TY - JOUR
T1 - Working apart, together
T2 - The challenges of co-work
AU - Swezey, Casey
AU - Vertesi, Janet
N1 - Funding Information:
We are grateful to the members and administrators at WeWork in New York City who allowed us to study their environment, and to the Princeton University Sociology department for travel funding and support.
Publisher Copyright:
Copyright is held by the owner/author(s). Publication rights licensed to ACM.
PY - 2019/11
Y1 - 2019/11
N2 - Attracting contingent workers, teleworkers, small start-up teams and the self-employed, co-working spaces have grown from corner coffee shops and internet cafes, to business empires with thousands of members in urban locations. Yet the rise of co-working in the twenty-first century has received only limited attention in CSCW, despite co-workers’ copious use of distributed collaborative tools. CSCW has more frequently addressed the challenges of working together, apart - that is, how we might support or otherwise transpose rich collocated interactions into distributed environments. This paper explores the challenges of working alone and apart, yet together, based on observational study and interviews at three large co-working spaces in New York City. Using a sociomaterial approach, we identify and explore core tensions visible in the site between participation in a distributed work team and in a distinct, collocated community, which we label the co-working paradox. This includes local configurations of digital and physical materials that shift locus of participation, that blend work and home, and manage employer visibility. We use these themes to suggest a generative return to certain core concepts in studies of distributed work - namely, common ground, workspaces, and placefulness - to further study and design for the growth of these unique environments.
AB - Attracting contingent workers, teleworkers, small start-up teams and the self-employed, co-working spaces have grown from corner coffee shops and internet cafes, to business empires with thousands of members in urban locations. Yet the rise of co-working in the twenty-first century has received only limited attention in CSCW, despite co-workers’ copious use of distributed collaborative tools. CSCW has more frequently addressed the challenges of working together, apart - that is, how we might support or otherwise transpose rich collocated interactions into distributed environments. This paper explores the challenges of working alone and apart, yet together, based on observational study and interviews at three large co-working spaces in New York City. Using a sociomaterial approach, we identify and explore core tensions visible in the site between participation in a distributed work team and in a distinct, collocated community, which we label the co-working paradox. This includes local configurations of digital and physical materials that shift locus of participation, that blend work and home, and manage employer visibility. We use these themes to suggest a generative return to certain core concepts in studies of distributed work - namely, common ground, workspaces, and placefulness - to further study and design for the growth of these unique environments.
KW - Co-working
KW - Distributed teams
KW - Sociomateriality
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85075046625&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85075046625&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1145/3359306
DO - 10.1145/3359306
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85075046625
SN - 2573-0142
VL - 3
JO - Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction
JF - Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction
IS - CSCW
M1 - 204
ER -