Doctoral Dissertation Research: Work and Life in the New Economy: An Ethnography of High Tech Startup Companies

高科技创业公司被誉为工作的未来，但学者们尚未研究创业公司的组织结构和企业文化与前几代人和其他行业有多大不同。耶鲁大学美国研究项目的一位文化人类学家的博士论文研究验证了这样一个假设，即高科技创业公司代表了一种新的公司形式，对员工和他们开发的技术具有独特的影响。这本美国高科技创业公司的比较民族志调查了员工在特定行业和组织环境中的工作经历和概念。考虑到创业公司员工的独特人口结构，本研究挑战了关于工作和家庭生活之间关系的公认智慧，并阐明了新一代白领员工的特征，这是考虑到高科技行业最近经济和文化转变的突出主题。鉴于2001年下半年高科技产业的失业率急剧上升，对失业的高科技工人的采访补充了对企业员工收集的数据。研究方法包括长期参与观察、直接和开放式访谈、视频人种志、调查、劳动力统计分析以及管理理论和公司形式的历史研究。本研究促进了我们对当代生活中工作场所和公司形式演变的理解，这些知识将帮助员工、管理者和劳工倡导者修改公司工作组织和工人体验的质量

High-technology startup companies have been heralded as the future of work, but scholars have yet to examine the extent to which startups' organizational structures and corporate cultures differ from those of previous generations and other industries. This doctoral dissertation research by a cultural anthropologist in the American Studies program at Yale University tests the hypothesis that high-tech startups represent a new corporate form with unique implications for employees and the technologies they develop. This comparative ethnography of U.S. high-tech startups investigates employees' experiences and conceptions of work in a particular industry and organizational setting. Taking into account the unique demographics of the startup workforce, this study challenges received wisdom concerning the relationship between work and home life and elucidates the characteristics of a new generation of white-collar employees, salient topics considering recent economic and cultural shifts in the high-technology industry. In light of skyrocketing unemployment in the high-tech industry over the last half of 2001, interviews with unemployed high-tech workers supplement data collected on corporate employees. Methods include long-term participant observation, directed and open-ended interviews, video ethnography, surveys, analysis of labor force statistics, and historical study of management theory and the corporate form. This research advances our understanding of the place of work in contemporary life and the evolution of the corporate form, knowledge that will help employees, managers, and labor advocates modify the organization of corporate work and the quality of workers' experiences