Selling Their Soul for Their Cunning: Employee Experiences of Smartphones They Invoked
Christopher Russell · Academy of Management Proceedings · 2016
This longitudinal ethnographic study explores how engineers who exercised agency in the procurement of smartphones subsequently experienced them in use. Prior research suggests that voluntary users would be more inclined to experience, and report, the benefits as opposed to the costs of their use. This study finds that although employees exercised agency in the adoption of the smartphone, over time the smartphone itself exercised agency over the employee. What initially seemed like a bargain in the sense of ‘a steal’ in the words of one, turned out to be ‘a bargain with the Devil’ in the words of another. Such a bargain, like that made by Doctor Faustus when he invoked Satan, gave initial gratification but ultimately dissatisfaction, inverting the Protestant Ethic where earthly effort would be ultimately recompensed with redemption. In initiating the adoption of smartphones these engineers could be said to have sold their soul for their cunning.