All Edge

All Edge Inside the New Workplace Networks

by Clay Spinuzzi

University of Chicago Press, 2015
Cloth: 978-0-226-23696-4 | Electronic: 978-0-226-23701-5
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226237015.001.0001

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ABOUT THIS BOOKAUTHOR BIOGRAPHYREVIEWSTABLE OF CONTENTS

ABOUT THIS BOOK

Work is changing. Speed and flexibility are more in demand than ever before thanks to an accelerating knowledge economy and sophisticated communication networks. These changes have forced a mass rethinking of the way we coordinate, collaborate, and communicate. Instead of projects coming to established teams, teams are increasingly converging around projects. These “all-edge adhocracies” are highly collaborative and mostly temporary, their edge coming from the ability to form links both inside and outside an organization. These nimble groups come together around a specific task, recruiting personnel, assigning roles, and establishing objectives. When the work is done they disband their members and take their skills to the next project.

Spinuzzi offers for the first time a comprehensive framework for understanding how these new groups function and thrive. His rigorous analysis tackles both the pros and cons of this evolving workflow and is based in case studies of real all-edge adhocracies at work. His provocative results will challenge our long-held assumptions about how we should be doing work.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Clay Spinuzzi is professor of rhetoric and writing at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of Tracing Genres through Organizations, Network, and Topsight.

REVIEWS

"If you're obsessed about the future of work, Spinuzzi's latest is a must-read. All Edge is a fascinating deconstruction and exploration of the future workplace. Spinuzzi looks back, examines the now makes some solid predictions. His grasp of how, where and why we're going All Edge is smart, logical, and a mandatory reading for trend watchers."

— Liz Elam, founder, Link Coworking

"In All Edge, Spinuzzi gives us a look at the new workplace, the one we’ve been told is coming for decades now, in striking and compelling detail. Academic readers will appreciate the grounding of the work in scholarship by the author as well as others in areas such as organizational communication and business and technical writing. Professionals and readers with an interest in understanding contemporary workplaces will appreciate the way the book is presented in a clear and anecdotal style, with the scholarly references provided unobtrusively for further reading.

All Edge is a boundary-crossing work that presents a wealth of much-needed evidence to the claims that our work lives are changing in the twenty-first century. We may still be waiting on jetpacks, but the 'adhocracy' is here. And if you want to understand how to live and work in one, Spinuzzi’s book is your guide."

— William Hart-Davidson, associate professor, Michigan State University and coeditor of Rhetoric and the Digital Humanities

"In the midst of the current upheaval of organizational structures and arrangements, All Edge reveals an illuminating picture of how work is experienced by many people today. Spinuzzi offers timely and exciting case studies full of the grit that marks thoughtfully conducted fieldwork and interviews. His analysis proposes and demonstrates the value of new conceptual frameworks for understanding such important, emerging categories as temporary organizational networks, the unrelenting need for innovation, and the rise of co-working arrangements. As a whole, All Edge develops an engaging interplay of theory, field observations, and analysis that is instructive. This volume is essential reading for researchers interested in understanding the organizational structures and experiences of people’s work and non-work activities today. Its insights into communication, coordination, and collaboration should not be missed."

— Mark Zachry, professor, University of Washington

"Through the peerless empirical work for which he is known, Clay Spinuzzi looks under the hood of the contemporary economy, showing how automation, standardization, and interdependence underlie organizational forms of work that seem, on the surface, to run on unadulterated agility, fluidity, and adaptation to change. The invisible labor of bringing stability to work in today’s economy has never been told the way Spinuzzi tells it. This book is essential, fascinating reading for all interested in labor relations, technology in the workplace, and the massive changes in the economy all around us."

— Bonnie Nardi, professor, University of California, Irvine and coeditor of Materiality and Organizing: Social Interaction in a Technological World

"Spinuzzi has written a highly intelligent and interesting account of his research into 'all edge' work groups. . . . This is a well-written, boundary-crossing book, accessible to a wide readership."

— Choice

Acknowledgments

1. Becoming All Edge - Clay Spinuzzi
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226237015.003.0001
[information technologies, communication technologies, communication, coordination, collaboration]
The way we work is changing because new information and communication technologies (ICTs) provide new ways to communicate, coordinate, and collaborate. This introductory chapter discusses these changes and why they matter. It provides a brief historical sketch of how ICTs have changed our work, then goes into some depth about how digital ICTs in particular have impacted work in the early 21st century, laying the ground for all-edge adhocracies to flourish. (pages 1 - 17)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...

2. What Are All-Edge Adhocracies? - Clay Spinuzzi
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226237015.003.0002
[adhocracies, bureaucracies, networks, hierarchies, projectification]
This chapter illustrates how work has changed over the past 40 years, as organizations that were once institutional bureaucracies began to form institutional adhocracies, and later fragmented into all-edge adhocracies: cross-functional teams of specialists that organize around projects rather than departments. The chapter introduces basic concepts such as adhocracies and projectification. It also contrasts the characteristics of bureaucracies, institutional adhocracies, and all-edge adhocracies, explaining why these characteristics fit particular organizational objectives. (pages 18 - 35)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...

3. Stage Management: The Case of Nonemployer Firms - Clay Spinuzzi
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226237015.003.0003
[nonemployer firms, front stage, back stage, stage management, subcontractor networks, swift trust]
This case study of nonemployer firms illustrates the characteristics of all-edge adhocracies. These one- to two-person firms must assemble a temporary team of subcontractors to tackle each job, manage and coordinate them, and stage-manage them so that the subcontractors don’t undermine the firm’s performance. And they have to do all of this with very little leverage over the subcontractors. This chapter examines how these all-edge adhocracies work, succeed, and fail. (pages 36 - 54)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...

4. The Foundation of All-Edge Adhocracies: Organizational Networks - Clay Spinuzzi
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226237015.003.0004
[organizational networks, flat structure, changing composition, flexibility, adaptivity]
This chapter picks up where Chapter 3 left off, discussing what we know about the foundation underlying all-edge adhocracies: organizational networks. In this chapter, I discuss what organizational networks are, what characteristics they share, how they work, and why they are beginning to flourish. Based on what we learn here, we take a second look at the case from Chapter 3, seeing how the nonemployer firms had to handle the dynamics of their subcontractor networks. (pages 55 - 69)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...

5. Working Alone, Together: The Case of Coworking - Clay Spinuzzi
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226237015.003.0005
[coworking, electronic cottage, office space, good partners, good neighbors]
Specialists, such as the nonemployer firms and subcontractors discussed in Chapter 3, can increasingly do their work with just a laptop, a mobile phone, and a broadband Internet connection. And that means they can work anywhere: home, a park, a coffee shop, a restaurant. But these potential workplaces don’t meet a variety of needs, including networking, socialization, trust-building, and other sorts of support. So independent professionals have increasingly turned to coworking spaces, open-plan office spaces in which unaffiliated professionals can lease a desk for a monthly fee. This chapter reports on a 20-month case study of coworking spaces, examining how they support all-edge adhocracies by helping them to carry out front-stage and back-stage activities within their organizational networks. (pages 70 - 98)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...

6. The Dynamic Structure of All-Edge Adhocracies: Activities - Clay Spinuzzi
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226237015.003.0006
[activity theory, activity system, activity network, pulsing, kinetic, dynamic, multiperspectival]
In Chapter 5, we saw that coworking sites developed to support the new needs of all-edge adhocracies. But how are these coworking sites structured, how do they interact, and how do they develop? What characterizes an adhocratic activity? To understand the dynamic structure of all-edge adhocracies, we need a theory of human activity. This chapter introduces activity theory as a way to understand how coworking sites support all-edge adhocracies. At the same time, it extends activity theory to better address adhocratic work. (pages 98 - 111)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...

7. Lone Wolves: The Case of Search Engine Optimization - Clay Spinuzzi
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226237015.003.0007
[search engine optimization, customization, team cohesion, networks, contingencies, audience analysis, trust-building]
Up to this point, the book has discussed all-edge adhocracies as they form among relatively independent workers. But adhocracies can form wherever work is organized within networks and around projects—including hierarchies with organizational charts and payrolls. Although bureaucratic hierarchies and adhocracies are very different forms of organization, optimized for very different outcomes, they aren’t necessarily antithetical: networks can overlay and interact with hierarchies. When they do, we see some fascinating dynamics that deepen our understanding of work in the early 21st century. These dynamics are illustrated in this case study of an internet marketing company, particularly in terms of how different forms of work supported each other. (pages 112 - 137)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...

8. The Configurations of All-Edge Adhocracies: Hierarchies, Markets, Clans, and Networks - Clay Spinuzzi
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226237015.003.0008
[hierarchies, markets, clans, networks, object, tacit, explicit, internal, external]
Although adhocracies can explain some of the things in Chapter 7, they can’t explain everything. That’s because the internet marketing firm, like most organizations, is a hybrid of different forms of organization. These different forms can work together, but they are often in tension with one another, causing frictions in the organization. In this chapter, I discuss four different forms of organization—hierarchies, markets, clans, and networks—and define them using activity theory’s concept of the object. The internet marketing case illustrates the aspects and tensions of these different forms of organization. (pages 138 - 163)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...

9. The Work of All-Edge Adhocracies: The Three Integrations - Clay Spinuzzi
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226237015.003.0009
[integrated writers, integrated writing, the integration of distributed work, codification, abstraction, diffusion, generic labor, selfprogrammable labor]
How do all-edge adhocracies integrate their work across organizations, specialties, and locations? How do they make this work coherent and productive? The cases in this book have illustrated three ways that all-edge adhocracies do this, three integrations that provide these kinetic organizations with the stability they need in order to get anything done. Those integrations are: integrated writers, integrated writing, and the integration of distributed work. This chapter takes a close look at each of these three integrations, using examples from the cases throughout the book. (pages 164 - 177)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...

10. The Future of All-Edge Adhocracies

Appendix: Methodology

Works Cited

Index