Mobile ICT and the forming of organizational networks
The project is funded by The Knowledge Foundation and proceeds from February 2009 until January 2012.
Camilla Thunborg (PhD, project leader), Ragnhild Mogren (PhD student) and Tom Hagström (professor emeritus) from Stockholm University, Department of education work with the project .
This project explores the integration of mobile information and communication technology (mobile ICT) in the forming of organizational networks.
The network society is organized around flows and characterized by looser boundaries and new timing and spacing practices. This tendency has, within research on working and organizational life, been discussed in terms of boundaryless work. In boundaryless work settings, tasks and boundaries are under continual negotiation. According to previous research, the diffusion of mobile ICT contributes substantially to the “boundarylessness”. The aim of this project is to further develop knowledge about the relation between how actors use mobile ICT in everyday life and how organizational networks are formed.
The project is designed as a longitudinal two case study. Two small organizations, a small IT-company and a rockband, are studied as regards how the daily lives of the actors are organized in time and space and how mobile ICT is integrated in this organizing. Empirical data consists of self observations in form of diaries and organizational as well as biographical narratives.
Social theories, theories on organizing and time-geography are used as a theoretical framework.
Tentative results: three social practices of mobile ICT use in the borderland between work and non-work have been identified: ”boundaryless practice”, ”border practice” and ”second work domain practice”. Another conclusion drawn is that, used in the organizing of a network organization, mobile ICT can be understood as ”seamless” embedded in the daily flow of activities within a network, as boundary objects between networks and as a “battering ram” in the struggles between “boundaryless” logics related to the network society and more traditional forms of workplace norms.
The project has an interactive approach and is carried out in collaboration with the two participating organizations (the IT-company and the rockband) and TeliaSonera.
Publications:
Mogren, R. & Thunborg, C. (2010). Boundaryless work and the role of mobile ICT. I: V. C.X. Wang (Ed.). Encyclopedia of Information Communication Technologies and Adult Education Integration. Hershey, PA: IGI Global.
Contact: Camilla Thunborg, project leader: camilla.thunborg@edu.su.se
