Behavioral Changes at the Mobile Workplace: A Symbolic Interactionistic Approach

Abstract

The mobile workplace: How does it influence on behaviour? Abstract/Introduction During the last 10 years the mobile communication media have diffused into almost every corner of society. The professional users have in this period been eager to take advantage of the new technology to develop productivity or get other strategic advances. In the initial phase of this development, the mobile media functioned as a supplement to the traditional communication equipment, giving the user a new option for receiving and giving calls or messages outside the office or the main workplace. The mobile phone was an extra phone mostly used in the car or in holidays. Today, we are entering a new phase in the utilization of mobile communication media among professional business users. Increasingly, modern organisations are exploiting the mobile media and their infrastructure in a more strategic manner, developing work styles and office designs that are evolving around the possibilities of the new technology. The introduction of the mobile workplace is today the most distinct evidence of this change. In these new workplaces the mobile telephone– like Charles Handy forecast 10 years ago - has largely outmoded the fixed telephone. For many office workers today their only communication tools are a mobile telephone, a laptop and an e-mail address. The object of this paper is to explore how this new mode of working contributes to changes in behaviour in work style among office workers. In particular, I will focus on how changes in the use of individual territories might have consequences for how the daily work is conducted. Empirically, the study is based on a series of qualitative interviews and direct observations of managers and employees in an insurance company and in a telecom company. Thus, the scope of this article is limited to discussing changes at the “office” including typical white–collar, knowledge workers. A general theoretical framework based on the work of Sociologist Erving Goffman will be suggested as a lens to understanding these changes. I will 2) start with a closer look at how the mobile telephone has penetrated work life during the last decade. I will describe how a new kind of “territorial setting” has been introduced to knowledge workers, to a large degree based on mobile communication tools. I will then 3) go on to describe, in a general way, the concepts of territories and roles at the workplace, and how new communication media challenge these. I will argue that the new office architecture and communication technology might be studied as a general “information environment”. I will then 4) discuss how changes in the use of territories at the workplace can trigger new behaviour patterns, presenting selected observations of knowledge workers in two companies. In the final section 5) I will discuss how the mobile workplace might challenge general motives associated with the mobile workplace, such as efficiency, information-sharing and knowledge development.