The move from office-based to remote work can have different and even opposite effects on people's work practices and work outcomes, on their relationships with peers and on their work-life balance. Our research looks at an under-studied process of appropriation in remote work: the process whereby people appropriate time-space to socially construct their workplace. To this end we conducted a case study in the Italian subsidiary of a multi-national company selling pneumatic solutions. To cut costs, the company introduced a remote work program for all the salesforce and removed all local offices. Only the headquarter remained as a physical space. Our main source of primary data was a set of 21 semi-structured in-depth interviews to salesmen in their transitioning process from office-based to home-based mobile working and to their supervisor. In contrast to most research on the social construction of workplace, the study took an ethic, rather than an emic approach to the spaces where people work. This approach allowed a plurality of meanings attached by salespeople to their workplace to emerge through the analysis. Introducing the social construction of the workplace makes two sequential contributions to research. First, it contributes to research on remote work by establishing a link between research on the structural conditions shaping remote work, such as the remote work arrangement and task, with the meaning that people attribute to their workplace and which will inform how they experience and enact the transition to remote work. Second, it shows how to address a prevalent challenge in research on IT and organizations: that is integrating the role of meanings with the role of practices in the explanation of the link between people's use of IT and the effects of IT in organizations.
The meaning of the workplace and the practice of remote work
Luisa Errichiello;Tommasina Pianese
2020
Abstract
The move from office-based to remote work can have different and even opposite effects on people's work practices and work outcomes, on their relationships with peers and on their work-life balance. Our research looks at an under-studied process of appropriation in remote work: the process whereby people appropriate time-space to socially construct their workplace. To this end we conducted a case study in the Italian subsidiary of a multi-national company selling pneumatic solutions. To cut costs, the company introduced a remote work program for all the salesforce and removed all local offices. Only the headquarter remained as a physical space. Our main source of primary data was a set of 21 semi-structured in-depth interviews to salesmen in their transitioning process from office-based to home-based mobile working and to their supervisor. In contrast to most research on the social construction of workplace, the study took an ethic, rather than an emic approach to the spaces where people work. This approach allowed a plurality of meanings attached by salespeople to their workplace to emerge through the analysis. Introducing the social construction of the workplace makes two sequential contributions to research. First, it contributes to research on remote work by establishing a link between research on the structural conditions shaping remote work, such as the remote work arrangement and task, with the meaning that people attribute to their workplace and which will inform how they experience and enact the transition to remote work. Second, it shows how to address a prevalent challenge in research on IT and organizations: that is integrating the role of meanings with the role of practices in the explanation of the link between people's use of IT and the effects of IT in organizations.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
