Understanding Business Travel Time and Its Place in the Working Day

This article argues that there is a need to understand business travel time in the context of the wider organization of work time. It considers why travel time use is potentially changing with the use of mobile technologies by the increasing number of individuals engaged in ‘knowledge work’, and examines existing evidence that indicates that travel time use is part of a wider work-related ‘taskscape’. However, it not only considers material productive output, but suggests that travel time as ‘time out’ from work-related activities also plays a vital role for employees. It also suggests that business travel time use that is not of benefit to the employer may not be at the employer's expense. This is contrasted with the assumptions used in UK transport appraisal. Data gathered from the autumn 2004 wave of the National Rail Passenger Survey (GB) is used to illustrate some key issues concerning productivity and ‘anti-activity’. A case study of an individual business traveller then points towards the need for a new approach to exploring the role played by travel time in the organization of work practices to be considered. © 2008, Sage Publications. All rights reserved

Constant connectivity: rethinking interruptions at work

While the subject of interruptions has received considerable attention among organizational researchers, the pervasive presence of information and communication technologies has not been adequately conceptualized. Here we consider the way knowledge workers interact with these technologies. We present fine-grained data that reveal the crucial role of mediated communication in the fragmentation of the working day. These mediated interactions, which are both frequent and short, have been commonly viewed as interruptions — as if the issue is the frequency of these single, isolated events. In contrast, we argue that knowledge workers inhabit an environment where communication technologies are ubiquitous, presenting simultaneous, multiple and ever-present calls on their attention. Such a framing employs a sociomaterial approach which reveals how contemporary knowledge work is itself a complex entanglement of social practices and the materiality of technical artefacts. Our findings show that employees engage in new work strategies as they negotiate the constant connectivity of communication media