Controlled connectivity: managing personal life at work

Many workers in Western developed economies experience difficulty in managing their work and personal lives. This is particularly the case for employees with children, especially working mothers. Claims have been made about the potential of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to assist workers with this problem. These communication devices and applications facilitate communication from almost anywhere and at any time, a technical capability that is perceived to undermine the spatial and temporal division that typically separates work from personal life. Employees now have greater flexibility regarding where and when they carry out their work and personal life activities. In this thesis, I explore the opportunity this creates for workers to attend to personal life matters during the workday. My findings reveal that ICTs can, to some extent, assist workers to organise home and family matters, maintain familial bonds and interact with their friends while they are at work. However, while these personal mediated communications are often beneficial, employees do not engage in such communications freely. I argue that the mediated connection employees have between their work and personal lives takes the form of controlled connectivity. Workers participate in a range of new social practices to limit different facets of this mediated connection. These actions reflect the attempts of workers to negotiate various factors that inhibit their free use of ICTs for personal purposes. Two main issues are relevant here: firstly, the influence of the workplace as the site in which the technologies are consumed; and, secondly, the inability of ICTs to completely overcome space and time, affecting what personal matters can be achieved via these technologies and the ease with which this is done. I present new empirical evidence of the personal use of ICTs during the workday for employees of a multinational telecommunications company. Drawing on the social shaping on technology and, in particular, domestication, I examine the workplace factors that influence the personal use of ICTs in this context. In doing so, I extend domestication's conceptual tool of the moral economy of the household to the new terrain of work. I then apply boundary theory to make a connection between this personal use of ICTs and the relationship employees have between their work and personal lives. I identify new forms of boundary work that workers undertake as they use, and manage the use of ICTs. I also utilise data on the content of workers' personal mediated communications to analyse the level of success they have in attending to personal life matters during the workday and the implications of these communications on the relationship between their work and personal lives.