Working Conditions, Enterprise & Entrepreneurism

The many environments of media work exist as complex entities.

As a third year Communications student, I have experiences this primarily through interning at both Digital Marketing and Advertising Agencies.

It has been noted by Deuze (2009), we as media workers are split between working in somewhat splendid isolation with our creative endeavors, and dealing with the “constantly changing transnational context of ties, relationships, demands, and pressures of colleagues, consumers, employers, and clients” (Deuze, 2009, pg. 24).

This creates an environment that is particularly hard to navigate as a recent media graduate.

I have witnessed an increasing phenomenon especially within those smaller agencies where there has been a significant drift towards hiring freelancers. This may have it’s benefits, although it is driven by an overall “casualization of the [work]force” (Deuze, 2009, pg. 23). When it comes to working conditions this often means that agency employees are often coerced to work on a freelance basis. In a sense it has been much of a ripple effect, where by with a few beginning to work this way it became the new norm.

Online technologies of the likes of intranets have also ben used to grow and facilitate the distributed workforce. Deuze highlights that technology plays a “crucial part in the creative process” (Deuze, 2009, pg. 30), particularly within the daily life of workers. Businesses are embracing remote working- yet maintaining consistent means of collaboration through digital devices. Increasingly, technology is a means of allowing various kinds of creative interactions to take place, even in such a dispersed work force (Thrift, 2005). This is identified by Deuze as the “convergence of place…and the convergence of technology” (Deuze, 2009, pg. 30). The convergence of technology is what also plays a part in furthering the means of managerial control, just as it does in setting the parameters of creative endeavors.

These processes of work vary significantly from agency to agency, meaning that the employees are succumbed to a “constant reshuffling of adaptation processes and experiences” (Deuze, 2009, pg. 31). Where one work place may centralize all their communications on skype messenger, another may use programs such as slack. Workflow technology programs are also implemented vastly differently. It is a credit to the flexibility of many of these new media agencies that these technological programs are often re-evaluated and replaced. This also partly displays the reliance and importance media agencies have in embracing new technologies.

The state of working conditions also relates directly to people’s attitudes towards entrepreneurism. Many within media work aspire to be entrepreneurial in their work life. In many agencies this is highly encourage. Often, employees as well as side projects, run entire side businesses. This has much to do with the new economy that has changed work for professionals within the media industry. This can also be attributed to the digitalization that has been imposed on the workers themselves.

Within agencies, working conditions have changed as to turn the employees into what can be defined as fast subjects. Essentially, fast subjects are to be able to “cope with the disciplines of permanent emergency” (Thrift, 2005, pg. 14). The pressures causing fast subjects can be pinpointed as the desire for speed of innovation, development, and the creation of a cycle where pressure sees creativity become a value in itself. This has become increasingly acknowledged by organizations that are striving to foster the powers of creativity that will eventually lead to innovation (Thrift, 2005, pg. 14). Hence, supporting their employees to be entrepreneurial and to foster so-called entrepreneurial traits.

The commodity of time is another working condition that influences the media employee. It has expanded from the notion of the 9–5 day to a worker being available 24 hours a day. Time can be divided into both natural time and clock time (Pocock et al, 2012). Natural time refers to the “structuring of activities around natural phenomena such as day and night, the seasons, the weather and the body” (Pocock et al, 2012, pg. 6). These characteristics of natural time make it vastly different from the “regular, linear, predictable and universal” (Pocock et al, 2012, pg. 6) ways of clock time.

This leads itself to the notion of workload balance. This is an essential part in the workers experience within the agency. the proliferation of ‘self-help’ books has conditioned people within the work force to simply learn to deal with the demands of work.

As indivuals, when it comes to work we have multiple identities. Whilst we are individuals, we are thrust into organizations and coerced to conform to their existing policies, values and structures. This can lead to “change and insecurity whether real or perceived, [as being] part of most if not all people’s work styles (Gorz 1999)”. Departments within organizations are constantly involved in the struggle to push their wants and needs upon each other due varying in priorities and sector beliefs. Often organizations that are constrained or interrupted by other people’s objectives are those that experience the deepest lack of organic unity. Within the day-to-day happenings of media work, Deuze refers to the individual gaining purpose through the “cult of creativity [which is] partly bound up with a narcissism of minor differences” (Deuze 2009, pg. 36).

Areas of Melbourne such as Prahran, Windsor, Cremorne and Richmond, are examples of where a high density of media agencies reside. The clustering of companies like this allows for an ongoing exchange of labor, talent and skills. As identified by Deuze it allows for the production pipeline to be realized, as media professionals collaborate on larger projects, reinforcing one another and adding o the contingency of media work (Deuze 2009).

Where workplaces were once struck with a rigid hierarchy, the reality for workers in the 21st century is a more liberal and casual workplace. This is a factor that greatly impacts conditions within agencies. By definition, a hierarchy is a systematic arrangement of powers. It is widely understood that this is a necessary feature of any complex organization. Although the way in which control was centralized within the top management team has evolved. Workers are empowered with such Silicon Valley job titles such as “thought wizard”, “growth hacker” and “marketing evangelist.” As noted by Deuze, the foremost paradox and therefore key source of tension in the organization of media work lies between “on the one hand quite rigid structured hierarchical forms…and on the other hand a rather chaotic, conflict-ridden, deliberately emotionally creative process” (2009, pg, 34).

There are a mirage of factors that influence both the logic and nature of media work. Making it a complicated environment from which entrepreneurism stems.