Twitter is good, or else...

I noticed a recent report, claiming to prove that Facebook and Twitter at work are good for productivity. Apparently "short and unobtrusive breaks, such as a quick surf of the internet, enables the mind to rest itself, leading to a higher total net concentration for a days' work, and as a result, increased productivity". What's interesting here is less the validity or otherwise of the finding, than the urge to arrive at it.

This reminds me of two other economic findings. Firstly, the discovery that ethical, socially responsible companies out-perform unethical irresponsible rivals. Secondly, the discovery that cultural and ethnic diversity produce unintended economic and other measurable benefits. Again, I don't want to quibble about the validity of these findings. The question, as Jean-Pascal Gond explored at our Performance conference in relation to corporate social responsibility, is what sort of political project is involved in such empirical agendas? Why does so much work go in to building these economic-moral bridges?

Any primer on moral philosophy will tell you that there is an irreconciliable split between utilitarian and normative (or a priori) moral arguments. The former assess actions on their consequences, often in a measurable sense; the latter assess actions on their intentions and conformity to certain principles. But there are areas of economic and political life where the two have to be jammed together. Foucault's analysis of liberal political economy focuses on the paradox of trying to establish a legal, constitutional order (a normative question) which produces an efficient market economy (a utilitarian question). One of my own areas of study, the Chicago Law & Economics movement, attempts to refound law on principles of efficiency, criticising alternative concepts of morality as 'nonsense'.

Something similar occasionally occurs in the realm of management theory and economic policy. A concept of efficiency and a concept of justice have to be fused together sometimes. The win-win must be discovered, which forces a certain pragmatism upon the social sciences. Whether the win-win is enforced by the normative side ('we are so committed to ethical business practices, that their efficiency must be proven') or by the utilitarian side ('we are so committed to the free market, that its justice must be proven') is an open question. I am prepared to accept that the latter is as common as the former. Occasionally a positivist throws a spanner in the ideological works: see Robert Putnam's sad confession that his data cannot endorse cultural diversity.

So what's going on with this Twitter/Facebook at work issue? Clearly it would be nice, exciting, helpful if Twittering were good for workplace productivity. It would suggest a convenient alliance between a normative view of connectivity-as-good-in-itself and economic necessity. The very fact that the study was carried out confirms a desire for this convenient alliance.

If you doubt me on that, consider the alternative finding. Say these researchers discovered that Facebook and Twitter at work were bad for workplace productivity. Say they found that multi-tasking and switching between tasks diminishes our engagement with our work. This could then lead to two equally troubling conclusions. The first, troubling for the researchers, is that this finding is too banal to deserve any attention. One response to such a finding would be - of course Twittering and Facebook are bad for productivity! They have nothing to do with productivity, so ignore them! The business press is unlikely to be overly excited by a statement of the obvious.

The second conclusion, troubling at a societal level, is that our emerging version of freedom isn't working for us. Just like a finding that free enterprise doesn't produce ethical outcomes or that free movement of people doesn't produce happy, wealthy communities, a finding that the free movement of social data is economically harmful would upset our emerging Californian definition of freedom. The 'new spririt of capitalism' would have been rendered disfunctional, resurrecting uncomfortable questions about discipline, enforcement, power and efficiency in the workplace. Maybe managers should ban social networking at work. And should they stop there? Welcome back to Taylorism.

Now that might be enough to get the business establishment to sit up and listen, but not in a good way. Rather like those Simpsons episodes in which Homer accidentally gets involved in global politics, had "study author Brent Coker, from the Melbourne University department of management and marketing" set off that sort of debate, he might rather have wished he'd stayed well away. So far better to 'find' that twittering makes you work harder. Wise move, Brent.

Comments

[dk.au]

One proxy battleground for these conclusions is the University. This writeup in our conservative, pro-business national broadsheet shows up the contradictions between the two 'findings' beautifully:

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25325762-5013404,00.html

[Rob Knight]

Is it not possible that the use of social networking might be good for [certain kinds of] work on the basis that one's social circle might provide useful assistance in that work?

For example, I recently had to do a piece of writing for work and, before finishing it, I sent a copy to my girlfriend who is a professional writer. She checked it over and suggested some changes. I can think of other instances where I've been able to ask questions of people more knowledgeable about certain subjects than myself via the medium of social networks. All of which comes at no extra cost to my employer!

Taken to its logical conclusion, we may end up simply 'managing' our own jobs, coordinating the efforts of others in assisting us, selecting help from those who have the greatest comparative advantage in doing whatever it is we're meant to be doing (and this may well be a reciprocal process). Providing that the outputs remain as good or better than before, I can't see why employers would oppose this free help. It's just division of labour in an even finer scale.

[Will Davies]

Rob: this is all perfectly plausible. I hadn't intended to dismiss the potential for productivity gains, only speculate on the implicit motivations underlying the research project.