Abstract
In Intimacy at Work, Stefana Broadbent explores how digital media allows for intimacy at the workplace, an environment not known to be conducive for relationship maintenance, thus causing tensions in the private/professional divide. Noting how increasingly entrenched digital devices are in our daily lives, she argues that we need to understand how digital media has brought private life into the workplace, and the nature of the workplace itself. To do so, Broadbent covers three areas of study—human interaction and relationships, working environments and organizational practices, and mobile devices and media.
Broadbent first examines the upkeep of intimacy through the maintenance of strong ties, sustained also by continuous mobile-enabled bursts of interaction. She studies the implications of this incessant mobile-enabled intimacy for the espoused private/professional divide of the workplace. The traditional restriction of private communication in the workplace stems from the notion that attention is a limited resource and that focusing on personal matters would divert attention from work and reduce productivity. However, the use of personal devices may not be the root cause of this attentional deficit. By analyzing accidents involving mobile phones and the relationship between mobile device usage and attention paid to workplace tasks, Broadbent concludes that perhaps the accidents were not caused by the use of private communication platforms but instead by the circumstances that triggered their usage in the first place. An environment that deprives workers of social interaction may compel the individual to fulfill these needs elsewhere, with one ready source of such gratification being the mobile phone. The book concludes with a discussion on attention and communication.
While this slender volume does contain provocative ideas, a stronger overarching link back to intimacy and the workplace—the book’s titular focal point—would lend more cohesiveness as attention and intimacy are related but not synonymous. Methodologically, Broadbent takes an anthropological approach, drawing heavily from anecdotes and case studies which are illuminating. However, a more in-depth look at workers both off and on their mobile devices would also have yielded greater insights into how their offline communication habits have been adapted for the digital environment. As well, while Broadbent did explore different work arrangements such as working in isolation, high-stress occupations, and self-employment, the discussion was fleeting. Perhaps Broadbent will extend her discussion of these aspects in her subsequent work.
As it stands, Intimacy at Work serves as a pithy introduction to the subject matter, and provides a useful departure point for practitioners and students seeking to comprehend the sociocultural consequences of private mobile communication at the workplace.