Page 19 - WHERE WE WORK - Schlegelmilch

Introduction
of digitally enabled work, which contributes to the broader call of bringing work back into studying organizations (Barley & Kunda, 2001). In this call, Barley and Kunda (2001) argue that in order to adequately understand how work is changing and how to conceptualize it, we need to return to embrace studying the “mundane activities that constitute work” (Barley & Kunda, 2001, p. 86). My conclusion is that the physical environment indeed has implications for how digital work is conducted. Specifically, I conclude that we need to move from the concept of workplace as a single, predetermined location towards a concept of a workplace consisting of multiple digital and physical locations as well as being defined by actions occurring in the location.
In each chapter of this dissertation, I zoom in on a specific research question that addresses a different aspect of contemporary workplaces. When the findings of these chapters are combined, they contribute to an advanced theoretical and practical understanding of contemporary workplaces. In the upcoming sections, I elaborate on our current understanding of the spatial character of digital work, discuss my research approach and briefly outline each chapter in this dissertation.
1.1 Digital workers
Remote work, virtual work, mobile knowledge work and distributed work (Colbert et al., 2016; Hinds & Kiesler, 2002; MacDuffie, 2007) describe digital ways of working. They are both prevalent and wide-ranging. And although there are differences between these ways of working, they share that they are all enabled by digital technologies and concern knowledge work. Thus, for this dissertation, I define digital work as knowledge work that is characterized by being conducted using digital technologies in order to remain connected to people and digital objects while often being mobile and remote. Mobility occurs within one place and between places while remoteness is the distance to other people or places.
Many scholars are interested in studying digital work, for example
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