Refiguring creativity in virtual work: the digital‐material construction site

• Published date: 01 March 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ntwe.12075
• Date: 01 March 2017
• Author: Helen Lingard,James Harley,Sarah Pink

12 New Technology, Work and Employment © 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

New Technology, Work and Employment 32:1

ISSN 1468-005X

Refiguring creativity in virtual work: the

digital- material construction site

Sarah Pink, Helen Lingard and James Harley

In this article, we advance the question of how creativity is emerg-

ing in new virtual work configurations. We take two steps: first

we draw on theoretical perspectives from phenomenological an-

thropology to engage an understanding of creativity as emerging

through a relationship between the processual concepts of impro-

visation and knowing; second, we develop a focus on the digital

materiality of virtual labour. To examine and draw together these

themes we focus on a novel example of the use of digital technol-

ogies for improving worker safety and health in the construction

industry by recognising how safety is constituted through worker

creativity. We argue, on the basis of this, for a view of creativity

as constituted through improvisation and knowing, and that in-

vokes the possibility of thinking about virtual elements of work

as part of the ongoing processes of work.

Keywords: digital technologies, digital materiality, construction

industry, video ethnography, worker safety, creativity, improvisa-

tion, knowing.

Introduction

In this article, we advance the question of how creativity is emerging in new virtual

work configurations. Drawing on theoretical perspectives from phenomenological

anthropology, not usually used in this field of research, we argue for a reposition-

ing of creativity. This involves a critical departure from the concepts of innovation

and knowledge that have conventionally been associated with creativity in virtual

labour, towards understanding creativity as emerging through a relationship be-

tween the processual concepts of improvisation and knowing. We couple this with

a call for recognising the digital materiality of virtual labour. While the ‘need for a

material, cultural analysis of cyberspace that accords significance to both on and

off- line interactions, and the mediation of one by another’ (Pratt, 2002: 43–44) is

well- established, we propose a closer focus on how the digital and material co-

evolve. Rather than seeing the digital and material as separate facets of the same

world we pursue an analysis of how ways of knowing and improvising are

Sarah Pink (sarah.pink@rmit.edu.au), is an RMIT University Distinguished Professor, and Director of

the Digital Ethnography Research Centre, in the School of Media and Communication at RMIT Uni-

versity, Melbourne, Australia. Helen Lingard (helen.lingard@rmit.edu.au), is RMIT University Distin-

guished Professor and Director of the Centre for Construction Work Health and Safety Research in the

School of Property Construction & Project Management at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. Dr.

James Harley (james.harley@rmit.edu.au), is Manager - Special Projects, at the Centre for Construction

Work Health and Safety Research in the School of Property Construction & Project Management, RMIT

University, Melbourne, Australia.

© 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd Refiguring creativity in virtual work 13

implicated with the digital, intangible, physical and material work processes in

which they are inextricably entangled.

In doing so we focus on an area of work in which digital technologies have conven-

tionally been used little, worker safety and health in the construction industry. Digital

architecture and Building Information Modelling (BIM) are well- established as sys-

tems for building design and construction management. More recently digital technol-

ogies have also been deployed to facilitate improved safety through design (Wang

et al., 2015). Nevertheless, in contrast with work undertaken by professionals in design

offices, the everyday working lives of construction workers have been little impacted

by the ubiquity of digital media. Moreover, existing research has adopted a ‘technol-

ogy push’ perspective that has focused on what digital and mobile technologies can

provide in relation to identified industry communication challenges. Specific solutions

investigated involve the use of: IP Telephony technology for construction information

communication (Beyh and Kagioglou, 2004); wearable computers on construction sites

(Khoury et al., 2015); wireless sensors (Delsing et al., 2004; Riaz et al., 2014); and auto- ID

technology that integrates PDAs and bar code scanning (Tserng and Dzeng, 2005).

However as Chen and Kamara comment, to date, the deployment of mobile applica-

tions in construction work has focused on static information delivery, paying little

consideration to user contexts or experiences. The interaction between digital media

and workers’ physical work experiences remains ill- understood.

Here, we discuss the example of a company that has developed a digital system for

worker safety in the construction industry, incorporating digital video and an online

platform to engage workers with issues and practices related to worker safety in new

ways. Through an analysis of how in this case new uses of virtual platforms are suc-

cessfully integrated into face- to- face work with people and materials on construction

sites, we demonstrate how creativity, knowing and improvisation can emerge as part

of everyday work practices in a digital- material world.

Below we first outline the implications of understanding creativity through theories

of improvisation and knowing for how we understand virtual work. We then suggest

how worker safety in the construction industry is a context for such creativity, and

describe the digital- material environment in which this is being played out. Next, we

discuss our digital video ethnography research approach and findings, before drawing

broader conclusions about the implications of these for understanding virtual labour.

An improvisation approach: refiguring creativity,

innovation and knowledge

In the call for this special issue, Leung Wing- Fai and Juliet Webster, identified how,

influenced by psychological theory, creativity has been conceptualised ‘as an individ-

ual trait …connected to motivation’, and innovation is likewise seen as an individual

or organisational achievement. They lamented that knowledge and innovation have

been ‘unproblematically framed as major objectives of contemporary economic and

industrial policy- making, especially in sectors supported by new technologies and

new media’. As they critically reveal, from this perspective, innovation and knowledge

thus become objects, things that can be arrived at, or that hang in front of us as meas-

urable outcomes. Here, concurring with this, we examine the value of taking an alter-

native view which re- situates creativity, away from the idea that it is the outcome of a

particular kind of individual behaviour, and towards the idea that it is an integral ele-

ment of human activity. This involves shifting the emphasis away from the goal to ar-

rive at innovation as ‘an achievement’, and to instead follow a processual approach,

that sees outcomes as emergent and ongoingly changing. Processual approaches are

increasingly influential in the social sciences and humanities, and here we draw from

anthropology, where creativity, imagination, knowing and other intangible qualities

and ways in which we perceive and experience the world are understood as always