Page 163 - WHERE WE WORK - Schlegelmilch

General discussion
2007; Wilson et al., 2008), our understanding of what role the physical environment plays for individuals and their organizations remains incomplete. I argued earlier that a wealth of literature in the field of organization research has addressed the importance of the physical environment in organization and its implications workers (Ashkanasy et al., 2014; Davis et al., 2011; Davis, 1984; Elsbach, 2003; Weinfurtner & Seidl, 2019), yet this needs to be brought to the digital age. I extend the literature on digital work by showing that a spatiality perspective can help us to better understand digital work and how physical places can hinder or support individuals and organizations. Throughout this dissertation, I demonstrate the value of a spatiality lens in studies of digital work phenomena, such as digital nomads or mobile knowledge workers.
In chapter 2, my findings showed that the workers need to interact with the material environment in order to enable work and stay productive, yet work is often assumed to be organized location-independent through digital technology in hyperspatial settings. I argue that scholars – aiming to understand how work is changing as digital technologies enable professionals more to work independent of pre-defined locations (Colbert et al., 2016) – need to emphasize the role of place in digital work and examine the place-making activities. In chapter 3, I further showed how the spatial changes to the workplace configuration clearly impacted how digital workers organized for work to maintain their relationships. I concur with Liegl (2014) who found that the "guiding question ... seems to be, “Where can I work best? ... what seems to be a rhythmic interaction of workers with their work environment, where this environment might enable work ... for a certain period of time, and then it is time to move on.” (p. 178). This suggests that when studying knowledge workers without a designated place, we need not only take into account the digital space where digital workers dwell but also their physical place.
In sum, while much of the literature on the topic of digital work has treated the physical place rather implicitly but mainly through a focus on distance (Bailey & Kurland, 2002; Garrett & Danziger, 2007; MacDuffie, 2007; Rockmann & Pratt, 2015), I showed in my empirical chapters that it is
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