Shaun Ryan

When is a team a team? 'Teamworking' and the reorganisation of work in commercial cleaning

Purpose – The article seeks to analyse and explore the contradictions and variations in the concepts “team” and “teamwork” and their use in the NSW, Australia, commercial cleaning industry.Design/methodology/approach – The article utilises an ethnographic study of a large Australian cleaning firm. Data were collected using participant observation, field notes, and interviews with managers.Findings – The study provides evidence for the limited uptake of the idealised form of teamwork in commercial cleaning and suggests that teamworking is another means of coordinating groups of workers. Furthermore, the findings support previous research into the paradox of teams without teamwork.Originality/value – The research provides an insight into the largely neglected area of the reorganisation of work in commercial cleaning. It also provides a critique of the concept of teams and teamworking.

Just work : narratives of employment in the 21st century

Introduction - Reflections on Work 1. What has Happened to Work? 2. Growing, Making and Delivering Stuff 3. Selling and Serving 4. Helping People 5. Protecting People 6. Informing and Entertaining 7. Work - In Progress Appendix One: Participant characteristics Appendix Two: Author narratives

What Has Happened to Work

With the importance of appreciating how workers talk about and view their jobs including their employment milieu, and any changes to these over time, this chapter will briefly explore the major developments in the world of work as highlighted by previous scholars. In so doing, this will allow us to better locate and understand the lived experiences and narrative identities (see Foster 2012) of those who stories are included in this book.

Selling and Serving

The five narratives presented in this chapter represent occupations associated with retail, hospitality, image creation and management. It is within these occupations that we found our youngest workers in general. What these jobs have in common are immediacy, unpredictability, skills and expertise around sales, customer interaction and service, the presentation of self, and the management of emotion and aesthetics. As highlighted by the narratives, serving and selling work can often be the most meaningful and rewarding, but at times also the most frustrating.

Informing and Entertaining

In this chapter we have a playwright (representing a long and honourable tradition of work across history), a marketing manager, production manager and children’s entertainer working within the opportunities afforded by recent developments in information and communication technologies. All four stories are broadly influenced by developments in technology as the medium for the production and/or promotion of their jobs. Work at informing and entertaining others affords opportunities for self-employment, personal expression and creativity. Indeed, three of the individuals presented in this chapter work for themselves in addition to having another paid occupation. These choices are influenced by the need for economic security. Informing and entertaining can therefore be risky work. Three of the narratives discuss the fear of taking the leap into the unknown and the uncertainty of managing one’s own business. For others there is risk in the presentation of oneself and the scrutiny of public critique.

Introduction — Reflections on Work

Actor, broadcaster, oral historian and prize-winning author, Studs Terkel, was well known for his books that addressed the lives of ordinary people. In 1974, he published a book called Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do. In contrast to research that treats workers as objects, this book simply and yet powerfully gave voice to the subjective experience of work and working. Based on over 100 edited interviews with workers across a variety of occupations in the USA (largely centred around Chicago), Terkel highlighted the meaning of, and attitudes towards, work, skilfully capturing dreams and disappointments often in quite moving accounts. These accounts were historically grounded in the milieu and specificities of American working life in the early 1970s.

Growing, Making and Delivering Stuff

The narratives in this chapter perhaps demonstrate the greatest variety in terms of work presented in this book. Included are the growers — those who produce items of need; those who make and repair; and those who transport. In this chapter we cover the spectrum of tangible work since the taming of the land and time (the farmers and the horolo-gist) to new occupations (software engineer). The occupations depicted represent both the rise of new kinds of work and the decline of some others. We have included two similar jobs (that of farming), yet each offers a unique insight into the world of agriculture and its associated challenges and stresses.