Lady Geek

It seems to be increasingly important for businesses to understand how people live their lives. I recently came across this video podcast featuring Karsten Jonsen. He talked eloquently about how social change is relevant for management. He referred to the blurring of the private and public sphere through new information communication technologies as an example. This blurring of boundaries was also the topic of a seminar on Humanizing Work hosted by the Lehman Brother Centre for Women in Business. The seminar was convened by Professor Judy Wajcman who invited Professor Richard Sennett and Professor Lord Anthony Giddens to give keynote speeches.

Both of are sociologists and Stefan Stern, columnist at the FT, wrote after the event that managers can learn a great deal from sociologists. Anthony Giddens talked about addiction. There is a clear technology angle to this because Giddens referred to that when people wake up at night, they are often so addicted to their BlackBerry that they check for new emails first before going to the toilet (Stefan Stern has written about this in his column too).

Email and the internet can become like a drug which Belinda has discussed. Dr Ivan Goldberg has coined the term Internet Addiction Disorder (IAD) for this phenomenon and psychologists classify IAD as a mental illness. There is of course always the danger of creating the mental illness one speaks about. What is central however is that the knowledge of how people live their lives is important to create insight into what kind of products and services people might be interested in and also in what kind of work environment they want to be.