Digital Media Literacy in Teamwork and Distance Work : Competences, Discourse and Organizational Design

Jacques, Jerry [UCL] Collard, Anne-Sophie [UNamur]

Digital technology has become ubiquitous in the workplace, especially for office workers. So-called "new ways of working" are enabled by technological, organizational and societal developments. As distance collaboration is becoming increasingly common, it raises a number of critical questions. How does the organizational design evolve to accommodate and support this transformation? What are the key changes in the individual and team work practices? What competences do workers need in these new work environments? And how do the associated discursive changes impact on the practices and subjectivities of office workers? LITME@WORK, a 4-year research project, addressed these changes through the lens of digital media literacy (DML) for office work, focusing on teamwork and distance work. This project has investigated DML from three different but complementary perspectives: (1) a practice-oriented perspective focusing on the relationship between digital media uses and competences in employees’ new work practices; (2) an organizational design perspective focusing on the relationship between work organization, workplace design and structural conditions for (DML) competence utilization and learning; and (3) a discourse-analytical perspective focusing on the sense-making processes office workers rely on when they conceptualize work and (DML) competences in organizations transitioning to new ways of working. The LITME@WORK project studied ten Belgian organizations that took measures to enhance ICT-supported distance teamwork. The selected cases represent a variety of work contexts that can be distinguished on the basis of parameters such as the public/private distinction, the sector of activity (e.g. IT, health, transportation, insurance) and the size of the organization. LITME@WORK delivers as main research results: a research framework for analyzing the many aspects of digital media literacy in distance teamwork practices and environments, ranging from the organizational and team structures to the point of view of individual workers themselves; an in-depth analysis of the ways organizations understand and negotiate the “(digitally) competent worker”; an up-to-date description of the changing office work competences, practices, cultures and organizational structures, with a focus on teamwork and distance work trends; and a conceptual map of DML competences aimed at serving as a resource for societal and policy stakeholders in terms of defining, evaluating, monitoring, recognizing and supporting DML in office work. LITME@WORK was funded by the Belgian Science Policy Office (BELSPO).