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General discussion
transparency more closely, for example what the relationship between transparency and privacy and, more practically, how workers and organizations can achieve a balance. Particularly, privacy represents the perspective of the one being observed. In contrast, workplace transparency represents the perspective of the one observing. Privacy and transparency are intimately connected and are “commonly experienced as a compromise or even violation of the other” (Bernstein, 2017, p. 220).
5.3 Limitations and related future research
While this dissertation addresses many topics related to the spatial aspect of digital work, this dissertation is also subject to overarching limitations, as I outline hereafter.
Understanding the type of work and employment situation.
While my data show that workers are able to cope with the challenges in a variety of ways, I did not take into account how they do so within one particular profession. It could be that different professions have somewhat different ways of dealing with their physical environment. In my dissertation, the most variety of professions was present in the study of digital nomads in the hyperspatial setting. Therefore, I suggest future research to explore the affordances of nomadic work further. For example, one idea could be to differentiate between professions that require predominantly collaboration (e.g., a consultant) from those that require focused work (e.g., an academic). Since the actor’s intentions are an important aspect of affordances (Fayard & Weeks, 2006; Gibson, 1979), only then will we be able to understand how different type of work contributes to how workers ‘see’ the affordances in the environment.
Furthermore, the employment situation of workers has implications for how someone conducts work. While self-employed workers tend to have discretion over the when and how of work, employees usually need to adapt to how work is conducted in their organization. Such a shared way of working within an organization is usually transferred early on in an employee’s tenure through a process called newcomer socialization, which
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