[Air-l] Re: road warriors

[Bunz, Ulla K]

In organizational communication, there is a body of research on teleworking
(defined as being not physically in the office at least three days a week
while being connected to the office through electronic means). It has, of
course, examined issues such as isolation (no more water cooler
conversations) and the decrease of organizational identification, issues of
career pathing, technological dependence, and the all important (and over
the long term disintegrating) relationship between supervisor and
subordinate. There's also been some research on space - both physical and
virtual - in the organization. 
As Barry pointed out, teleworking or being a road warrior is not a new
phenomenon. Instead of selling brooms, now our virtual busy-bees deal with
digitized work. I do think it might be interesting to study this not from an
organizational/management/work perspective, but from a technological
perspective. I bet many technological developments and social adjustments
have been driven by the need to work from the road.
As to community forming among these road warriors - this reminds me of a
message I posted last October when I wondered about relationship forming and
maintenance among long term backbackers. 
I think the issue Barry brought up is extremely multi-facetted. Maybe worthy
of a workshop at AoIR in Toronto?
ulla
*************************
Ulla Bunz
University of Kansas
Starting summer 2002:
Rutgers University
bunz at scils.rutgers.edu
*************************