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The stories this theme is drawn from illustrate how the different strategies the directors used to order the relationships between the actors, including the technology actors, to achieve their required translations influenced how directors constructed their meanings of telework. The directors of the traditional firms were actors in patterned relationships with and between other actors, including the technologies, ordered to generate both compliance for their clients and revenues to fuel the networks of the firm. These relationships were homogeneous across most of the networks of firms, the result of decades of network learning. They constituted a mode of ordering that included teleworkers and the in-office accountants in relationships with the technology actors to achieve the required calculations of translation, the required productivity with its resulting surplus labour. The only difference was that the teleworkers, who were physically located within the networks of the home, crossed over the work–home boundary via the internet to join the networks that ordered their agencies within their employing firm.

This traditional mode of ordering with its stable relationships between the human and nonhuman actors was aimed at the completion of client compliance in the most productive manner. To the

manager at W, however, this form of ordering prevented the teleworkers and in-office accountants from adding value to their clients’ businesses: “I have targets to meet so I can’t spend an additional half an hour or hour with the client because then I will have write offs,” while the director at HT called this mode of ordering “flawed because they do not have a working relationship with the client.” These expressed concerns about the appropriateness of the traditional ordering for productivity arose because “The younger business owners are technologically very competent and decision driven.” Thus, for two directors and managers the future lay not in compliance, but in assisting clients to use the results of compliance to add value to their businesses through better collective decision making.

These clients were younger business people who were using the new cloud-based accounting

software, because they were very comfortable using the newer digital technologies, as the manager at C explained:

Xero has changed accounting for many small businesses completely. This programme, once set up is so intuitive that people can do their accounts quickly which is what people want now.

Consequently, these younger business persons, by adopting this cloud-based accountancy software, had reordered the relationships within the networks of their firms to complete translation of

accounting materials into compliance accounts located in the cloud. This privileging of the agencies of technology by clients reduced their need for traditional accountancy services which, in turn, has the potential to diminish the influence traditional chartered accountancy firms have had over their clients.

To meet this changed demand for financial services, two directors also enrolled newer technologies within their firms’ networked web of relationships which aligned their networks with the financial networks of their clients. Directors told stories about the positive use by teleworkers of mobile phones, mobile video conference meetings and the use of collaborative software both between the teleworker and their clients and between the teleworker and the office. They also told of the increased use of web portals for client communications and transfer of data, all reflecting this reordering to privilege the technologies in the relationships with actors within the networks of the firm, strategies designed to enhance the delivery of productivity and client financial requirements.

Additionally, according to the manager at A, this reordering of the technologies in relation to the human actors increased the labour surplus in firms, resulting in a higher return on their capital investment in their actors. In other words, the reordering of the relationships between the human actors and the technology actors resulted in increased productivity. However, this realignment of the relationships between the actors and the technologies within the networks of the firms to align with those of the clients did not achieve agency over the financial networks of the clients that the

traditional directors carrying out compliance enjoyed. This alignment the directors of these two firms re-achieved by gaining agency over the relationships within the financial and management networks of their clients. These firms no longer influenced how their clients ordered their network relations to process their financial accounts so the firm’s networks could complete the required compliance. Instead, they negotiated a reordering of their network relationships to influence the networks of the clients to ensure accuracy of their client-translated compliance accounts. Then, they partnered with the client to both review and evaluate the stories the client accounts told, in order to guide client financial and management decisionmaking. Firms, therefore, were entering into collective agencies with their clients within the client financial and management networks, resulting in the firms’ tailoring their translations to the financial needs of these clients. This web of relations the directors called relationship building, since, as the director at HT pointed out: “Doing their accounts, don’t keep their clients, creating relationships with them does.”

This reordering of the relationships within firms changed the relationships the teleworkers had with technologies, especially the newer digital technologies. In aligning the technologically enhanced relationships with those of the client, one firm provided its teleworkers with, and expected them to use, mobile phones, collaborative software plus their own analytical skills to add value to the client’s business. These activities they could easily fit around their roles within the network of the home, because their changed relationship with the technologies provided better communications with their clients. Moreover, as the director at HT pointed out, the clients’ preference for digital

communications meant that relationship building could occur at any time convenient to the parties.

You don’t have to work from 8:30 to 5; I don’t give a rat’s arse; you can be up at 2 in the morning; you can be up at midnight; it’s not an issue, if it’s the right time and you get a buzz out of doing it then hey, go and do it.

These teleworkers had their own clients so they were continuously part of the material of the networks of the firm and, being so integrated into the firm’s webs of relationships, they could be full-time or part-time, but not on-call employees. Yet, for the majority of the teleworkers, apart from being part of the changed relationship with the digital technologies, little else within the networks of the firm had changed for them. There appeared to be two reasons for this situation. First, the firms still relied on compliance for the bulk of their revenues and, with most teleworkers being in-office trained in compliance, it was logical that they continued with this work. Secondly, partnering with clients to add value to their networks requires skills the in-office trained teleworker may not have acquired because of the emphasis on compliance and director-led communications with clients. To train these teleworkers in these new skills, in these new agencies, requires an investment the network, through the dimension of the economic, may not be prepared to commit to.

This changed relations with clients also required a different calculation of productivity, as the use of the traditional calculation of budgeted hours to order translation did not fit the new collaborative model. As a result, these firms were currently in transition from the traditional model based on chargeable hours to alternative calculations based, for example, on annual contracted hours tailored to client network requirements.

In summary, this technological dimension influenced, through the economic and political dimensions, the network mode of ordering to maintain labour surpluses through negotiated changes to its

relationships between newer technologies and human actors. That the modes of ordering of

teleworkers remained unchanged despite the technological changes that led three firms to commence network negotiations with their clients is the result of how, through the technological dimension, the networks constructed their meaning of telework.

Looking back

At the beginning of this chapter, I noted that three themes had emerged from the analytical

framework; the need for productivity by all firms, the tensions between the office and the home and the changed relationships between the actors and the digital technologies. Through all these themes the stories all told of the the importance the networks attached to a culture of productivity, and, how the networks of the firms were ordered for productivity both in the completion of client accounts and the minimising of nonchargeable work such as filing. This was an ordering based on time, an ordering that through actor-enabled processes within the network such as observation and the completion of 6-minute time sheets at network obligatory passage points, maintained the required calculations of translation, the network truths. It was an ordering specific to a productive space, the office, where accounting actors were required to be present, making them visible, present and reflective of their relationships within the mode of ordering that drove productivity. It was a space symbolising to other networks that here, in this space, actors are located with the knowledge to order financial reports in compliance with the requirements of other entities in the social. It was a mode of ordering of the networks of all firms that had been negotiated over decades and had become accepted by the managers, directors and all other actors in the firm as the truth because of its symbolic,

economic, political and technological success. Consequently, the networks of the firms have become obdurate and resistant to material change (Law, 2004a) in order to preserve their truths, truths that influenced how the networks, told through the directors and managers, constructed their meaning of telework.

Actors, being immersed in the relationships within the network of the firm, and through their training, accepted the ordering of the networks for time productivity as the truth, as their reality. Thus, when these actors went home to work the symbols of the truth were not present. In their place were the social truths of the home that symbolised the roles actors played within the home networks. Thus, the known truth related to the office was now in conflict with the known truth of the home, a tension that raised productivity concerns with the networks of the firm, as expressed by the directors. These concerns the networks of the firm overcame by refusing to allow accounting actors to telework or, by negotiating with selected actors and enrolling them in changed relationships that located them in their homes in exchange for changed agencies that made them 100 percent productive.

Then, there were the directors who understood the financial needs of the new entrepreneurs who privileged the digital technologies as materials within the relationships of their networks. These entrepreneurs had less need for compliance, as their finance network was ordered to achieve this through the privileging of the new accounting software. What their networks lacked were the skills to use the accounting information to make profitable business decisions. The market firms, by

rearranging the relationships of actors and the technologies within their networks, were able to negotiate the roles of in-office accountants and teleworkers to fulfil the network needs of these clients for financial and management decision making advice. Nevertheless, the majority of teleworkers remained within the traditional mode of ordering that translated client immutable mobiles into compliance accounts.

The networks of the social have also influenced the mode of ordering of the firms, especially the ordering of the roles of women and men. Consequently, from their locations within these networks the directors and managers have learned the socially constructed roles men and women play in the social, explained by Whiting (2008) as the gender contract. This construction was made obvious by the fact that only women were allowed to telework.

Also, the stories in the analytic framework tell of directors, who were all members within the patterned relationships of their firms being influenced by other networks, just as they attempted to influence other networks themselves. As a result, their understanding of telework was additionally influenced by those networks they interacted with. Thus, how the directors have constructed their meaning of telework is the result of their social and professional learning from their interactions within the networks of the firms they are located in, from the networks of their peers, their professional body, their clients and many other networks of the social.

However, the mode of ordering in chartered accountancy firms has a long stable history, hence its homogeneity and consequent isomorphic pressures on firms that materially vary this traditional mode of ordering. “No. There will always be compliance. Computers can only do so much of that sort of work.” This traditional ordering is being challenged by the changed economic ordering of society that now encourages women to enter and remain in the workforce while prioritising their roles to the home and family. Some networks have accommodated this tension by providing telework. In doing so, because of the influence of the social and the isomorphism for a purity of ordering of the

profession, the directors attempted to locate these teleworkers within the traditional modes of

ordering. Essentially, the networks attempted to construct the meaning of telework similarly to that of the in-office accountant, a mode of ordering that privileged the office. Thus, to accommodate the influences of the social regarding the dual roles of women, the networks, for specific teleworker actors, negotiated a different mode of ordering and changed agencies based on the director and different calculations of translation.

The traditional pattern of ordering of the firms was based on three truths: productivity, the importance of the client and the privileging of the office. Consequently, a network would only retain an actor as a teleworker if the network truths were maintained, an activity that involved negotiating with and enrolling teleworkers in a range of changed relationships within the networks. The technology actors have aided these negotiations by providing network links to allow the teleworker to achieve

productivity targets while locted in the home, and, to privilege the client. However, though the technology can connect the teleworker virtually to the firm, it has yet to, on a cost-effective basis, replace observation as the prime productivity control the network continues to rely on. It was from this traditional truth of privileging the office, because of concerns for control over the correct completion of timesheets, that the directors and managers constructed their meanings of telework. Nevertheless, given the increasing numbers of professionally or in-office trained women being recruited into the networks of the firms, these firms faced an economic dilemma if, or when, these women wished to prioritise their family responsibilities over their paid work responsibilities. The dilemma being, how to retain these skilled women as teleworkers, yet maintain or improve the calculations of translation to achieve the required surplus labour. This the firms generally addressed in one of two ways. First, after filtering, the actor was constructed the same as the in-office

accounting actors, or secondly, because of the influences of the home network, the actor was constructed as a 100 percent productive revenue source, the result of negotiations to realign her exchange of compliance outputs with her remuneration. Exercising their agency, the networks, therefore, in order to maximise their labour surplus and to minimise operational costs, negotiated with selected skilled women accounting actors and enrolled them in relationships, constructed as telework, that allowed them to be located at home with modified agencies that made them 100 percent

These were enrolments that could, but as yet not, also be applied to the changing relationships in the market firms to translate the changed client financial needs, the result of the adoption by the client of cloud-based accounting programmes. These changes, though minimal, have resulted in changes to how the meaning of telework has been constructed by the networks and, therefore, by the directors and managers. Thus, as the stories told, it was through the influences of the symbolic, the political and the economic that the networks constructed their meanings of telework.

In this chapter I have analysed the stories from the analytical framework using ANT. In doing so, I have followed Law (1994) in order to understand the linkages, the connections and tensions within the networks of the firms. These I have reflected on by first unpacking, and secondly, understanding the network constructed truths of productivity, the office as the productive space and the challenges of technology to compliance, truths that underpin the networks’ construction of telework that the stories told as reality.

It is the question of how the networks constructed their meanings of telework through the cultural symbolic, the political, the economic and the technological dimensions that I will further reflect on in the following chapter.

Chapter 10