Abstract
This chapter presents a general reflection about how we can learn to navigate work and private life in new ways in the twenty-first century. Historically, the ideal worker was a man with a stay-at-home wife, and the ideal worker devoted long hours to their jobs. Our clinging to the ideal worker norms of industrial society when we talk about “going to work” is therefore paradoxical, as more and more work is now an activity that takes place all the time for many people. The Life Navigation concept punctures the idea that work is something that only can take place at the office during regular business hours. The employees are set free from their own and colleagues’ confining expectations, and are given the opportunity to design their own schedule and work location. The time battle in the industrial society was about work time and free time. The new time battle requires that we find new ways to break with the old concept of “9 to 5” work. The new time battle is about working in sync with your inner, biological clock. It’s a call for a new ideal worker: a super navigator.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Asplund, J. (1985). Tid, rum, individ och kollektiv. Stockholm: Liber Förlag.
Castells, M. (2003). Netværkssamfundet og dets opståen. Copenhagen: Hans Reitzels Forlag.
Davies, A. R., & Frink, B. D. (2014). The origins of the ideal worker: The separation of work and home in the United States from the market revolution to 1950. Work and Occupations, 41(1), 18–39.
Deloitte. (2014) Global human capital trends – Engaging the 21st century workforce.
Dumas, T. L., & Sanchez-Burks, J. (2015). The professional, the personal, and the ideal worker: Pressures and objectives shaping the boundary between life domains. The Academy of Management Annals, 9(1), 803–843. https://doi.org/10.1080/19416520.2015.1028810.
Hall, E. T. (1983). The dance of life. The other dimension of time. New York: Anchor Books a Division of Random House, Inc.
Honoré, C. (2004). In praise of slowness. New York, NY: Harperone.
ILO. (2016). Workplace stress: A collective challenge. Geneva: International Labour Organization.
Ismail, S., Malone, M. S., & Van Geest, Y. (2014). Exponential organizations. New York, NY: Diversion Books.
Kring, C. (2017). Life navigation – Tools to improve your work-life balance. Copenhagen: Super Navigators.
Ocean Tomo. (2017). http://www.oceantomo.com/intangible-asset-market-value-study/
Spira, J. B., & Feintuch, J. B. (2005). The cost of not paying attention: How interruptions impact knowledge worker productivity. New York, NY: Basex.
Taylor, F. W. (1911). The principles of scientific management. Published in Norton Library 1967 by arrangement with Harper & Row, Publishers, Incorporated, by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, NY. ISBN 0-393-00398-1.
Yam, K. C., et al. (2014). Morning employees are perceived as better employees: Employees’ start times influence supervisor performance ratings. Journal of Applied Psychology, 99(6), 1288–1299.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Kring, C. (2020). The New Ideal Worker Is a Super Navigator. In: las Heras Maestro, M., Chinchilla Albiol, N., Grau Grau, M. (eds) The New Ideal Worker. Contributions to Management Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-12477-9_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-12477-9_8
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-12476-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-12477-9
eBook Packages: Business and ManagementBusiness and Management (R0)