When Blue Meets Digital: Exploring the Digital Journey of District Heating Workers

In this paper, we broaden the discussion on work digitalization beyond the confines of the traditional office setting and knowledge work at the center of recent IS and organizational research. As perversive digitalization and computing are increasingly present in what are typically referred to as ‘blue-collar’ industries such as agriculture, construction, or maintenance, understanding the sociomaterial particularities of work in these settings becomes crucial for integral theories of digital work and organizing. Referencing findings from an ethnographic study on the digital journey of district heating maintenance workers in Denmark, we bring to the fore the importance of bodies, materiality and ‘messy’ sites in how digital mediation impacts the embodied performance of skilled work. We discuss how the digitalization of maintenance practices gives rise to a hybrid class of skilled workers by expanding occupational knowledge and boundaries and creating new work specializations, thus blurring the boundaries between white-collar and blue-collar work.