‘Becoming Mainstream’: The Professionalisation and Corporatisation of Digital Nomadism

"Digital nomadism, a mobile lifestyle that encompasses a wide array of professional endeavours, ranging from corporate remote workers to digital entrepreneurs, has benefitted from a steadily growing appeal. Despite this, there is a dearth of research exploring the premises and development of digital nomadism. This paper is concerned with the image of digital nomadism, its underlying structure and practices, and its relation to the current world of work. In order to explore these aspects and problematise digital nomadism, the paper traces the development of digital nomadism and takes inspiration from the Deleuzo‐Guattarian image of the nomad. Adopting a qualitative approach to content analysis, this paper argues that digital nomadism is becoming increasingly institutionalised and professionalised, and, as such, is distant from the emancipatory dimension underlying its discourse and many of its cultural representations. Overall, digital nomadism appears as an extension of capitalist logics, rather than an alternative to them."

[1]  Ada I. Engebrigtsen.  Key figure of mobility: the nomad , 2017 .

[2]  Clay Spinuzzi,et al.  Working Alone Together , 2012 .

[3]  E. Vaara,et al.  Legitimacy Struggles and Political Corporate Social Responsibility in International Settings: A Comparative Discursive Analysis of a Contested Investment in Latin America , 2015 .

[4]  Vili Lehdonvirta,et al.  Flexibility in the Gig Economy: Managing Time on Three Online Piecework Platforms , 2018 .

[5]  S. Hibbert,et al.  The Never-Ending Story: Discursive Legitimation in Social Media Dialogue , 2019 .

[6]  Michael A. Gold,et al.  ‘Work Always Wins’: Client Colonisation, Time Management and the Anxieties of Connected Freelancers , 2013 .

[7]  S. Ekman.  Win-win imageries in a soap bubble world: Personhood and norms in extreme work , 2015 .

[8]  Emilie Vayre,et al.  A Systemic Approach to Interpersonal Relationships and Activities Among French Teleworkers , 2014 .

[9]  Hubert Eichmann,et al.  Triangular Love–Hate: Management and Control in Creative Crowdworking , 2017 .

[10]  Hans J. Pongratz,et al.  Of Crowds and Talents: Discursive Constructions of Global Online Labour , 2018 .

[11]  Peter Cappelli,et al.  Classifying Work in the New Economy , 2013 .

[12]  Jean Wilson,et al.  Perceived Proximity in Virtual Work: Explaining the Paradox of Far-but-Close , 2008 .

[13]  Alison Hirst,et al.  Settlers, vagrants and mutual indifference: unintended consequences of hot‐desking , 2011 .

[14]  Mohammad Hossein Jarrahi,et al.  The Gig Economy and Information Infrastructure , 2017, Proc. ACM Hum. Comput. Interact..

[15]  Jaana Näsänen.  Two versions of nomadic employees: Opposing ways to employ the same discourse in talking about change , 2017 .

[16]  Nathalie Mitev,et al.  Mapping Themes in the Study of New Work Practices , 2019, New Technology, Work and Employment.

[17]  S. Livesey.  Global Warming Wars: Rhetorical and Discourse Analytic Approaches to Exxonmobil's Corporate Public Discourse , 2002 .

[18]  S. Kingma,et al.  New ways of working (NWW): work space and cultural change in virtualizing organizations , 2019 .

[19]  Lynn Holdsworth,et al.  The Psychological Impact of Teleworking: Stress, Emotions and Health. , 2003 .

[20]  L. Haddon,et al.  The Character of Telework and the Characteristics of Teleworkers , 2005 .

[21]  Petra M. Bosch-Sijtsema,et al.  Multi-Locational Knowledge Workers in the Office: Navigation, Disturbances and Effectiveness , 2010 .

[22]  Claire Hewson.  Ethics Issues in Digital Methods Research , 2016 .

[23]  A. Jose,et al.  Environmental Reporting of Global Corporations: A Content Analysis based on Website Disclosures , 2007 .

[24]  Jeremy Aroles,et al.  Nothing happened, something happened: Silence in a makerspace , 2018, Management Learning.

[25]  Stephanie Taylor.  A New Mystique? Working for Yourself in the Neoliberal Economy , 2015 .

[26]  Eric M. Eisenberg,et al.  Employee sensemaking in the transition to nomadic work , 2006 .

[27]  Mohammad Hossein Jarrahi,et al.  Digital Nomads Beyond the Buzzword: Defining Digital Nomadic Work and Use of Digital Technologies , 2018, iConference.

[28]  Donald Hislop,et al.  To Infinity and Beyond?: Workspace and the Multi-Location Worker , 2009 .

[29]  Ina Reichenberger,et al.  Digital nomads – a quest for holistic freedom in work and leisure , 2018 .

[30]  Christian Beck.  Web of resistance: Deleuzian digital space and hacktivism , 2016 .

[31]  Michael Brocklehurst,et al.  Power, Identity and New Technology Homework: Implications for `New Forms' of Organizing , 2001 .

[32]  Amy Wrzesniewski,et al.  Agony and Ecstasy in the Gig Economy: Cultivating Holding Environments for Precarious and Personalized Work Identities , 2019 .

[33]  B. Bergvall-Kåreborn,et al.  Amazon Mechanical Turk and the Commodification of Labour , 2014 .

[34]  Sebastian K. Boell,et al.  Telework Paradoxes and Practices: The Importance of the Nature of Work , 2016 .

[35]  Jeremy Aroles,et al.  Smoothing, striating and territorializing: The assembling of ‘science in the making’ , 2019, Ethnography.

[36]  D. Cecez-Kecmanovic,et al.  Digital Work and High-Tech Wanderers: Three Theoretical Framings and a Research Agenda for Digital Nomadism , 2018, ACIS.

[37]  Paul J. Taylor,et al.  The experience of work‐related stress across occupations , 2005 .

[38]  Jon C. Messenger,et al.  Three Generations of Telework: New ICTs and the (R)evolution from Home Office to Virtual Office , 2016 .

[39]  Andrea Whittle,et al.  ‘I Could Be Dead for Two Weeks and My Boss Would Never Know’: Telework and the Politics of Representation , 2009 .

[40]  John Noyes.  Nomadism, nomadology, postcolonialism: By way of introduction , 2004 .

[41]  Lei-da Chen,et al.  Nomadic Culture: Cultural Support for Working Anytime, Anywhere , 2005, Inf. Syst. Manag..

[42]  S. Barley,et al.  Bringing Work Back In , 2001 .

[43]  Susan Halford,et al.  Hybrid Workspace: Re-Spatialisations of Work, Organisation and Management , 2005 .

[44]  Annika Müller,et al.  The digital nomad: Buzzword or research category? , 2016 .

[45]  Julie Wuthnow.  Deleuze in the postcolonial , 2002 .

[46]  T. Golden.  Applying technology to work: toward a better understanding of telework , 2009 .

[47]  Y. Baruch.  Teleworking: benefits and pitfalls as perceived by professionals and managers , 2000 .

[48]  Shiva Sayah,et al.  Managing Work–Life Boundaries with Information and Communication Technologies: The Case of Independent Contractors , 2013 .

[49]  Harry Matlay,et al.  Virtual Teams and the Rise of e-Entrepreneurship in Europe , 2005 .

[50]  Beverly Y Thompson,et al.  The Digital Nomad Lifestyle: (Remote) Work/Leisure Balance, Privilege, and Constructed Community , 2018, International Journal of the Sociology of Leisure.