Endless Work

The working world has clearly changed. Since the 1970s, we’ve shifted away from the Fordist model toward a so-called “flexible” approach to work, according to which we grant workers more autonomy and demand that they be more adaptable while offering less job stability.

This flexibility has not freed us, however, from the iron cage of industrial capitalism (Weber), and we continue to be haunted by old moral maxims such as “time is money” and “idleness is the mother of all vices.” Twenty years ago, sociologist Richard Sennett wrote that “revulsion against bureaucratic routine and pursuit of flexibility has produced new structures of power and control, rather than created the conditions which set us free.”¹ 1 - Richard Sennett, The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism (New York & London: W. W. Norton & Company, 1998): 47. In the era of the Internet and Workplace 2.0, this situation has only amplified. The working space has never been as nomadic or the working hours as flexible as today, with the result that the border between professional activity and private life is inexorably crumbling away. Therefore, flexible individuals find themselves even more constrained by work that now accompanies them at all times.