Entrepreneurial Needs for Outer Urban Co-Working Hubs

Workspaces and workplaces have changed significantly over the last decade. Facilitated by networking and collaboration tools, there has been a steady concentration of inner-city coworking spaces providing many opportunities for new flexible work arrangements. Driven by sustainability and creative entrepreneurship, coworking spaces are ideal hosting and meeting places to connect creative minds. Despite the growth in inner city coworking spaces, little is known of entrepreneurial needs for coworking models in outer urban city areas, particularly areas that experience rapid population growth. The authors conducted an exploratory study to identify entrepreneurs' coworking needs in a fast-growing outer urban city area in Melbourne, Australia. Drawing on activity theory (AT) as a lens to analyse the data, the study confirms that entrepreneurs in fast-growing outer urban areas have unique coworking needs compared to those in inner-city areas. The study identifies three key requirements that an outer urban coworking model needs to address to support a growing cohort of outer-urban anywhere workers.

A Clinician's Perspective on Anywhere Working and Telehealth

Clinicians (general practitioners, specialists, allied health professionals) are experts in medicine, not technology. The delivery of healthcare using technology includes changes to the way the clinician works; in effect, they work from anywhere. This study examined telehealth adoption from the perspective of clinicians. Data was collected from 44 in-depth interviews undertaken with a variety of Australian clinicians. The findings show that telehealth is a complex endeavor involving multiple stakeholders. While the potential of telehealth service provision is significant, the realities of delivering telehealth services involve many challenges. These include technology-related issues, lack of funding and financial incentives for telehealth, the changing skills and capabilities required by clinicians who engage in telehealth consultations, as well as changes to business processes resulting from the introduction of telehealth in a complex environment. A conceptual model for the adoption of sustainable telehealth is proposed for a better understanding of these complexities.

National Culture and the Social Relations of Anywhere Working

Western ideas about work have developed as macro and micro level changes continue to shape the social relations of work. As anywhere working developed as an alternative to traditional work arrangements in the 1990s, a system of checks and balances ensured the work practice delivered customer service and product quality. Western low-context work cultures situated the work practice as a logical development in the chronology of the social relations of work. With its tipping-point in the West reached, anywhere working received less attention in high-context work cultures. Specifically, this chapter investigates how the concept of “national culture” impacts thinking about anywhere working. In the high-context work cultures of East and South East Asia, employers, employees, and the stakeholders of organizations and governments have divergent views about the legitimacy of this work practice. The chapter discusses the influence of national culture on thinking about anywhere working in high-context work cultures, drawing on current data concerning anywhere working in selected Asian economies.

Design for the Future of Work

The paradigm shift in work dynamics in the digital age leads the evolution of how and where people work. Knowledge workers adopt more flexible working styles: they connect to their laptops and work anywhere. The main disadvantage of this way of working is social isolation. Creative industries often require interdisciplinary interaction and collaboration. Coworking spaces have emerged in order to remove this isolation and create a third place apart from home and office. These spaces have been studied by disciplines such as economics, work psychology, and geography but studies on their spatial characteristics are limited. The aim of the chapter is to propose a conceptual framework to identify design implications for the coworking spaces in terms of spatial preferences of users. Accordingly, literature related to changing work dynamics and workplaces, rise of coworking spaces, and coworking space typology are discussed. The conclusion of the chapter is to propose design implications, which will inform designers, researchers, and managers on best practice for coworking space design.

Access to Flexible Work Arrangements for People With Disabilities

People with disabilities face unique challenges accessing and participating in work. From a digital inclusion perspective, an uptake of anywhere working arrangements may hold significant promise for people with disabilities. This qualitative study explored barriers of flexible work for people with disabilities in Australia. The study focused on manager and worker perspectives and findings indicate that both parties face unique challenges to accommodate people with disabilities in flexible work. Barriers encountered by disabled workers seeking access to flexible working arrangements include management attitudes, physical and infrastructure problems, social isolation misconceptions, insufficient flexible work opportunities, and inadequate management knowledge of IT support and reasonable adjustment for people with disabilities. Management issues involve cultural intolerance towards diversity and disability in general, as well as lack of policies and processes that create a supportive environment for people with disabilities who wish to engage in flexible working arrangements.

3D Printing Build Farms

The development of high-end, distributed, advanced manufacturing over the last decade has been a by-product of a push to foster new workforce capabilities, while building a market for industrial additive manufacturing (3D printing) machines. This trend has been complemented by a growing democratization in access to commercial platforms via the internet, and the ease of communication it allows between consumers and producers. New ways of distributed working in manufacturing are on the rise while mass production facilities in the Western world are in decline. As automation increasingly excludes the worker from assembly line production, the tools to regain control over manufacturing and commercial interaction are becoming more readily available. As a result, new working practices are emerging. This chapter discusses networked 3D printing build farms and their potential to reshape the future of work for distributed manufacturing. It highlights changes in infrastructure priorities and education for a digitally enabled maker society from an Australian perspective.

Working Anywhere Management Opportunities and Challenges

This chapter examines the literature relating to information and communications technology (ICT) and opportunities and barriers relating to anywhere working. The workforce is becoming more global, and workers can work from anywhere and still be connected with colleagues and collaborators. Although ICT is an enabler of anywhere working, sustainable anywhere working requires specific management skills and capabilities. Globalization of work requires organizations to manage workers ranging from full-time employees through to freelancers working in different locations including a central office, co-working center, from home, and other flexible options. The chapter concludes by proposing a research agenda and conceptual framework to identify the management skills and capabilities required to successfully manage anywhere working (other terms include telework and telecommuting). The proposed conceptual framework will inform researchers and managers on best practice for adopting sustainable anywhere working to achieve strategic business objectives.

Service Delivery in Aged Care Case Study

This chapter examines how information and communication technology (ICT) and working anywhere was adopted in a not-for-profit aged care organization in Australia. The aged-care and services sector is expanding, leading to shortages of skilled and experienced workers. At the same time, the sector is dealing with significant changes relating to how services are funded, an increase in competition from both not-for-profit and for profit providers, a rise in demand for services, changes in technology, as well as variations in government regulations. Using ICT to streamline operations, communicate and collaborate has become critical for delivering efficient and effective services the aged care and services sector. The not-for-profit case study in this chapter shows how a first mover in ICT adoption and utilizing working anywhere (telework) can support cost savings, provide the ability to respond to the changing regulatory environment, as well as attract, recruit, and retain skilled and experienced workers.

Humans Need Not Apply

Advanced technologies including artificial intelligence, robotics, and machine learning (smart machines) impact understandings about the nature of work. For professionals, semi-professionals, and ancillary workers supplying healthcare and legal services, for example, smart machines change the social relations of work and subvert notions of status and hierarchy that come with occupational groups such as doctors or lawyers. As smart machines continue to disrupt employment, job advertisement might soon carry the warning that humans need not apply. Under the prospect of a new world of work, people require additional knowledge, skills, and attitudes to cope with a future where smart machines radically alter the nature of work in settings where some people work anywhere and anytime while others work nowhere. In any future, people require skills and attitudes to cope with uncertainty. Ideas about multiple intelligences, emotional intelligence, critical thinking, creativity, and problem-solving will help employees cope with any of the futures of work predicted in the literature.