Invisible Digi-Work: Compensating, connecting, and cleaning in digitalized organizations

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to develop a theoretical vocabulary that allows us to better understand not only the visible effects of digitalization on organizations but also the invisible work that arises in and around the digitalized organization to prepare, maintain and repair its key features. Drawing on feminist science and technology studies and their classic concept of invisible work, we challenge some of the dominant spatial root metaphor assumptions in current research and develop an alternative metaphoric of digital work and the digitalized organization. We develop the theoretical concept of invisible digi-work as a corollary to the already established concept of digital work and flesh out three types of work that we conceptualize as invisible connecting, compensating and cleaning work. This analytical framework captures aspects of work that tend be out of sight and devalued in dominant accounts. As such, it represents a theoretical alternative to imageries of digital spaces that lead to an overemphasis on the affordances of new digital technologies, establishing an alternative ground for interrogating work at margins, which is essential to the constitution of digitalized organizations. Theorizing invisible digi-work is in line with recent calls in organization studies to go beyond the visual and investigate the indirect and less visible implications of digitalization.