Meta-work as a scaffold for the continual transformation of work

Workplaces deal with a continual transformation of culture and practices due to emerging challenges such as digitalisation, datafication, and changing societal priorities. To support these transformations, workplaces provide forms of professional learning focused on the development of new skills and knowledge. However, the transformation of work extends beyond skills and knowledge to include social and cultural issues that reorganise work, professional identity and values. To engage proactively in transformation as a field of entangled action, individuals and communities need to reshape their practices, agency and identity, and this act of reshaping is a form of ‘meta-work’ – work that enables work (Aroles et al., 2022). Meta-work is a way to ‘scaffold’ new ways of working in contexts of transformation and uncertainty. Over time this scaffolding may be changed or removed, but it continuously morphs and mutates as work continually transforms. It is critical to understand the professional’s everyday experience around meta-work and the part it plays in supporting organisation of work during transformation. This paper aims to examine two contrasting empirical cases to explore forms of meta-work that were emerging in response to transformation processes. The first case explores mainstream work becoming marginal and the second examines isolated and novel forms of practice becoming mainstream. The theme that connects these two cases is the relationship between meta-work and (envisioned / new) mainstream work, which is problematized through the lens of ‘productive resistance’.