The new economy and the work life balance: Conceptual
explorations and a case study of new media.


















Dr Diane Perrons
Department of Geography and Environment and
Associate Fellow Gender Institute,
London School of Economics,
Houghton Street
London WC22AE
UK
Email d.perrons@lse.ac.uk

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The new economy and the work life balance: Conceptual explorations and a case
study of new media.
Abstract

Given the varied claims made about the new economy and its implications for the
organisation of work and life, this paper critically evaluates some conceptualisations
of the new economy and then explores how the new media sector has materialised and
been experienced by people working in Brighton and Hove, a new media hub. New
technologies and patterns of working allow the temporal and spatial boundaries of
paid work to be extended, potentially allowing more people, especially those with
caring responsibilities, to become involved, possibly leading to a reduction in gender
inequality. This paper, based on 55 in depth interviews with new media owners,
managers and some employees in small and micro enterprises, evaluates this claim.
Reference is made to the gender differentiated patterns of ownership and earnings;
flexible working patterns, long hours and homeworking and considers whether these
working patterns are compatible with a work life balance. The results indicate that
while new media creates new opportunities for people to combine interesting paid
work with caring responsibilities a marked gender imbalance remains.



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The new economy and the work life balance: Conceptual explorations and a case
study the new media.
Introduction
Given the diverse nature, varied understandings and different claims made about the
new economy, this paper seeks to explore how one sector, new media, has
materialised in one particular location – Brighton and Hove, focusing on the gender
differentiated nature of opportunities and risks, work and working hours and the
impact on work life balance.

The paper divides into three sections. The first explores some of the varied
conceptualisations of the new economy and outlines some of the potential risks and
opportunities that have been identified in the literature. The second, outlines the view
put forward by government and politicians, including the UK’s Women’s Unit, that
the new economy, especially the development of communication and information
technologies and in particular the Internet, which potentially extends the spatial and
temporal range of paid work, provides new opportunities for people with caring
responsibilities, and potentially a means of reducing gender inequality. The main
section evaluates this expectation by reference to a qualitative study of the new media
sector in Brighton and Hove, which has become a new media hub. It does so by
exploring gender differentiated patterns of ownership, management and earnings;
working practices, in particular long hours, flexible working patterns and
homeworking, and considers the extent to which these working patterns are
compatible with a work life balance, especially when caring responsibilities are
involved. The paper concludes by contesting some of the ideas about the new

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economy and makes some suggestions for redressing gender imbalance that, so far,
seems to be being reproduced in this new area of activity.

1) The new economy, new media and the organisation of work
The new economy is a concept that has recently entered academic and media
discourse and although widely used has several meanings with differing implications
for the well being of the economy, individual and social welfare. Optimistically the
term has been used to refer to the unprecedented coexistence of economic growth and
a booming stock market with low inflation, tight labour markets and low wage
pressures (Greenspan, 1998). More substantively it has been used to depict 'a new
technological paradigm centred around micro electronics-based
information/communication technologies, and genetic engineering’ (Castells, 2000:9).
The development of Internet, in particular, is said to have profound implications for
the organisation of economic activity and for increasing productivity (Castells, 2001).
Other analyses focus more circumspectly, on the changing character of work
associated with technological change, deregulation and globalisation (Sennett, 1998;
Beck, 2000; Carnoy, 2000) and the new social inequalities that seem to be
accompanying these processes. Ulrich Beck (2000) argues that work at all levels is
characterised by insecurity and increasing inequality. Similarly, Richard Sennett
(1998) maintains that new, insecure and increasingly fragmented forms of work are
leading to an imbalance between the values required for a successful working life and
those required for a stable family leading to the ‘Corrosion of Character’. Fernando
Flores and John Gray (2000:24) speak of the 'death of the career' and argue that
lifelong identities are giving way to 'brief habits' and 'the lives of wired people are
more like collections of short stories than the narrative of a bourgeois novel.' The

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empirical support for these claims is however more varied. Interestingly, Danny Quah
(1996, 2001) and Robert Reich (2001) in different ways link the positive and negative
dimensions analytically and argue that they form part of an emerging digital divide.
That is, they argue that some of the essential characteristics of the knowledge-based
economy, which contribute to economic growth, also increase economic inequality
(Perrons 2001). Reich (2001) and Martin Carnoy (2000) also emphasise that the new
economy puts increasing pressure on maintaining a work life balance, and on social
sustainability, but otherwise less attention has been given to questions of reproduction
and the gendered nature of emerging inequalities in the new economy, an omission
noted by Castells (2001) i and something this paper seeks to explore.

Perhaps more is said about the ‘new economy’ and the lives and livelihoods of people
working within it than is actually known and there may be a tendency to generalise
from the little that is known especially within popular writings (see for example
Reeves, 2001 in which a very optimistic and one sided view of the future of work is
developed). Thus, detailed, comparative, empirical work is necessary in order to
investigate the varied forms taken by the new economy and how it is experienced in
practice. Kevin Doogan (2001) has made an explicit empirical critique of the
insecurity thesis and this paper also seeks to make a contribution to the debate by
reporting on a qualitative analysis of the experiences of women and men working in
the new media sector in Brighton and Hove.

In this brief review of work on the new economy emphasis is placed on explanations
which foreground long lasting, substantive changes, that is, the potential offered by
new information and commuting technologies and new working arrangements in

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terms of time and contracts, rather than those that rest on nominal economic variables,
such as inflation free growth, as the sustainability of the new economy on these
criteria has already been questioned as economic growth in the USA began to slow
down in the middle of 2001.

Thus thinking of the new economy as characterised by the increasing use of
information and computing technologies, and the Internet, it is clear that new ways of
organising the production, distribution and exchange of existing goods as well as
entirely new goods and services have come into being. The distribution and exchange
of goods via the Internet is generally referred to as E-commerce and takes place
between businesses and consumers (B2C), a well known example of which would be
Amazon.com which supplies books, videos and CDs, and transactions between firms
or businesses (B2B) which so far are quantitatively more significant (OECD, 2000)
and have been said to lead to new forms of business organisation. Castells (2001)
argues for example that the Internet has allowed the potential of networked forms of
organisation within and between firms to be realised. Existing services such as
training, marketing, advertising and public relations are also increasingly being
provided through the Internet, becoming e-training, e-marketing and e-pr, usually in
addition to traditional means of provision through CD Roms, videos and brochures.
The Internet also facilitates the development of new interactive services including
digital TV, games and interaction with virtual worlds, for example with a pop groupii.
In turn, these new services, products and methods of distribution generate new forms
of knowledge-based employment ranging from web based graphic design, web
system/database management, video installations through to programming. One
outcome is a range of new activities and jobs now commonly referred to as new

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media, which do not fit neatly into existing industrial sectors or occupational
categories.

This conceptualisation of the new economy conforms to media images, which
emphasise ICT and high status employment and also forms the main subject of this
paper. Nevertheless, it is important to recognise that these activities also generate and
depend on a range of lower level jobs in distribution and consumer services. E-
commerce, designed and managed by the higher-level workers, generates low status
employment in warehousing and deliveryiii. Some work is displaced from
conventional retailers and banks to call centres and some is transferred to consumers
who manage their own transactions directly via the Internet. Furthermore, given the
long hours worked by knowledge-workers (see IER/IFF, 2001) there has been an
expansion of jobs in the personal care and consumer services sector to cater for their
needs (see Perrons, 2001). Thus, the new economy is characterised by a duality or
digital divide, which in practice may build upon and possibly reinforce existing social
divisions of class, gender, race and ethnicity. Middle class, well-educated and white
men are likely to be over represented in high level 'self programmable' (Castells
2000) jobs, while women, ethnic minorities and people from lower social classes are
more likely to be found in the generic, lower paid jobs, in delivery and personal
services such as office cleaning, personal fitness, catering and care. There is however
some similarity in the contractual structure and temporal demands of employment, if
not in lifestyles and levels of pay, between high and low level workers that create
problems for managing work life balance.
New working patterns and the work life balance

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With the possibilities offered by ICT, increasing deregulation and associated moves
towards the 24/7 society, the temporal range of working hours has expanded leading
to an expansion of flexible and long working hours (Harkness, 1999; Presser, 1999;
Rubery, Smith and Fagan, 1998; IER/IFF, 2001; Twomey, 2001). For example, the
recent IER/IFF (2001) survey found that 11% of workplaces in the UK (covering 19%
of the employees) operated 24 hours a day 7 days a week and 11% of employees,
amongst whom fathers were especially prevalent, were working 60 or more hours a
week. There was also a connection between flexibility and long hours in that the
former were sometimes allowed simply to permit the latter, that is the demands of the
workplace were so intense that people were ‘allowed’ to work on Saturdays and
Sundays and take work home, a practice which has been facilitated by ICT and
internet access which enables continual connection between work and home through
mobile phones and emailiv. This can be construed positively as a means of extending
the range of locations from which paid work can be carried out, more negatively as a
means of work invading the home or indeed elements of both. The Department for
Employment and Education (DfEE, 2001a and 2001b) emphasises the business case
for flexibility, termed work life balance, and provides illustrations of how it can
increase productivity, reduce absenteeism, improve staff commitment, increase
retention rates and so reduce employer costs. Indeed within this perspective flexible
working seems to be more concerned with accommodating life to rather demanding
and unquestioned working hours rather than one of reorganising work to allow time
for domestic and caring responsibilities. The IER/IFF survey (2001) found that while
some forms of flexible working were permitted, especially work at weekends and
during unsocial hours, only a tiny minority of employers provided other forms of
flexibility such as job shares or forms of leave additional to statutory requirements.

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Neither did many provide any direct assistance with childcare (2% provided a
workplace crèche and 3% financial assistance) yet 26% of workplaces provided
workplace counselling/stress management. They suggest that employers are prepared
to pay to alleviate their employees’ stress but less willing to provide facilities that
might prevent it in the first place’ (IER/IFF, 2001: 25). It is important to recognise
however that even when available, the take up rate of family leave related
arrangements is low (DfEE, 2000a) possibly because of stigmatisation. Thus, flexible
working patterns have opened up opportunities for a wide range of people, including
carers, to take paid employment, even though employers often retain control over the
parameters of flexibility (Dex and McCulloch, 1997; Breedveld, 1998; Figart and
Mutari, 1998; Rubery, Smith and Fagan, 1998; Perrons, 1999).

New working patterns have eroded the boundaries and collective rhythms of working
life and the concept and reality of a fixed working day has declined for many people.
The process is also cumulative. As working hours become more varied, people will
expect services to be available at a wider range of times. Further, as the boundaries of
the working day have become more opaque, many salaried workers are expected to
work long hours to demonstrate commitment (Hochschild, 1997; McDowell, 1997;
Doyle and Reeves, 2001; Fagan, 2001) and to match the working hours of different
time zones. The main reason given by employees for long hours is ‘to get the work
done’ but the IER/IFF survey (2001) found that 70% of those working over 60 hours
enjoyed their work compared to 57% in the survey as a whole. Entrepreneurs and
freelancers similarly work long hours to get the work done, but also because of the
unpredictable nature and flow of work together with tight deadlines and in some cases
endorsing the findings of the IER/IFF survey, because of intrinsic work satisfaction,

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which means that the boundaries between work and life become blurred (see Massey,
1996; IER/IFF, 2001; Reeves, 2001 and the case study below). This blurring can also
be explained by the fact that knowledge work depends on human rather than fixed
capital and so is characterised by bursts of activity followed by fallow periods and
thus does not fit easily into a 9-5 structure (Gershuny, 2000). Consequently
knowledge based societies are said to be moving to a postindustrial time regime
(Doyle and Reeves, 2001; Fagan, 2001; Gershuny, 2000).

Richard Reeves (2001) argues that concern over long working hours is misplaced
because they often reflect worker preferences. He argues that time at work
increasingly involves doing interesting things in attractive physical and social
environments and so may be preferred to watching a TV soap, carrying out domestic
work or looking after children. In part following the ideas of Arlie Hochschild
(1997) Reeves argues that:
‘while the workplace is growing in attractiveness for many people home, or
‘life’ is looking a bit gloomy. For dual-earner couples with children, life
outside work is one of fixed timetables (childcare), conflict (whose turn is it to
pick up the kids?), low-skill work (cooking, cleaning nappy disposal) and
thankless masters and mistresses (the kids). As work enters the post-industrial
era, home life has become industrial’ (Reeves, 2001: 128).

There may be some truth in this illustration for some people, or on occasions for many
but Reeves (2001) pays little attention to the terms and conditions of employment for
those who might provide childcare and domestic services or ‘life-style fixers’ (Denny,
2001) or whether they similarly would welcome increased working hours.

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Document Outline

• Abstract
• 2) The new economy potential for redressing gender imbalances
• References

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