Managing intensity in knowledge work: Self-leadership practices among Danish management consultants

This paper examines the sources of knowledge workers’ work intensity and the self-leading strategies they apply to deal with it. The paper is based on focus group interviews with management consultants in a Danish management consultancy firm. Work intensity was identified as resulting from a combination of: (1) a results-only focus, (2) vagueness, (3) boundaryless work, and (4) low control of the quantitative load. A framework for self-leading strategies is developed based on the dimensions of reactive/proactive and self-focused/externally focused strategies in different combinations. The results indicate that while consultants expressed a belief in internal self-discipline strategies of a more reactive nature, in fact, external and proactive strategies were the most effective in practice. In conclusion, the paper contributes to an extension of self-leadership theory to better account for current research on self-control.

Boundaryless Work and the Role of Mobile ICT

The change of structures of work towards fewer boundaries in time, space and tasks are sometimes referred to as boundaryless work. ICT is pointed out as one cause of this tendency. The aim of this chapter is to discuss the role of mobile ICT in the forming of the borderland between work and non-work and the identities formed in relation to this borderland: how is mobile ICT used in work and non-work, how is this use related to the forming of a borderland between work and non-work, what are the characteristics of the identities formed in this borderland? Narratives of experience of mobile ICT practices are analysed by means of social theories. The results show that mobile ICT is used as a boundary object between work and non-work. In distinguishing between functions and artefacts, between time and space, different identities are formed: extended work identity, border identity and boundaryless identity.