The changing or persistent nature of work: the challenges of post-bureaucratic organizing, workplace technologies, and navigating boundary crossing knowledge work in a dynamic high-tech organization

This study investigates how teams in a fast-changing, dynamic high-tech organization in a volatile setting engage in knowledge sharing practices and navigate existing boundaries of work, technologies, and teams. It shows that members’ collaborative practices are shaped by, and at the same time, reinforce the distinct ways of working and organizing in a post-bureaucratic organization. I support this thesis through my fieldwork at a large technology organization, employing field observations, interviews, and archives. Specifically, this study shows that an organizational infrastructure characterized by innovation, flexibility, and technological and structural dynamism creates two distinct cultural mechanisms: 1) change-prone tech culture, and 2) localized communication and decision-making processes. While these conditions facilitate quicker decision making and changes needed to continuously innovate, they also carry constraints where team members experience two distinct challenges regarded as silos – practice misalignment and poor information streaming. To address these challenges, this study finds that members engage in what I call synchronizing practices. Some of their efforts involve leveraging existing post- bureaucratic elements through the tools and culture of grassroot changes and decisions, while others include experimenting with conventional bureaucratic practices – introducing hierarchical, top-down channeling of information and establishing development standards in a post-bureaucratic culture of work. Here, I highlight the tension between the current organizational configurations, which are largely associated with a flexible and informal culture of tech, and the workers’ desired practices and processes of work which the same tech culture intends to discard. Drawing on these tensions, I argue that by the very principles of flexibility and locality, traditional organizing principles may be recognized for their values, desired or even adopted, as they are configured to fit the current milieu of the organization. It unveils nuanced understanding of the traditional and new forms of organizing typically understood with a deterministic lens. The knowledge gained sheds light into the discussion on the “changing nature of work” and the “future of work”.Ph.D.Includes bibliographical reference