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Nordic working life studies have mostly focused on the precarious aspects of work mediated via online labor platforms. We follow a different approach and examine the potential of such work to benefit professionals by enhancing their job quality and learning. This qualitative, practice-based study applies the concept ‘co-creation’ to examine how a social form of creating value takes place in Upwork macrotask projects. It then investigates how platform features shape opportunities for co-creation. The data comprise interviews of 15 freelancers residing in Finland. The findings suggest that co-creation is possible in macrotask projects, but the platform does not seem to actively support co-creation. This paper provides insights into the discussion of job quality at platform work and how co-creation on platforms might be developed to support the Nordic labor market model.

In this qualitative study, the authors apply Callon’s sociology of translation to examine how new technology entrepreneurs enact material arguments that involve the first two moments of translation—problematization (defining a market problem) and interessement (defining a market and the firm’s relationship to it)—which in turn are represented in a claim, the value proposition. That emergent claim can then be represented and further changed during pitches. If accepted, it can then lead to the second two moments of translation: enrollment and mobilization. Drawing on written materials, observations, and interviews, we trace how these value propositions were iterated along three paths to better problematize and interesse, articulating a problem and market on which a business could plausibly be built. We conclude by discussing implications for understanding value propositions in entrepreneurship and, more broadly, using the sociology of translation to analyze emergent, material, consequential arguments.

Content marketing involves creating content in genres that readers find useful. These genres individually do not persuade their readers to buy a given product and may not even mention the product o...

The papers in this special section address effective communication styles for entrepreneurs.

Activity theory in its “third generation” (3GAT) has been used extensively to analyze case studies in professional communication and related fields such as information systems, workforce education, and computer-supported cooperative work. Yet 3GAT has known limits, and these limits are making it difficult to model, assess, and make recommendations for such cases. In this paper, we discuss these limitations, then overview and synthesize recent research pointing to a fourth generation of activity (4GAT). We find that this literature has two main foci: (1) Peer and social production and (2) Networked organization of labor and production. We conclude by offering implications for professional communication.

Coworking spaces are shared working environments in which independent knowledge workers gather. Coworking is consistently described in terms of community and collaboration—yet these terms are defined inconsistently in the coworking literature. This study reviews the literature on coworking to better examine how community relates to collaboration. To anchor a more systematic analysis of community in coworking, the authors introduce Adler and Heckscher’s typology of communities; apply it to a study of six coworking spaces in the United States, Italy, and Serbia; and develop the typology to better understand coworking.

Research problem: Examines how Korean entrepreneurs in an entrepreneurship program revised their English-language slide decks for their competitive presentations (“pitches”) by reusing content from professional communication genres, including their own documents and feedback from potential stakeholders in their target markets. Research question: As entrepreneurs learn to pitch ideas to unfamiliar markets, how do they revise their slide decks by reusing content from other professional communication genres? Specifically, what strategies do they follow when reusing content? Literature review: The professional communication literature demonstrates that reuse tends to take place in documentation cycles where documents are set in interaction with each other and that reuse itself involves rhetorical choices. Yet such reuse strategies have not been examined in existing studies of entrepreneurial pitches in marketing and technology commercialization. Methodology: In an exploratory qualitative study, researchers textually analyzed 14 sets of five related document genres in the archives of an entrepreneurship program. These genres represented a full cycle of activity: application to the program, initial pitches, initial feedback from program personnel, detailed feedback from representative stakeholders in the target market, and revised pitches. Interviews and surveys of program personnel further contextualize the data. Results and conclusions: Entrepreneurs reused content from professional communication genres, including those that they had generated as well as those generated by market stakeholders. However, reuse went simply beyond accepting and copying feedback; as they learned to make their pitch arguments, these entrepreneurs had to weigh this feedback and engage with it critically. This reuse can be characterized as Accepting (repeating verbatim or in close paraphrase); Continuing (extending lines of argument); and Resisting (rebutting lines of argument). These findings suggest that entrepreneurs need all three strategies as they refine their pitches for their target markets.

At the time of publication B. McNely was at The University of Kentucky, C. Spinuzzi was at The University of Texas at Austin, and C. Teston was at The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio.

Research problem: The question: How Korean entrepreneurs in an entrepreneurship program revised their slide decks for their presentations (“pitches”) in response to professional communication genres representing feedback from potential stakeholders in their target markets is examined. Research questions: As entrepreneurs learn to pitch ideas to unfamiliar markets, how do they revise their slide decks for their pitches when interacting with other professional communication genres that represent the concerns of market stakeholders? Specifically, what changes do entrepreneurs make to the claims, evidence, and complexity of arguments in their pitches? Literature review: The professional communication literature demonstrates that the revision process tends to take place in documentation cycles where documents are set in interaction with each other. Yet such revision processes are not studied in detail in existing studies of entrepreneurial pitches in marketing and technology commercialization. Methodology: In this exploratory qualitative study, researchers textually analyzed 14 sets of five related document genres in the archives of an entrepreneurship program. These genres represented a full cycle of activity: application to the program, initial pitches, initial feedback from program personnel, detailed feedback from representative stakeholders in the target market, and revised pitches. Interviews and surveys of program personnel further contextualize the data. Results and conclusions: Entrepreneurs revised their claims and evidence based on their dialogue with their target market. Some of the entrepreneurs altered their slides to make more complex arguments rebutting stakeholders' concerns. These findings suggest that entrepreneurs engage in dialogue with their target markets, but their engagement tends to be guided by tacit, situated experience rather than through an explicit, systematized approach.

Professional writing scholars have often turned to activity theory (AT) as a rich framework for describing and theorizing human activity. But AT-based studies typically emphasize the uniqueness of activities rather than examining how certain types of activities share configurations. Consequently, these analyses often miss the chance to examine activities’ internal contradictions that are a result of interference between different configurations of activity. This article argues that a typology of activities can deepen our understanding of these internal contradictions. Drawing from a range of literature, it describes the general characteristics of different types of activities, providing examples from other AT-based studies. It concludes by discussing how this typology can help such studies to better analyze internal contradictions in activities.

Nonemployer firms—firms with no employees—present themselves as larger, more stable firms to take on clients’ projects. They then achieve these projects by recruiting subcontractors, guiding subcontractors’ interactions with clients, and coordinating subcontractors to protect their team performance for the client. Using fourth-generation activity theory, I examine how these firms stage-manage their ad hoc collaborations. I conclude by describing the implications for further developing fourth-generation activity theory to study such instances of knowledge work.

Mobile professionals can choose to work in offices, executive suites, home offices, or other spaces. But some have instead chosen to work at coworking spaces: open-plan office environments in which they work alongside other unaffiliated professionals for a fee of approximately $250 a month. But what service are they actually purchasing with that monthly fee? How do they describe that service? From an activity theory perspective, what are its object, outcome, and actors? This article reports on a 20-month study that answers such questions.

At a search marketing company, each search engine optimization (SEO) specialist writes up to 10 to 12 complex 20-page monthly reports in the first ten business days of each month. These SEO specialists do not consider themselves to be writers, yet they generate these structurally and rhetorically complex reports as a matter of course, while negotiating a constantly changing landscape of a contingent, rapidly changing business sector. Under these conditions, how did the SEO specialists manage to write these reports so quickly and so well? What is the standing set of transformations that they enact in order to develop and produce these reports? And given the multiple contingencies, rapid changes, and high individual discretion at this organization—seemingly a recipe for discohesive practices—how did they maintain and develop this standing set of transformations in order to turn out consistent reports? In this article, I draw on writing, activity, and genre research (WAGR) to examine how Semoptco’s SEO specialists produced monthly reports, specifically in terms of their constant networking, audience analysis, and ethos building. Finally, I draw implications for applying WAGR to knowledge work organizations.

In this paper, we examine five cases of technology commercialization in terms of how entrepreneurs advance a specific kind of claim: the value proposition. The value proposition can describe the characteristics of the innovation itself (Goods-Dominant Logic) or propose how the innovation will co-create value with stakeholders (Service-Dominant Logic); in the examined cases, the value proposition transitions between these two “logics,” addressing different needs in the ongoing argument. We conclude by discussing the needs that each “logic” serves and the implications for better understanding entrepreneurship communication.

Traditional software usability methods can help us design more understandable and more useful application program interfaces (APIs). They also give us information we need to write good API reference documentation-before we invest in either programmers or writers and before evolving a large body of code or content.

“In the past,” Nardi, Whittaker, and Schwarz tell us, “much work took place in relatively stable settings” (2002, p. 205). In these settings, long-term relationships flourished; workers held long-term or lifelong jobs, maintained steady contacts with other organizations and with the public, and built up considerable expertise (cf. Braverman, 1974). They fulfilled clearly defined roles and developed strong working relationships. They “shared considerable social, cultural, and organizational knowledge that served as a backdrop for work and interaction” (Nardi et al., 2002, p. 205). But recent changes in work, particularly knowledge work, have destabilized these settings: downsizing, automation, flattening of work hierarchies, increasing numbers of relationships between companies, and continual reorganization (p. 206; cf. Deleuze, 1995; Engestrom, Engestrom, & Vahaaho, 1999). One result, Nardi et al. say, is that “many corporations operate in an increasingly distributed manner, with workers, contractors, consultants, and important contacts such as those in the press located in different parts of the country or across the globe” (p. 206; cf. Zuboff & Maxmin, 2004). This description certainly fits Telecorp in 2000–2001, during my observations. Telecorp was undergoing rapid and sometimes chaotic changes: rapid growth, rapid acquisitions, rapid turnover in workers, rapid adoption of new technologies and new features, all in the rapidly changing landscape of the telecommunications industry. The industry by its nature involves constant collaboration among companies and frequent contact with customers; organizational boundaries are quite porous, with connections at all levels and in all areas.

As we saw in the previous chapters, different parts of Telecorp relate in different and complex ways. I've introduced activity networks and actor–networks in thumbnail fashion as two different ways of getting at how these parts relate. Now it's time to roll up our sleeves and see what's actually involved in analyzing such networks. As we've seen, activity theory and actor–network theory have common ground but also disagreements stemming from their very different projects. As I said in Chapter 2, I'm not going to provide a middle way or “just right” solution (that's a tired trope, and nobody really believes it anyway). I'll settle for a dialogue – one that honestly examines the dispute, not the sniping that has until now taken place between the two camps. Let's have a real argument! And it's high time that this argument take place. Activity theory and actor–network theory have traditionally worked in separate areas. Activity theory is primarily a theory of distributed cognition and focuses on issues of labor, learning, and concept formation; it's used in fields such as educational, cognitive, and cultural psychology, although it's also making inroads in human–computer interaction, computer-supported cooperative work, communication, and anthropology. In contrast, actor–network theory is primarily an ontology – an account of existence – and focuses on issues of power in science and politics: rhetoric, production of facts, agreements, and knowledge. It's used in science and technology studies, philosophy, and sociology.