–66.

10.

Castells

(1996) The Rise of the Network Society, 2nd ed. Oxford/Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers.

11.

Chiapello

(2015) Financialisation of valuation. Human Studies 38: 13–35.

12.

Ciborra

Lanzaara

(1990) Designing dynamic artifacts: Computer systems as formative contexts. In: Gagliardi

(ed.) Symbols and Artifacts: Views of the Corporate Landscape. New York: Aldine de Gruyter, pp. 147–165.

13.

Clement

(1993) Looking for the designers: Transforming the “invisible” infrastructure of computerized office work. AI & Society 7: 323–344.

14.

Cooper

(2012) Workfare, familyfare, Godfare: Transforming contingency into necessity. South Atlantic Quarterly 111: 643–661.

15.

Cowan

(1983) More Work for Mother: The Ironies of Household Technology from the Open Hearth to the Microwave. New York: Basic Books.

16.

Davies

(1982) Woman’s Place is at the Typewriter: Office Work and Office Workers, 1870–1930. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

17.

Deloitte (2018) Smart buildings: Four considerations for creating people-centred smart, digital workplaces. Available at: www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/br/Documents/financial-services/DI_Smart-buildings.pdf (accessed 10 October 2022).

18.

Dieumegard

Saury

Durand

(2004) L’organisation de son propre travail: une étude du cours d’action de cadres de l’industrie. Le Travail Humain 67: 157–179.

19.

Drucker

(1966) The Effective Executive. London: HarperCollins.

20.

Fogarty

Scott

Williams

(2011) The half-empty office: Dilemmas in managing locational flexibility. New Technology, Work and Employment 26: 183–195.

21.

Gertler

(1988) The limits of flexibility: Comments on the post-Fordist vision of production and its geography. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 13: 419.

22.

Gregg

(2011) Work’s Intimacy. Cambridge: Polity.

23.

Gregg

(2015) Getting things done: Productivity, self-management and the order of things. In: Hillis

Paasonen

Petit

(eds) Networked Affect. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp.187–202.

24.

Gregg

(2018) Counterproductive: Time Management in the Knowledge Economy. Durham: Duke University Press.

25.

Grudin

(1994) Computer-supported cooperative work: History and focus. Computer 27: 19–26.

26.

Gustavsson

(2005) Virtual servants: Stereotyping female front-office employees on the internet. Gender, Work & Organization 12: 400–419.

27.

Haigh

(2006) Remembering the office of the future: The origins of word processing and office automation. IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 28: 6–31.

28.

HQO (2021) Why is tenant engagement so important? HQO Blog, 11 February 2021. Available at: www.hqo.com/resources/blog/why-is-tenant-engagement-so-important/ (accessed 16 December 2022).

29.

HQO (2022) The return to the Office App takes on a new purpose for the hybrid workforce. HQO Blog, 21 April 2022. Available at: www.hqo.com/resources/blog/the-return-to-the-office-app-takes-on-new-purpose-for-the-hybrid-workforce/ (accessed 10 October 2022).

30.

Jarvis

Pratt

(2006) Bringing it all back home: The extensification and ‘overflowing’ of work. Geoforum 37: 331–339.

31.

Johnson

(2007) Building IQ: Intelligent buildings are becoming part of global real estate market. Journal of Property Management 72.

32.

Lecomte

(2019) What is smart? A real estate introduction to cities and buildings in the digital era. Journal of General Management 44: 128–137.

33.

Mackenzie

(2008) The affect of efficiency: Personal productivity equipment encounters the multiple. Ephemera: Theory and Politics in Organization 8: 137–156.

34.

Mackenzie

(2018) Personalization and probabilities: Impersonal propensities in online grocery shopping. Big Data & Society 5.

35.

McGuirk

Dowling

Carr

(2019) The material politics of smart building energy management: A view from Sydney’s commercial office space. Political Geography 74: 102034.

36.

McLeod

Jones

(1987) A framework for office automation. MIS Quarterly 11: 87.

37.

Moore

Robinson

(2016) The quantified self: What counts in the neoliberal workplace. New Media & Society 18: 2774–2792.

38.

Muniesa

(2011) A flank movement in the understanding of valuation. The Sociological Review 59: 24–38.

39.

Nolan

(2000) Information technology management since 1960. In: Chandler

Cortada

(eds) A Nation Transformed by Information: How Information Has Shaped the United States from Colonial Times to the Present. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 217–256.

40.

Olson

Lucas Jr

(1982) The impact of office automation on the organization: Some implications for research and practice. Communications of the ACM 25: 838–847.

41.

ONS (2022) Is hybrid working here to stay? Available at: www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/articles/ishybridworkingheretostay/2022-05-23 (accessed 10 October 2022).

42.

Pollert

(1988) Dismantling flexibility. Capital & Class 12: 42–75.

43.

Pryke

(1994) Looking back on the space of a boom: (Re)developing spatial matrices in the city of London. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space 26: 235–264.

44.

Richardson

(2021) Coordinating office space: Digital technologies and the platformization of work. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 39: 347–365.

45.

Richardson

(2023) How is the platform a workplace? Moving from sites to infrastructure. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers.

46.

Richter

(2007) Buildings with brains: Building owners and managers are integrating their properties’ operating systems so they fit the definition of smart buildings. Journal of Property Management 72.

47.

Saval

(2014) Cubed: A Secret History of the Workplace. New York: Doubleday.

48.

Schmidt

Simone

(1996) Coordination mechanisms: Towards a conceptual foundation of CSCW Systems Design. Computer Supported Cooperative Work 5: 155–200.

49.

Schmidt

(1997) Of maps and scripts: The status of formal constructs in cooperative work. In: Proceedings of the international ACM SIGGROUP conference on supporting group work: The integration challenge. pp. 138–147.

50.

Schwanen

Dijst

Kwan

M-P

(2008) ICTS and the decoupling of everyday activities, space and time: Introduction. Tijdschrift Voor Economische en Sociale Geografie 99: 519–527.

51.

Siemens (2021) The business purpose of digital twins – Creating intelligent ecosystems in real estate. Available at: www.siemens-advanta.com/blog/digital-twins-real-estate (accessed 11 October 2022).

52.

Starosielski

(2021) Media Hot & Cold. Durham: Duke University Press.

53.

Star

Ruhleder

(1994) Steps towards an ecology of infrastructure: Complex problems in design and access for large-scale collaborative systems. In: Proceedings of the 1994 ACM conference on computer supported cooperative work – CSCW ’94. Presented at the 1994 ACM Conference, pp. 253–264. Chapel Hill: ACM Press.

54.

Star

Ruhleder

(1996) Steps toward an ecology of infrastructure: Design and access for large information spaces. Information Systems Research 7: 111–134.

55.

Star

Strauss

(1999) Layers of silence, arenas of voice: The ecology of visible and invisible work. Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) 8: 9–30.

56.

Suchman

(1987) Plans and Situated Actions: The Problem of Human-Machine Communication. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press.

57.

Suchman

(1995) Supporting articulation work. Computerization and Controversy: Value Conflicts and Social Choices. Communications of the ACM 38(9): 56–64.

58.

Wajcman

(2017) Automation: Is it really different this time?: Review essay: Automation. The British Journal of Sociology 68: 119–127.

59.

Wajcman

(2019a) The digital architecture of time management. Science, Technology, & Human Values 44: 315–337.

60.

Wajcman

(2019b) How Silicon Valley sets time. New Media & Society 21: 1272–1289.

61.

Work after Lockdown (2022) Work after lockdown: No going back. Report. Available at: www.workafterlockdown.uk/blog-and-reports/second-report (accessed 10 October 2022).

62.

Yates

(2000) Business use of information and technology during the industrial age. In: Chandler

Cortada

(eds) A Nation Transformed by Information: How Information Has Shaped the United States from Colonial Times to the Present. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 107–135.

63.

Zisman

(1978) Office automation: Revolution or evolution? (Sloan WP 986-78 No. CISR 34). Sloan Management School.

64.

Zuboff

(1982) New worlds of computer-mediated work. Harvard Business Review 60: 142–152.

65.

Zuboff

(1985) Automate/informate: The two faces of intelligent technology. Organizational Dynamics 14: 5–18.