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

高科技初创公司被认为是工作的未来，但学者们尚未研究初创公司的组织结构和企业文化与前几代人和其他行业的不同程度。这篇博士论文是由耶鲁大学美国研究项目的一位文化人类学家进行的，他测试了这样一种假设：高科技初创企业代表着一种新的公司形式，对员工及其开发的技术具有独特的影响。这一美国高科技初创企业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验和概念。考虑到初创企业劳动力的独特人口结构，这项研究挑战了关于工作和家庭生活之间关系的传统智慧，并阐明了新一代白领员工的特征，考虑到最近高科技行业的经济和文化变化，这是一个突出的话题。鉴于2001年下半年高科技行业失业率飙升，对失业高科技工人的采访补充了收集到的企业雇员数据。方法包括长期参与观察、定向访谈和开放式访谈、录像民族志、调查、劳动力统计分析、管理理论和企业形态的历史研究。这项研究促进了我们对现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、经理和劳工倡导者修改公司工作的组织结构和工人体验的质量

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