In praise of boredom at work

Abstract

In the context of management and organisational literature, boredom has largely been seen in individual, psychological and negative terms, both for those experiencing it and for organisational outcomes. Through selective references to a wider sociological, historical and philosophical set of perspectives, we make a case here for refiguring boredom at work as a more relational and political notion. Rather than being seen as negative or trivial, we suggest that it is central to the concerns of organisation studies (and more widely) as a ambivalent everyday condition and experience. In particular, boredom is intimately linked to the project and promises of modernity and its associated effects on time, from factory industrialisation to contemporary work platforms. Both in terms of philosophical argument and applied fields such as art, literature, architecture and design, we suggest that boredom is both emancipatory/productive and alienating. Such an understanding establishes opportunities for research which would be central to the experience of contemporary paid employment and wider experience.

Examining the Contemporary Worker and the Workplace From a Leadership-as-Practice Perspective: A HRD Opportunity

“…The response of workers to threatening forms of control has been found to be diverse, ranging from compliance to covert and, ultimately, overt forms of resistance. For example, to maintain their identities, they may collectively display a gesture of compliance while deploying such tactics as cynicism, irony, foot dragging, boredom, staged performance, or reinvention of meaning (Fleming & Spicer, 2008; Noury et al, 2022; Siltaloppi et al, 2022; Ybema & Horvers, 2017). Ultimately, any movement towards the practices entailed in resistance appears to arise from contradictions between the attempts by management to define an organizational identity and the corresponding response of workers who maintain their own sense of personal and collective meaning.…”

Time as a Research Lens: A Conceptual Review and Research Agenda

“…Second, several studies have shown that temporal structures influence the temporal experiences of organizational actors (e.g., Bailey & Suddaby, 2023; Briscoe, 2007; Dorow & Jean, 2022; Katila et al, 2020). Whereas some temporal structures can trigger experiences of flow and timelessness (Mainemelis, 2001), others can result in boredom (Noury, Ahuja, Parker, Sturdy, & Tyler, 2022) or even stress and burnout (e.g., Blagoev & Schreyögg, 2019; Lupu & Rokka, 2022; Perlow, 1999). Some temporal experiences—such as serving time in prison—might point “to a more fundamental and negative dimension of time, where the processual construction of meaningful time is substituted for a radical experience of finitude” (Johnsen, Berg Johansen, & Toyoki, 2019: 15).…”

Needs, creativity and care: Adorno and the future of work

“…The ‘feeling of powerlessness is closely bound up with boredom’, which ‘is a function of life under the compulsion to work and under the rigorous division of labour. Boredom need not necessarily exist’ (Adorno, 2005a: 171), yet it is perhaps one of the most common workplace experiences (Cederström and Fleming, 2012; Fisher, 1993; Johnsen, 2016; Noury et al, 2022).…”