Mobility and Technology in the Workplace

Donald Hislop

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN: 9781138864078
• eBook ISBN: 9781134067794
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

The contemporary period has witnessed the rapid evolution in a wide range of mobile technology. This book charts the profound implications these technological changes have for workers and business organizations. From an organizational point of view they have the potential to transform the nature of organizations, through allowing workers to be incr

1
Introduction

Donald Hislop

Context

Two relatively recent ongoing, and arguably significant ways in which work has been changing, both of which began to become visible and significant trends from the mid-1990s onwards, are first, the extent to which work is carried out in locations beyond the home and the workplace, and the increasing levels of spatial mobility required of workers, and second, the rapid evolution in a wide range of mobile information and communication technologies and their increasingly widespread use by workers. For example, mobile communication technologies such as mobile phones have developed enormously, and the start of the twenty-first century witnessed the development of mobile email devices such as BlackBerries. Personal and mobile computer technologies have also developed enormously, with laptops becoming increasingly more powerful, more portable, and more able to connect to the internet from diverse locations (through wifi). The central focus of the chapters in this edited collection is on the many and diverse ways in which these two trends have combined to change work practices and the character of the places in which work is carried out.

Such a focus connects with the burgeoning sociological literature on and interest in mobility, or mobilities, which builds from the assumption that the growing mobility of people, goods, money, ideas, etc. represents one of the defining characteristics of capitalism in the early twenty-first century (Hardill and Green 2003; Kaufmann 2002; Kellerman 2006; Larsen et al. 2006; Sheller and Urry 2006; Urry 2000). The contributions here add to this body of work through providing insights into mobility and mobile technology use in the domain of work, a relatively neglected focus of interest in the mobilities literature.

Often, with a hint of technological determinism, developments in mobile information and communication technologies (hereafter m-ICTs) have been argued to be instrumental in increasing the spatial mobility of work (Cooper et al. 2002). However, the functionality of m-ICTs is such that they simultaneously have potentially contradictory consequences for where, when and how (collaborative) work is organized. Mobile technologies such as mobile phones, Black-Berries and wifi-enabled laptops do have the potential to ‘free’ work/ers from the confines of fixed locations, enabling workers to be more mobile than previously, allowing work to be conducted from a greater range of locations than previously possible. Simultaneously however, m-ICTs also have the potential to reduce the need for workers to be spatially mobile, as the increasingly powerful communication and information-sharing potential of these technologies facilitates remote collaboration and arguably thus could actually reduce the need for business people to travel for face-to-face meetings (Virilio 1999). Such paradoxical, simultaneously contradictory potential implications of mobile technology use reflects what Arnold (2003) suggests is the inherently Janus-faced nature of mobile technologies/phones.¹

Broadly, the book takes a social shaping/constructivist perspective on technology, highlighting the two-way relationship between the technical and the social through being sensitive to both the ways in which human choices in technology use shape the characteristics of technologies which facilitate mobile working and also how the use of such technologies impacts on the character of work locations, activities and experiences (Wajcman 2006). Thus the way in which m-ICTs impact on work are regarded as being as much due to negotiations between (and the choices of) social actors as being the result of the determining effect of the technologies’ inherent characteristics. Thus, while the contributions in this chapter look at how both trends have impacted on work, they don’t assume that it is the use of m-ICTs which is the prime determinant driving the spatial (re)organization of work.

Accompanying the dramatic and rapid developments in m-ICTs, as occurs with much technological change, has been a positive and optimistic rhetoric, or ‘cyberbole’ (Woolgar 2002), which suggests that these changes are both significant, and largely positive. A key component of the rhetoric surrounding the development and use of mobile communication technologies is the ‘anytime, anyplace’ idea (Cooper et al. 2002; Perry et al. 2001). This is articulated clearly and succinctly by Katz and Aakhus (2002, p. 303),

The ambitious dream of a generation of telecommunications engineers is becoming realized: we will be able to have at least potential contact with most anyone at any time or place…. We can have perpetual contact, enjoying instant or asynchronous communications from around the world or the heavens above…. These are not dreams but achievable today.

The contributions in this book take a deliberately more critical, sceptical and questioning stance to such claims, examining the positive and negative consequences these changes have for workers.

Statistics

Before proceeding any further, it is helpful to empirically flesh out the claims regarding changing spatial mobility patterns and m-ICT use made above. Statistics from a range of countries illustrate the extent to which they are changing, and how an increasingly significant proportion of workers regularly need to be spatially mobile. First, Felstead et al. (2005), using longitudinal data taken from the UK government’s Labour Force Survey showed how, between 1981 and 2002, the percentage of UK workers working ‘mainly in different places using their home as a base’, increased from 3.8 to 7.1 per cent of the UK’s workforce, an increase of over 231 per cent in two decades. Second, Gareis et al. (2006, Table 3.3) found that in the 15 EU countries surveyed,² on average 15 per cent of these country’s workforces spent at least ten hours per week working away from their home or office premises (a category of work they define as highly intensive mobile work).³ Finally, Gustafson’s (2006) study of Swedish workers, which is based on data collected between 1995 and 2001, found that 11 per cent of the workers studied had spent at least two nights out of the previous two months away from home on work-related business.

A number of studies also substantiate the claim that recent times have witnessed a significant increase in the work-related use of m-ICTs. In terms of mobile phone use, a study in the UK conducted by the London School of Economics and the Carphone Warehouse found that 46 per cent of those surveyed made use of mobile phones in their work with 15 per cent reporting that their work, would be virtually impossible without a mobile phone (LSE/Carphone Warehouse 2006). Haddon and Brynin’s (2005) study of telework across a range of European countries including the UK, Italy, Germany, Norway, Israel and Bulgaria, found that the category of workers they defined as ‘mobile users’ (‘people who say their mobile phone is important for their work but are not internet or PC home users’), accounted for on average 20 per cent of respondents. Without providing much specific empirical detail, Middleton and Cukier (2006) suggest that the work-related use of BlackBerry mobile email devices in Canada and the USA grew rapidly during the early years of the twenty-first century with RIM, the manufacturer of BlackBerries boasting over four million subscribers in 2005.

Finally, Gareis et al.’s (2006) research shows that, in only three years, between 1999 and 2002, mobile eWork (work which involves both spatial mobility and the use of an online computer connection when mobile) across the 15 EU countries that they studied increased from accounting for 1.5 to 4 per cent of employment. The relatively limited numbers reported in this category of work relates to the rather narrow and specific way this category of work is defined, which excludes workers who either use mobile phones, or laptops without online connections. Arguably, if eWork was defined in broader terms, the number of workers so categorized may be significantly higher.

Overall, therefore, available evidence indicates that, not only do an increasingly significant proportion of workers need to be spatially mobile to carry out their work, but that the extent to which m-ICTs are used by workers is also increasing significantly.

While there is a significant overlap and interrelationship between the need for workers to be spatially mobile, and their use of m-ICTs, it is important to acknowledge that the two are not inseparable. Not only is it possible for people to use m-ICTs without their work demanding great spatial mobility (as was the case with the office and home based workers studied by Towers et al. 2006), work can also involve significant levels of spatial mobility without inevitably requiring the use of m-ICTs (as is the case with postal delivery staff). However, the contributions in this book typically focus on workers who need both to be spatially mobile, and to make regular use of mobile computer and communication technologies.⁴

Definitions and terminology

A plethora of labels exists to categorize the type of work examined here. Some of the most common labels for such forms of work are nomadic or multi-location working, mobile eWork (Gareis et al. 2006), mobile virtual work (Andriessen and Vartianinen 2006), and mobile telework (Brodt and Verburg 2007; Daniels et al. 2001; Hislop and Axtell 2007). As the contributors to this book come from a wide range of countries and academic disciplines, no attempt is made to develop, or impose a unitary definition, with a catholic approach to terminology being preferred. If the academic telework literature, which is significantly more mature than the literature on mobile working, is taken as a guide, such definitional pluralism may continue and attempts to develop a wide consensus on an agreed lexicon of key terms may prove futile (Sullivan 2003; Haddon and Brynin 2005). What is arguably more important than the particular labels people employ is that everyone clearly articulates the definitions of the terms they use, which allows effective comparisons to be made. The preference in this introduction is for the term mobile telework. However, this is not intended to privilege this term over any of the others that can be used to categorize this form of work.

While this introduction has made clear that the focus in the book is on workers who are both spatially mobile, and employ m-ICTs in their work, both the amount and type of spatial mobility, as well as the types of technology used and the extent to which they are used has been deliberately left vague and ambiguous, through use of terms such as ‘regular’ and ‘significant’. While the use of such terms can be criticized for a lack of precision, the advantage of adopting such deliberately open terminology is that it avoids the risk of imposing a somewhat arbitrary boundary on terms (such as: to be classified as a mobile worker, someone must spend at least two days per week working away from any home or office base), which can lead t...

Table of contents

• Routledge studies in innovation, organization and technology
• Contents
• Figures
• Tables
• Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• Part I Work space/place
• Part II Work-related travel
• Part III Mobile work practices
• Part IV Home–work dynamics
• Part V Public policy
• Index