The Future of the Firm is a Dimly Lit, Lonely Corner in a Coffee Shop
The Future of the traditional firm isn’t just approaching; its foundations are already crumbling. Some of the workforce, tired of depressing cubicles and dreary tasks, have couched this shift as finally breaking free from worn and rusty chains of the corporate machine, embarking on the new age of freedom, flexibility and happy autonomy. “Imagine working anywhere in the world, whenever you want,” they muse.
I don’t blame the portion of the workforce that feels a need to be set free. Personal experience in working for large companies often made me feel akin to George Orwell’s bleak depiction of the future: “imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever,” he says.
Though the shift is not due as much to workers weary of some authoritarian regime (although that may be true in some cases) as much as companies latest cost cutting measures, classifying more workers as independent contractors and outsourcing projects to freelancers. In “The Next Safety Net”, Nicolas Colin and Bruno Palier capture the shift in writing, “Stable, long-term employment in routinized jobs is often no longer necessary; formal and informal collaboration on temporary projects [will be] more the norm”.
While Colin and Palier highlight the social policies that need to adapt to the inevitability of this new working paradigm, there may be another unwelcome byproduct. Entrenched loneliness; another disconnect from real social exchanges that can be healthy and fulfilling. Recent research and survey data seems to support the assertion that those who have experience as non-traditional employees are less than satisfied:
- A poll by Deloitte found that 67% of Americans who have worked as independent contractors or freelancers would choose not to do so in the future.
- The same poll suggested that half of the non-traditional workers believed it would be very difficult to understand and connect with any company culture.
- A 2010 YouGov poll found that those who regularly worked from home or were self-employed were workers who “suffer the most with loneliness and isolation as they don’t have the support or camaraderie of colleagues.”
- More broadly, a study by Brigham Young University, found that a lack of social interactions could have detrimental effects comparable to smoking 15 cigarettes a day.
Connection. Developing meaningful social relations with those around us. That may be one of the growing list of lost ideals suffering from technological growth in general, and more specifically, in the gig economy. While there is an expectation that employees come to work to be productive, complete tasks and help a company achieve its own goals, the traditional firm and workplace has also provided a community of sorts where people meet, collaborate face-to-face, talk about weekends, kids, relationships and can be of service to one another through connection.
New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote, “I’ve come to think that flourishing consists of putting yourself in situations in which you lose self-consciousness and become fused with other people, experiences, or tasks.” Brooks goes on to argue in his piece The Social Animal that when individuals are immersed in a community, we are most “happy”.
All the forces behind companies and technologies that connect would be freelancers with those needing their services can argue that they have every tool necessary to connect people. Skype. Upwork. Slack. Even Facebook is competing with Workplace by Facebook. But is seeing a face occasionally on screen a replacement for real life interactions? One may also argue that freelancing can give people more freedom to interact with those they choose and like. But even there, is there not much value to be gained by learning to work and live cohesively with those potentially very different from us?
The future of the firm is well on its way to fully assimilating on-demand forces. I do not make the claim that traditional firms always did as much as they could to foster policies, environments and cultures that create these connections. But the potential is there to create an uplifting workplace sociality in the traditional firm without completing upending workplaces as we know them (to say nothing of the economic implications). At this rate of change, it may be only lost potential.
Discover the other articles in the FOW Sciences Po publication:
