This paper explores the changing nature of work at a telecommunications enterprise, where distributed work has become the new “normal” due to advances in ICTs. To make sense of this distributed nature of work, we build on the concept of liminality, which refers to an “in-betweenness”, where times and tasks of work and leisure, spaces and technologies of the office and home tend to blend. However, work and leisure do not just blend on their own, people continuously work on both mixing and separating them. Accordingly, our study explores the different types of liminality work that people do to accomplish their daily practices. Our findings demonstrate four types of liminality work – spatial, temporal, structural and technical – and two aims of each type of work – blending and delimiting. Our contribution lies in outlining three sets of propositions that can guide future research on technology-mediated changes to the nature of work.
['Mari-Klara Stein', 'Tina Blegind Jensen', 'Riitta Hekkala']
Comfortably 'Betwixt and Between'? Delimiting and Blending Space, Time, Tasks and Technology at Work