Current trends in workplace research focus on understanding how the nature of work creates the conditions that shape our practice, organize our lives outside work, influence our constructions of identity and create sense of place (Cairns and Malloch, 2011). Definitionally, the term work has multiple meanings, referencing a place or an activity which produces something and may or not be remunerated. Various histories have been written about the contribution of work to the transition from agrarian to industrial to post-industrial societies. The concept of paid work has been analysed in relation to power, class, status and gender, divisions of labour and identity, and in the context of practice and performance associated with the operationalisation of work.

Work can therefore be seen as an ‘intentional engagement’ (Cairns and Malloch, 2011, 7) conducted in places which can more often than not be described as messy and complex. Nowadays, workplaces can be concept - ualised as fast and shifting places which are marked by rapid rates of transition and change as organizations compete in markets (commercial and non-commercial) that demand innovation to keep their competitive edge (Lloyd, 2017). The rapid insinuation of technology into all aspects of work complicates any analysis of work, working life or workplaces and has social and economic implications. Technology blurs the traditional boundaries between online and offline work and space, creating new spaces and affording opportunities and imaginings for different kinds of work and different types of working arrangements to emerge, while at the same time introducing threats to employment as organizations downsize and reorganize the nature and the flow of work. While tech nology creates opportunities for more effective organizational and personal workflow organization and management, it simultaneously creates the potential conditions for risk in relation to data security. In some aspects of work the integration of algorithmic processes as a replacement for human decision making introduces complex questions about transparency, equality and equity.

So how can the workplace be understood from an information science perspective? Where are the starting points for understanding what conditions enable and constrain work, working life and work practices? The thread that weaves through this description of messiness and complexity is that of information.