Co-Creating the Workplace: Participatory Efforts to Enable Individual Work at the Hoffice

Abstract

This paper analyzes the self-organizing network Hofficea merger between the words home and officethat brings together people who wish to co-create temporary workplaces. The Hoffice concept entails a co-working methodology, and a set of practices inherent in opening up one's home as a temporary, shared workplace, with the help of existing social media platforms, particularly Facebook. We discuss both the practices of co-creating temporary workplaces, particularly for workers who lack a stable office and orchestrate flexible work arrangements, and the values and rhetoric enshrined in Hoffice. We collected our research materials through interviews, participant observation, and workshops. Our findings draw attention to i) the practical arrangement of Hoffice events, ii) the participatory efforts to get individual work done, and 3) the co-creation of an alternative social model that encourages trust, self-actualization, and openness. To conclude, we discuss how Hoffice is already making change for its members, and how this is indicative of a politics of care. We contribute to research on computersupported collaborative work (CSCW) by highlighting grassroots efforts to create alternative ways of organizing nomadic work and navigating non-traditional employment arrangements.

Processes of Proliferation

“…And, while Naber et al intend their four terms to encompass adjusting and adapting experiments to new settings, referring to that as replication risks fostering ideas of recreating something to be the same across contexts. As a case in point, grounding their discussion in the case of Hoffice -a self-organizing network experimenting with an alternative social model for flexible forms of work in private homes (for details, see [48]) -Lampinen, Rossitto, and Gradin Franzén [32] discuss the challenges of replicating the original home-based concept in other contexts, such as public libraries. Their work shows that core visions and ideas might be entirely transformed, to the extent that they become something else, when initiatives are "replicated" by -and forthird-party actors that fail (or purposefully refuse) to appropriate initiatives' original values and motives.…”

“…The self-organising network Hoffice -a merger of the words home and office -brings together people who wish to co-create temporary workplaces by opening up private homes for collective use as shared offices [48]. The network was founded in Stockholm, Sweden, in 2014.…”

Flexible Turtles and Elastic Octopi: Exploring Agile Practice in Knowledge Work

“…Possessing 'flex time' also has spatial implications, particularly when work is constituted as a form of telework or remote work. For example, the notion of the home office predicates both temporal as well as spatial boundary making and management on the part of a worker (Gisin et al 2016;Heath et al 1995;Kelliher and Anderson 2010;Rossitto and Lampinen 2018). The ability to work from anywhere-the epitome of the modern conception of flexibility-actually puts an onus on a worker to construct or find a physical situation that will be effective for professional productivity.…”

Co-design de Groupware para Planejamento entre Professores do Ensino Médio

“…Há três principais problemas relacionadosà atividade de planejamento de aula: falta de tempo, o que leva ao estresse do professor; falta de apoio para compartilhar planos de aula com outros colegas professores; e cultura de isolamento no planejamento do plano de aula [Rossitto and Lampinen 2018]. Considerando os problemas supramencionados, o planejamento colaborativo de aula tem se tornando relevante em pesquisas naárea de Aprendizagem Aprimorada por Tecnologia, pois estas pontecializam o ensino-aprendizagem [Nguyen and Bower 2018].…”