Telework - Telenor

10
The silent transformation of the workplace
Distribution of Norwegian teleworkers 1995 – 1998
TOM ERIK JULSRUD
1 The tracing of a social
innovation
Telework is often presented as a consequence
of rapid diffusion of new communication
technologies at the workplace, in
the homes, or – more recently – due to
the fast development of the Internet. It is
true that technological progress is at the
core of the concept, and also provides an
important driving force behind the development
of homework and other types of
telework. As argued in a typical commercial
by an ISDN supplier: “With an ISDN
connection you don’t have to go to the
office every time you need to work”. 1)
However, several researchers have during
the last 30 years or so, warned us
against a strong belief in technology as a
deterministic force in social change (see
Williams, 1974; Winner, 1985; Feenberg,
1991; Mackay, 1995). The broad field
labeled “social shaping of technology”
stresses on the contrary that social forces
are crucial in the development of a new
technology and how it is adopted by the
users. This last point is highly relevant to
the discussion on telework: Use of information-
and communication technology
(ICT) is – at least in most cases – not an
end in itself for the employees who decide
to work at a distance, but something
that helps them reach one or more goals.
A decision to work at home could, for
instance, be made as a response to a long
commuting distance, or a need to work in
more peaceful surroundings. This insight,
as simple as it might be, underpins a
human centered approach towards telework,
where it is treated as a social,
rather than a technical innovation.
The aim of this paper is to give an updated
overview of telework and teleworkers
in Norway. The empirical core
of this work is a small survey of the Norwegian
households conducted by Telenor
R&D during the years 1995, 1997 and
1998. This statistical analysis includes a
sample of 29 full time homeworkers, 180
part time homeworkers and 443 mobile
workers, and it provides exciting information
on how Norwegians use their
domestic technologies and how they tend
to organize their work and leisure activities.
The issue I will put forward in this
article, however, is not only who the Norwegian
teleworkers are, but I will also try
to shed some light on how the phe-
1) Advertisement for Alcatel STK, Telekom
revy, 19/97. (My translation.)
nomenon of telework has developed, and
what have been the central factors behind
the development. Even if the data only
cover a small time span, from 1995 to
1998, it is nevertheless a rare opportunity
to trace the development of telework
over time. The intention is that observations
here should relate to a more general
discussion on how we might understand
the phenomenon of telework as a social
innovation, and thus how it is developing
in modern societies.
Since telework is a social innovation, it
is also a cultural phenomenon, driven by
the common understandings and ideas
of a community of people. Thus, telework
should be studied with reference
to the specific social environment it is
applied to. In this article I will first outline
the way telework has been presented
in Norway since the concept caught the
interest of the social researchers. It is
important to note that this is a very brief
and also highly subjective presentation.
The idea is however that this brief history-line
will provide me with a starting
point, and help raise some “guiding
hypotheses”. These hypotheses raise the
framework for the discussion of the core
results from the three small surveys. My
focus here will be different types of
homework and to some degree mobile
work. In the last section, I will discuss
how the results from the surveys can be
related to the way it has been treated in
public discussions, and what we can
expect of telework in the years ahead.
2 Teleworking the
Norwegian way
The modern vision of telework was born
on the west coast of the United States in
the early 1970s, when the western
nations were forced to cut their oil consumption
due to the oil crisis in the Middle
East. Prominent researchers, such as
Jack Nilles and John Harkness conducted
estimates of the potential savings possible
by giving way to teleworking for
parts of the labor force. It was stated that
for every percent of the workforce who
became teleworkers, the US saved 5.4
billion barrels of oil per day (Nilles et al.,
1976; Huws et al, 1990). In this early
vision, the primal advantage of teleworking
was the reductions in money spent on
oil and gas. When the idea of teleworking
reached Norway in the early 1980s it
had, somewhere on the way, undergone
an interesting transformation: The essence
of the concept was more or less the
same; people were going to work at a
distance with the support of telecommunication
and information technology, but
the central objective was no longer the
reduction of oil and gas, but the development
of regional labor markets. In a report
from the Norwegian government
published in the early eighties outlining
the future consequences of telecommunications
in the society, teleworking is for
the first time discussed in an official document
(NOU, 1983). Here, homework
and local neighborhood offices (“telematikksentra”)
are viewed as the two contrasting
types of telework. While the
report is sceptical towards homework for
its potential deterioriation of the individual
workspace and lack of contact with
colleagues, regionally based neighborhood
offices are highly recommended:
“Local neighborhood offices of varying
size may be considered. Such
offices could be placed in the regions
and could serve as a means for regional
and employment policies (...) There
may be great potential in co-localizing
groups of similar work or whole organizational
units in local neighborhood
offices which are physically separate
and have a geographical distance to
the rest of the company or organization
they are part of.” (page 71)
The point is further elaborated in a later
chapter describing “teleworking in the
year 1998” in two futuristic scenarios.
While the home-office is concerned with
constraints on the individual, the neighborhood
office is described in a more
positive scenario, marked by renewal
of local industries. In general, telework
is perceived as a way of moving the jobs
from the cities to the regional areas. This
is combined with a focus on local neighborhood
offices instead of home-working.
Thus, in the Norwegian discussion,
telework on the one hand shifted its content
from homework to neighborhood
offices in the regions. On the other hand,
it changed its purpose from fuel savings
to regional employment.
This shift of focus illustrates a more general
point to be made on the introduction
of telework as a social innovation: the
idea itself seems to be closely connected
to the present historical and political context.
While the crisis in the Middle East
triggered the initial research in USA,
there was another political agenda in
Norway in the early 1980s. The regional
dimension has solid roots in several political
parties in Norway since the begin-
Telektronikk 4.1999