Page 16 - WHERE WE WORK - Schlegelmilch

Introduction
Where work can be conducted has changed considerably over the years. Freelancers and employees alike have left the Taylorist cubicle farms (Saval, 2016) to work ‘anywhere, anytime’ (Chayka, 2018). Anywhere can refer to a variety of locations beyond the office, such as cafés, at the airport, or at home (Boell et al., 2016; Gandini, 2015). At the same time, workers have also become more mobile between locations (e.g., Aguinis & Lawal, 2013; Ashford et al., 2007; Colbert et al., 2016) as digital technology enables them to work irrespective of a specific geographic location (Barley et al., 2017; Kiesler & Cummings, 2002; Porter & van den Hooff, 2020). Yet, each of the locations is different and workers need to adjust how they work, adapt their environment and develop new skills to ensure their productivity and continuity of work.
Despite great strides in studying digital work (e.g., Hinds & Kiesler, 2002; MacDuffie, 2007; Raghuram et al., 2019; Rockmann & Pratt, 2015; Wilson et al., 2008), it is still unclear what role the physical environment plays for digital work when workers are connected virtually all the time; whether all physical environments support digital work; and what the benefits of sharing a physical place are for innovative behaviors. Understanding the role of the physical place for digital knowledge work is essential for determining how we can setup contemporary work and workplaces to best facilitate digital knowledge workers. This is why we need to explore the physical settings of digitally enabled work, thereby contributing to the broader conversation of understanding work in the
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