Abstract

As products of the network society, high-tech professionals find themselves nodes in many different, interrelated organizational and personal networks---nodes in the global network of production, nodes in the structures of their companies, nodes in the networks of their work colleagues, nodes in a greater network of professionals, nodes in personal networks. In examining the research done on the rise of the network society and the attached reorganization of work structures involved, this thesis aims to understand how the high-tech professionals interviewed cope with being disposable 'nodes' along these networks. Based on other studies concerning constructions of work roles and the culture of work in the informational era, this thesis also explores how the professionals interviewed perceived the values of high-tech industry, the uses and constructions of high-tech organizational work environments, and their constructions of work-selves and 'true'-selves. The research involved with this study was based on fourteen structured individual interviews, and participant observation in a high-tech organization and in informal group settings with high-tech professionals. Work in the network society can be seen as disaggregating---this thesis demonstrates that under such conditions, the high-tech professionals interviewed have shaped the determinants of their identities to fall outside the networks associated with work in an efficient manner of dealing with professional ambiguities