Principal speaker
Dr Maree Boyle
Abstract: The working lives of creative people have been under some scrutiny in recent years, particularly in relation to an interest in the rise of the creative class and how this phenomenon has affected both local and global economies. We now refer readily to creative economies, creative cities and creative organisations, signalling a growing recognition of the role creativity plays in economic life and society. While the focus on the societal benefits of increased creativity is admirable, there exists a gap in our understanding of how the lives of creative workers emerge, grow and often flounder. This seminar discusses the findings of a recent life history study on creative workers’ lives, where study participants have engaged or currently engage in creative work that involves the production of new creative products.
The seminar will discuss the key themes that emerged – creative proficiency, non-traditional career trajectories, creative networks and temporal/ spatial management within the context of current conventional academic and industry understandings of work/ non-work integration and conflict theories and practices and concepts about precarity and work. The findings indicate that current theoretical and conceptual frameworks may not provide enough explanatory power regarding a group of workers whose creative endeavor does not neatly fit into pre-existing notions of work, career and work/non-work conflict. In order to understand the benefits and the challenges of living creative lives, this study aims to provide a deeper insight into how creative workers “live” their lives through analysis of work-life challenges, and how communities and institutions will best collaborate with people to address these challenges.
Speaker: Dr Maree Boyle is a Senior Lecturer at the Griffith Business School’s Department of Employment Relations and Human Resources, Griffith University, with an extensive industry background in the non-profit sector. She is also consulting methodologist to the Griffith Social and Behavioural Research College, and a member of the Research Centre for Work, Orgnisation and Wellbeing.
Dr Boyle’s current research interests include the nature, value and practice of work within a disciplinary context of the sociology and anthropology of work, including emotion work and labour, extreme work/ normal work and the relationship between work and non-work. Her qualitative methodological expertise includes organisational ethnography, retrospective/ autobiographical approaches and reflexive/ analytical techniques.
She has published widely in journals such as Gender and Society, Organization, The European Journal of Marketing and Journal of Business Research, and at key premier international conferences such as the Academy of Management Annual Meeting and European Group for Organization Studies.
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RSVP on or before Thursday 14 November 2013 , by email wow@griffith.edu.au , or by phone 3735 3714