ABSTRACT
In the contemporary world, organizations and work are being fragmented. People change jobs more often, and their working lives are made up of ‘chunks of labour’ (Sennett 1998). This has implications not only for the way they work and the way they learn skills but also for lives outside work. There is a great deal of variation between sectors in the extent to which work and organizations are fragmented. Many areas have changed little over the last few decades, whereas others outsource peripheral tasks such as cleaning, security, or supplement existing workforces with temporary staff. However, there are some, and UK television production is one of these, in which the changes have been dramatic. Here the process of fragmentation was initiated in the 1980s, and the sector changed from one dominated by large vertically integrated organizations, such as the BBC and ITV, to one composed of a large number of small independent production companies and a small number of large ones working on commissions from the broadcasters.
