Mobility of Knowledge Work and Affordances of Digital Technologies

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  • Nelson, Sarah Beth
    • Affiliation: School of Information and Library Science
  • Jarrahi, Mohammad Hossein
    • Affiliation: School of Information and Library Science
  • Thomson, Leslie
    • Affiliation: School of Information and Library Science
Abstract
  • Information communication technologies (ICTs) enable mobile knowledge workers to conduct information practices.These practices ensure access, keep social cohesion, maintain acuity, uphold work rhythm, and enact work-life balance.Mobile knowledge workers mobilize their work practices across space, time, social situations, and contexts.Mobile knowledge workers employ personalized assemblages of ICTs to best achieve mobilization across different boundaries. The focus of this work arises from two needs within information science literature: (1) to understand more, from an empirically driven perspective, about the increasingly visible yet understudied mobile work population, and (2) to address more clearly, from a theoretical standpoint, the ways in which information and communication technologies (ICTs) mediate the work practices of these mobile workers. Drawing on the affordance perspective, this research goes beyond simplistic conceptualizations of technological effects to explore the roles of multiple ICTs in enabling mobile knowledge work. In this paper, the use of ICTs in mobilizing information practices and the ways in which ICTs generate affordances along different mobility dimensions (spatial, temporal, contextual, and social) are examined. The empirical base of this research is a field of study of 33 mobile knowledge workers (MKWs); broadly, it focuses on the ways they employ ICTs to accomplish work in dynamic and unpredictable work conditions.
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  • Article
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  • In Copyright
Journal title
  • International Journal of Information Management
Journal volume
  • 37
Journal issue
  • 2
Page start
  • 54
Page end
  • 62
Language
  • English
Version
  • Preprint

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