Paper presented at 2nd International Seminar on Methodologies for Mobilities Research: Challenges and Innovations, ed. A. D'Andrea. Limerick, Ireland: University of Limerick, Ireland !

Mobilities & Mobile Technologies

Conceptual Clearings in Search of Clarity?

Carsten Sørensen

London School of Economics and Political Science Department of Management

The Information Systems and Innovation Group www.carstensorensen.com

mobility.lse.ac.uk

Mobility is a concept used across a range of academic fields to signify a variety of primary interests from social studies of places and spaces to technical designs of systems and services. Much of the recent discussion of mobility is associated with assumptions of technological developments amplifying mobilising various aspects of our existence. Even further, the specific rapid diffusion of the mobile phone has fuelled significant research interest in the social adoption of this particular technology. The aim of this position paper is to highlight the variety of research discourses with the potential for contributing to our understanding of the particularly under researched issue of enterprise mobility, i.e., the organisational use of mobile- and ubiquitous technology. It is argued that greater understanding of enterprise mobility must not only be based on cross-fertilisation between a diversity of mobility discourses, but also that it will be necessary to open the black box of technology and investigate the role of technology affordances and the complex translation of these into technology performances.

Mobility and Information Technology

A broad range of academic fields and disciplines research issues related to variations in and combinations of space, time, movement and technology. Within the interdisciplinary field of human geography these aspects have for decades formed significant themes of research, see for example (Carlstein, 1983; Gregory and Urry, 1985). More recently the increased interest in issues broadly related to movement and temporality has been labelled “the mobility turn” (Urry, 2007, p.6). Urry (2007, p.12) seeks to establish a comprehensive mobilities research agenda within the context of sociology, social geography and transportation studies, arguing that; “Overall mobilities have been a black box for the social sciences, generally regarded as a neutral set of processes permitting forms of economic, social and political life that are explicable by other more causally powerful processes.” A such broad and inclusive perspective both offers a comprehensive umbrella for understanding a diverse range of research issues related to mobility, but also comes associated with the risk of in turn treating other important aspects as black boxes. The broad social science discussion on mobilities assembles an interesting and rich discourse by growing tentacles that reach deep into a variety of social science issues as illustrated in (Urry, 2007). However, not many tentacles reach deep into the discussions of how social affairs and contemporary information technology are mutually co-constructed — constitutively entangled (Orlikowski, 2007) — in everyday life.

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A range of technologies in general and information technologies in particular has shaped and is shaped by mobilities of various kinds (Urry, 2007). However, this paper is in particular considering a specific class of information technology, broadly categorised by supporting combinations of mobile-, portable-, and pervasive computing. Portable, devices connect wirelessly to various digital infrastructures, and this is frequently refereed to as mobile computing, to distinguish the phenomenon from the use of stand-alone portable computing technology without wireless access to digital infrastructures, e.g., the traditional personal digital assistant (PDA). A technology is in this context considered pervasive if is embedded at context-aware, and ubiquitous if both pervasive and mobile (Lyytinen and Yoo, 2002b; Lyytinen and Yoo, 2002a).

The article initially outlines a range of mobility discourses; it then discusses these in terms of conceptual clearings and argues that the dynamic nature of socio-technical developments makes disciplinary focus difficult. The paper concludes with an example of one aspect of mobility and technology namely the need for individuals to engage in cultivating ubiquity.

Studying Mobility and Information Technology

This section briefly highlights some of the academic discourses with relevance for the understanding of mobility and information technology. These range widely and the discussion here is more exemplary and idiosyncratic than comprehensive and principled. However, it illustrates the rich diversity of possible fields to reconnect. Table 1 summarises the discourses and draw out example publications for each.

Within the social sciences, an emerging and growing community of researchers are engaged in a social study of mobile communications, largely fuelled by the advent of mobile voice calls and sms connectivity, for example; (Katz and Aakhus, 2002; Ling, 2004; Castells et al., 2007; Ling, 2008). This research field is related to, yet distinct from, the general mobilities research, and has explicitly chosen mobile communications as a focal point of interest. However, characteristic for this highly interesting research is the almost entirely black-boxing of the technology itself. The emphasis is largely on social behaviour under a regime of mobile phone use and not on a broader understanding of the inner socio-technical workings. Ling’s (2008) exposition of rituals in the age of the mobile phone is an interesting sociological analysis that largely takes for granted the technological properties afforded by the mobile phone. Arnold (2003) investigates the phenomenology of technology, using the mobile phone as an example. Arnold refutes the notion of a simple relationship or performance between affordance and purpose, but rather a multi-faceted complex arrangement of contrary performances. Even still, the notion of affordance is not unfolded and merely represented as a black box.

The social science studies of mobile information technology are largely concerned with a single technology, the mobile phone, applied with a general social context (Sørensen, 2010b). There is little research on the co-construction of mobile- and ubiquitous information technology and working practices within organisations, as is there only sparse research moving beyond the mobile phone to explore complex assemblages of mobile- and ubiquitous technology. The work by Wajcman and colleagues is a notable exception studying the mobile phone at work (Wajcman et al., 2008; Bittman et al., 2009), and Manning’s (2003; 2008) extensive research into the use of complex technological assemblages within the police force provides another elegant exception that proves the rule.

Considering social science research of flexible working practices facilitated by the use of mobile information technology, then there is here a significant body of research discussing organisational

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practices without significantly linking it into a deeper understanding of the co-construction of these practices and specific technological choices. Felstead and colleague’s (1999; 2000; 2005) work on shared offices, home working, and mobile working is an excellent example of a highly interesting organisational discourse. Similarly, Sturdy and colleagues (2009) take a close look at management consultancy practices, characterised in terms of boundary spanning and knowledge flows between organisations. Dale & Burrell (2008) study the mutual construction of organisational spaces and practices by relating both to literature from organisational theory, philosophy, social geography and architecture – yet, information technology is absent.

At the opposite end of an imaginary – and in many ways problematic – socio-technical continuum, we find a broad range of research within the technical sciences engages in the construction of socio-technical visions directly relating to mobilities, for example; wearable computing (Barfield and Caudell, 2001; Mann and Niedzviecki, 2002), ubiquitous computing (Weiser, 1991), novel forms of mobile device interaction (Kjeldskov and Graham, 2003), and pervasive computing (Hansmann et al., 2003; Kourouthanassis and Giaglis, 2008). Characteristic for most of the technical research is an intense interest in creating technological affordances, and only to limited extent exploring these in any social contexts beyond laboratory experiments or other forms of controlled environments (Sørensen, 2010b).

Beyond mobility-related studies, a large number of researchers seek to understand the complex entanglements of organisational processes and technological choices, for example: Suchman (1987; 2006) studying how knowledge is situated in the interaction with technology; Zuboff (1988) discussing the organisational role of ICT as either automating routine activities or informing distributed human decision making; Yates (1989) analysing the co-construction of scientific management and communication technology driven by the advent of large geographically distributed organisations in the 1850-1920s USA; Bowker & Star (1999) exploring the dynamic co-evolution of global standards and local practices governing their use; and Kallinikos (2006) discussing the role of human agency under conditions of explosive information growth.

Within the mobility@lse research unit at The London School of Economics and Political Science (mobility.lse.ac.uk) we have the past decade studied the organisational use of mobile- and ubiquitous information technology with particular emphasis on the co-construction of organisational- and technological practices – enterprise mobility (Sørensen et al., 2008; Sørensen, Forthcoming), See Table 2. This research seeks to understand how mobile working and technological choices in developing, adapting and using mobile- and ubiquitous information technology are mutually constituted, for example: the role of technologically mediated ongoing relationships and the prioritisation of interaction with mobile information technology (Sørensen, 2010a); the diversity of organisational information services supporting heterogeneous localised adaptation (Mathiassen and Sørensen, 2008); the complex relationships between rhythms of operational policing, interaction modalities, and the configuration of portfolios of mobile technologies (Sørensen and Pica, 2005); the role of mobile information technology in the remote management and control of health professional learning (Wiredu and Sørensen, 2006; Kietzmann, 2008); the organising properties of mobile phones and cab-dispatch systems for previously highly independent London black cab drivers (Elaluf-Calderwood and Sørensen, 2008); and the use of mobile information technology as a means of organising mobile foreign exchange trading through balancing potentially conflicting requirements between traders, the market, the bank and the regulator (Sørensen and Al-Taitoon, 2008).

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Discourse Field Themes Examples

Mobilities Sociology Globalisation, movement of signs, symbols, people, material

(Urry, 2000; Urry, 2007)

Place, space and movement

Philosophy, Human geography, Acrhitecture

The role of space in human activity (Lefebvre, 1991) (Carlstein, 1983)!(Laing et al., 1998; Hubbard et al., 2004)

Mobile Communications

Social science of the mobile phone

The social impact of mobile phones, e.g., rituals, routines, adoption, and appropriation

(Katz and Aakhus, 2002; Ling, 2004; Horst and Miller, 2006; Castells et al., 2007; Baron, 2008; Ling, 2008)

Mobile Usability Human-computer interaction

Usability of handheld devices and methods for studying this

(Kjeldskov and Graham, 2003; Kjeldskov and Stage, 2004; Jones and Marsden, 2005; Love, 2005)

Flexible Working

Organisation behaviour, Labour market studies

New forms of flexible working, e.g., home-offices, shard spaces, and mobile working as well as new labour market relations

(Orr, 1996; Nilles, 1998; Felstead and Jewson, 1999; Barley and Kunda, 2004; Felstead et al., 2005; Dale and Burrell, 2008)

Enterprise Mobility

Information systems

Co-evolution of mobile information technology use and individual/organisational practices

(Lyytinen and Yoo, 2002b; Basole, 2008)

Ubiquitous Computing

Computer science, human-computer interaction, information systems

The intimacy of computation with embodied interaction

(Weiser, 1991; Barfield and Caudell, 2001; Dourish, 2001)

Geographies of the Information

Society

Architecture, urban planning

The understanding of interaction between spaces, individuals with mobile- and embedded information technology

(Mitchell, 1995; Mann and Niedzviecki, 2002; Mccullough, 2004)

Urban Computing

Human-computer interaction, Information systems

The interplay between urban spaces, social activities and ubiquitous computing

(Mitchell, 2003; Brewer et al., 2007; Angus et al., 2008; Bassoli, 2010)

Autonomous mobile agents

Computer Science

The mobilization of autonomous software agency (No one really knows what they are good for, except for Internet viruses ;-)

(Bassoli, 2010)!(Maes, 1991)

Mobile database Computer Science

The construction of database technology specifically aimed at serving mobile client handsets

(Dunham and Helal, 1995; Lange and Oshima, 1999)

Table 1: Examples of academic discourses relevant to the study of enterprise mobility – the application of mobile- and ubiquitous information technology for mobile- and flexible working practices.

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Table 2: Examples of completed studies of enterprise mobility within the mobility@lse (mobility.lse.ac.uk) research unit at The London School of Economics from 2000 onwards.

# Worker Year Place Method Extent Topic References

1 CEO 2001-2002

Japan Interviews Case 1 and 7 part of study with 63 interviews and in-situ observations

Mobilisation of interaction for modern Tokyo professionals

(Jensen, 2009) (Kakihara, 2003)!

2 London black cab driver

2004-2005

UK Interviews & video observation

39 interviews and 14 hours of video-taped observations

The choice of location as core business strategy and the role of mobile technologies in pooling resources and informing individuals

(Kakihara and Sørensen, 2004) (Elaluf-Calderwood, 2008)

3 Off-premises foreign exchange trader

2003-2004

Middle-East

Interviews & observation

102 interviews plus observation of traders

Discretion and control in mobile working for off-premises foreign exchange traders

(Elaluf-Calderwood and Sørensen, 2008) (Al-Taitoon, 2005)!

4 Police officers 2002-2004

UK Observation, interviews & focus group

250+ hours’ participant observation with 40+ officers and managers. 20+ interviews. 2 focus groups

The rhythms of interaction with mobile information technology by operational police officers

(Sørensen and Al-Taitoon, 2008) (Pica, 2006) !

5 Security guard 2004-2005

UK Action research 350 hours of meetings, interviews & observation for Study 5 & 6

Real-life experimentation with RFID (Radio Frequency ID) enabled mobile phone technology supporting new ways of working

(Sørensen and Pica, 2005) (Kietzmann, 2007) !

6 Industrial waste management worker

2004-2005

UK Action research 350 hours of meetings, interviews & observation for Study 5 & 6

Real-life experimentation with RFID enabled mobile phone technology supporting new ways of working

(Kietzmann, 2008) (Kietzmann, 2007)

7 Town Planner 2001-2002

Japan Interviews Case 1 and 7 part of study with 63 interviews and in-situ observations

Mobilisation of interaction for modern Tokyo professionals

(Kietzmann, 2008) (Kakihara, 2003)!

8 Delivery driver 2006-2007

UK Observation & interviews

50+ people participating in interviews and participant observation

Establishing IT mediated control of work tasks with low degree of discretion through enterprise infrastructure and mobile information technology

(Kakihara and Sørensen, 2004)

9 Health professional

2002-2004

UK Action research Intensive collaboration with 16 students + others participating in project

Supporting situated and remote learning for medical professionals (Perioperative Specialist Practitioners) with mobile information technology

(Boateng, 2010) (Wiredu, 2005)!(Wiredu and Sørensen, 2006)

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Conceptual Clearings and Academic Communities

The previous section outlines several research traditions each tackling a variety of aspects within the broader mobilities research arena. The aim of this paper is to consider to what extent cross-fertilisation between these research strands is possible or even desirable. The “mobility turn” can be interpreted as a conceptual clearing acting as a timely response to a range of global phenomena. As a conceptual clearing, it is forgiving in allowing a diverse, heterogeneous and sprawling research debate. Indeed, it can be argued that there in several distinct research communities have been a “mobility turn”, ranging from sociology, social geography, transportation studies, the social study of technology, information systems, human-computer interaction, and computer science. Broad and open-ended research discussions centred on a uniting, but ill-defined, conceptual clearing can potentially bring together researchers and practitioners that under normal circumstances, given a well structured and -defined research agenda, would not engage in a common debate. The conceptual clearing will allow different combination of skills, facilitate access to alternative research funding pools, help the questioning of assumptions, and possibly even make conferences more interesting to attend.

The information systems field is largely born out of the notion of management information systems (MIS). It has since the 1970s experienced a relative open cross-disciplinary discourse with an influx of a range of academic reference disciplines participating in primarily researching information technology in organisational settings. Members of a variety of reference disciplines will regularly attend information systems conferences and publish papers in its journals. There is an ongoing discussion within the field of the merits in narrowing the scope and thereby rendering this field defined by the phenomena studied into a discipline (Baskerville and Myers, 2002; King and Lyytinen, 2004; Lyytinen and King, 2004; Wiredu, 2007).

The computer-supported collaborative work (CSCW) field has since the mid-1980s drawn together a community of ethnographers interested in understanding the role of information technology for collaboration, and computer scientists building this exact technology. Here, the cross-disciplinary discourse has clearly benefitted both parties, although it has also proven quite difficult to substantially integrate the two separate research discourses (Shapiro, 1994; Sidorova et al., 2008).

The mid-1990s saw an interesting cross-fertilisation where a range of research interests came together in the study of knowledge management. The two dominant groups were here researchers within organisation theory and organisation behaviour who came to knowledge management from a previous conceptual clearing of organisational learning, and information technology researchers with a background in understanding management information systems. The dominant discourse was initially largely technological with firms and technology vendors shifting from an organisational discourse on learning towards the technological fix of corporate intranets forming the basis for automated means of managing organisational knowledge (Swan et al., 1999; Ackerman, 2000). The organisational theorists had a significant background already in the study of organisational knowledge. The information technology researchers drew significant inspiration from the community. The community managed to define a much clearer research agenda than each arrived with from the start, for example more clearly understanding the relative merits of networks of boundary spanning, communities of practice, and the codification of best practice (Newell et al., 2009).

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Information Systems – Balancing Emergence and Theorising

The academic field of information Systems offers a good example of the dilemma between disciplinary focus and cross-disciplinary innovation. Researchers within the Information Systems field are constantly, like Odysseus, expected to steer clear to the two imminent dangers of the technological sea monster Scylla and the theoretical whirlpool Charybdis. The former requires constant attention to changes in socio-technical practices and readiness to change direction as the field moves on beneath. The latter demands that conceptual clearings emerging from socio-technical shifts are understood in terms of lasting theoretical questions and the accumulation of insights into both subject matter and appropriate sound research approaches to be applied when gaining and documenting insights. Steering too close to Scylla renders the discourse unable to the significance of some phenomena over others, whilst steering too close to Charybdis in a short span of time will establish a close-knit community of researchers out of touch with the salient phenomena defining their field (Swan and Newell, 2000).

The problems of balancing the study of a constantly dynamic domain and the development of lasting theoretical insights can be illustrated by Dahlbom & Mathiassen’s (2004) example of the history of clocks:

“In the fourteenth century it became high fashion for towns in Europe to invest in clockwork technology. The clocks were normally installed in church towers, to be seen all over town. They were built on the premises by clockwork makers, who usually stayed on to manage the clockwork maintenance, and in the process educate their sons in the trade. Being a successful technology, clocks spread throughout Europe, turning clockwork makers into a powerful and respected profession. But the success of the technology encouraged its development, and gradually the technology changed its nature. Home clocks and personal clocks (watches) were introduced and became a great success. The sheer volume of production made the craftsmen obsolete, replacing them with an industrialized production process. Decentralized, widespread use of clocks turned the town clock into more of a symbolic than a functional artifact. Clocks are now more important then ever, but the clockwork professionals have vanished.”

We can draw some parallels between the development of clockwork- and computer technology, for example in terms of the initial need for bespoke specialists to take care of centralised operations, which later was replaced by general commodification of affordances in the hands of just about everyone. Dahlbom & Mthiassen’s article was written in 1994 and aimed at challenging the predominant perspective within the Information Systems field of stable organisational arrangements and the application of largely centralised computer resources.

However, it was also written just after SAP in 92 had released R/2 using client-server architecture, 3 years after Tim Berners-Lee had specified the first HTTP protocol, and also 3 years after Radiolinja in Finland had launched the first GSM network and around 1 million people across 48 countries were using digital mobile phones. This was two years before Google’s Larry and Serg in 1996 set up the first server at Stanford – later to be named Google. It was before Wikipedia, before Microblogging, Bluesnarfing, happy slapping, Web 2.0, SaaS, mash-ups, a Japan where 1/4 of the top-50 best-selling novels were authored on mobile phones, before Indian software firms began outsourcing development to China to keep costs down, and before 90% of South Koreans in their 20s joined Cyworld.

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The Information Systems field was born out of centralised computers running applications subjected to fairly homogenous patterns of use standardising and streamlining organisational back-office procedures.

The chairman of IBM, Thomas Watson, famously stated in 1943; “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers” (Dahlbom and Mathiassen, 1994, p.11). The founder of DEC, Ken Olson, predicted in 1977 that “there is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home” (Berghel, 1999, p.13); and even Bill Gates’ statement that “Microsoft was founded with a vision of a computer on every desk, and in every home”1 was met with deep commentator suspicion the late 70s despite in now seeming a conservative vision considering the range of everyday computing experiences (Berghel, 1999). Mark Weiser saw the light in the 1980s, and professed that each person would end up using many CPU’s although he was slightly naive about how easy the relationship would be (Yoo, Forthcoming). Harold S. Osborne’s 1954 prediction also now seems much more lucid. He foresaw that each individual would possess a device similar to the mobile phone with video connection and a life long phone number assigned at birth (Sørensen, 2010a).

The use of computer technology is now better characterised by decentralised and embedded appliances providing services to be used in heterogeneous (and idiosyncratic) ways by all walks of life for a broad range of purposes. The sources of IT innovation no longer resides deep inside argon-protected IT bunkers but just as much at the edges. Digging a bit around of course still reveal plenty of mainframes in the 21st century, but as Nicholas Carr argues in his most recent book, The Big Switch, storage and computation is rapidly becoming an utility. Amazon S3 offers cloud computing at 7 pence pr GigabyteMonth, and at 5 pence pr GigaByte data-transfer so there is no immediate need for start-ups to buy their own mainframe. Most companies worth their salt outsource storage, networking, maintenance, and increasingly business processing. It would be tempting to argue that in such a scenario, IT does not matter - as Mr Carr has done previously. This is, however, not the case. IT matters more than ever before. It can provide the access to books through Amazon, availability of information through Google and Wikipedia, support people lending money to each other through Zopa, allow them to follow each others every move through Jaiku, or redefine mobile banking with MoniLink and M-PESA. How can IT not matter when the computer games industry rivals Hollywood, when teenagers nominate the mobile phone as their most important possession, and when I have to reboot my TV regularly so my daughter can watch childrens TV before bedtime?

Clearings and Clarity?

Over time it is likely that the broad and sprawling academic discourse defined by a conceptual clearing will be the subject of intense discussions and as a result deliver some consensus within the community of, for example; The definition of key-terms; core commonly held assumptions; research approaches considered appropriate; and a prioritisation of core issues to be researched. It is also likely that the more mature such debate becomes, the more parts of the community may decide that they indeed do not see themselves as contributing further to the field with resulting fragmentation of the community. In terms of understanding mobility and information technology within the context of work, it can be argued that there is a need for a broader community to be formed. One example of cross-fertilisation from the general mobilities discussion across to enterprise mobility research is the expansion of the mobility concept beyond the focus on corporeal movement and instead emphasise the mobilisation of interaction at work through a variety of technologies (Kakihara and Sørensen, !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1!(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft)!

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2001; Ling, 2004). This broadening of the analytical scope brought with it an interesting understanding of the roles of technology and mobility, for example emphasising the role of mobile communications in terms of what Ling (2003) calls micro-coordination, augmenting and arranging essential situated interaction as well as a connected presence (Ling, 2004) amongst remote colleagues. Within much of the technology-centred discussion of mobility there still is a strong paradigm of one-sided emphasis on technology affordances, broadly translated into the mantra of “anytime, anywhere, anyone” interactivity. This is clearly an assumption in dire need of anchoring in a set of alternative assumptions related to situated human practices and emotions (Licoppe, 2004).

However, it can equally be argued that the separate academic communities each discussing their own aspect of mobilities should seek to further narrow and deepen their discourse rather than broaden it. Division of labour, specialisation and focus is an essential prerequisite for the production of academic insights. If sociology successfully has black-boxed mobility, what is wrong with black-boxing or even disregarding the role of information technology? Why should computer scientists and telecommunications engineers, who gladly will continue to develop mobile inventions and -innovations, not simply continue doing so without the possible disruptions? Should they have to question assumptions about the social contexts in which their innovations will be used and how such assumptions should influence the technical decisions?

This is entirely true. However, several problems are facing the study of mobilities and information technology. The complexity with resulting emerging phenomena, as for example argued by Urry (2006), implies that established boundaries between academic fields of interest may need to be re-drawn and reconfigured in order to comprehensively engage with these phenomena. In terms of understanding mobility and information technology, then an additional complexity is the emerging changes in the relationships between processes of invention, innovation, production and use. Whereas these in the past could be assumed at least partly distinct and separate, they are increasingly intermingled – Rothwell (2007) characterise this as interactive innovation. The closing feedback loop between innovation and use of internet- and mobile services is an example of interactive innovation as for example described by Haddon et al (1994) in terms of users seen as everyday innovators.

Furthermore, the socio-technical processes of digitalisation are blurring long-established boundaries between devices, storage media, and transmission formats (Haddon et al., 2006). This digitalisation not only implies new technological opportunities, such as the convergences between traditional mobile phone services and high-speed Internet access. More fundamentally, it challenges and destabilises existing boundaries between sectors and between established divisions of responsibilities in the provision of content, services, and infrastructures. Where previously there was a stable arrangement, for example, between book publishers, printers, distributers and retailers, digitalisation is now blurring the boundaries between providers of content, services and infrastructure. In the processes of jostling for control, new alliances and boundaries will emerge, and these are likely to cut across precious horizontal layers of responsibility as well as vertical industries.

To the extent that existing fields of research are defined by a stable set of socio-technical phenomena, these may need to reconsider these traditional disciplinary barriers. Global mass media is one of the core phenomena for the media studies field. However, a host of innovations based on digitalised services, implies a blurring between the delivery mechanisms, content, services and infrastructures. The media discourse must respond to these changes, for example through increasingly taking an interest in the development and delivery of information services. This is, in turn the traditional remit

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of the information systems field, which mainly studies the services- or application layer (Tilson et al., 2010).

For the electronic engineers, who traditionally have been researching the underlying telecommunications infrastructure, digitalisation implies the blurring between the purely technical concerns for the design of an infrastructure and concerns associated with this infrastructure in use. Whereas the mobile telecommunications infrastructure traditionally was subjected to relatively stable types of usage, digitalisation challenges this stability. Mobile network operators, who were the primary customers of electronic engineering research, increasingly find themselves in situations where the design of the infrastructure must rake into consideration ongoing tussles over control, revenue streams, capacity, frequency trading and other issues carrying a range of distinctly non-technical design challenges (Clark et al., 2005; Tilson et al., 2010). This blurring of boundaries is destabilising existing arrangements in industry, and in order to research these phenomena, there may be a need to destabilise existing academic boundaries.

Emerging socio-technical arrangements also questions the assumptions of stable social categories of analysis. The lowering of transactions costs of enrolling members of organisations and organising their mass-engagement imply a blurring of the boundary between those in paid employment and those serving as voluntary members of a crowd (Herzhoff et al., 2010). The ready availability of a range of computer-mediated interaction implies that very few organisational teams are not simultaneously virtual and co-located. Commercial organisations increasingly seek to establish ecosystems or generative platforms from which they can both utilise the creativity of global crowds and control the activities and flows of revenue. The Apple iTunes ecosystem is an example of such a platform made possible by digitalisation, standards and infrastructures. These arrangements challenge existing demarcations between organisations and markets.

If the domain of study is characterised by stability, or if this stability is indeed stipulated when a field is established, then it may make sense to exclusively seek to explore increasingly focused research questions narrowing down the scope of inquiry, standardising concepts and disambiguating their interrelationships. However, much of the mobilities research in general and the studies of the social and organisational role of mobile information technology in particular draw energy more from salient worldly phenomena than from theoretical insights and the domains studied are characterised by emerging phenomena and blurring of previously established boundaries and categories. This implies a much more precarious balancing between seeking academic rigor through focus and worldly realism through innovating the discourse beyond established categorisations and dogma (King and Lyytinen, 2004; Tapscott and Williams, 2007).

Enterprise Mobility

Let us in more depth consider one important phenomenon related to mobility and information technology, namely the organisational use of mobile- and ubiquitous information technology to support emerging flexible working practices. This is an area subjected to both constant socio-technical changes and one in dire need of theoretical grounding. Table 2 illustrates a number of enterprise mobility studies conducted at the LSE. This raises the question of how such grounding can be established by drawing on established theories of the past whilst maintaining the ability to address salient aspects of emerging socio-technical changes.

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There is clearly a need to reach outside the narrow categorisation in established fields of research to understand enterprise mobility even if such ventures are associated with the dangers of wholesale adoption of alien research discourses emphasising salient features of neighbouring phenomena and not those intended. Understanding enterprise mobility implies, amongst others, the attempt to theoretically identify the significance of the technological changes from mainframe and personal computing to mobile- and ubiquitous computing and to understand these in the social context of human movement, communication flows, and flexible working practices.

One of the first challenges in such endeavour is to address the issue of the constitutively entangled nature of the social and the technical (Lyytinen and King, 2004). Generally, the management literature has not comprehensively dealt with the material aspects of organisational life in general, and information technological aspects in particular (Orlikowski, 2007). It can be argued that enterprise mobility in essence marks an increased degree of polarisation in the application of information technology spanning highly intimate and idiosyncratic use by individuals and the deep reliance on globally integrated and digitally converged infrastructures (Lyytinen and Yoo, 2002b; Orlikowski and Scott, 2008). One of the primary challenges is therefore to begin unpacking the unique aspects of the relationship between spaces, places, mobility and technology without making unnecessary analytical cuts favouring social practices over technological affordances or indeed the opposite. The concept of socio-materiality has been suggested as an analytical means of engaging in the study of relationships between organisational practices and materiality (Orlikowski, 2007; Sørensen, Forthcoming).

Ubiquity

As an example of such unfolding of the sociomaterial relationship in enterprise mobility, let us consider Weiser’s (2008) vision of ubiquity2. While Weiser’s vision of ubiquitous computing marked a dramatic departure from previous predictions by Watson, Olson and Gates, and has formed a powerful force shaping our understanding of technical possibilities, it also engenders notions of ease of use, harmony, and computation merging into the fabric of life. However, socio-material assemblages are “constitutively entangled in everyday life” (Sørensen, 2010a, p.1437) and are best conceived as enmeshed in complex, paradoxical, and conflicting relationships (Mick and Fournier, 1998; Arnold, 2003; Jarvenpaa and Lang, 2005).

When ubiquitous computing technology supports the combination of both fostering highly intimate technology practices whilst also engaging in remote connections with individuals, groups, or interactive systems, the users’ contexts and practices can be shaped by actions of these remote entities. For example, the decision of whether or not to pick up a specific mobile phone call will be informed by a whole range of possible factors. Is it possible to determine the caller’s identity? Who is calling? What is the recipient’s physical and emotional situation? What image does the recipient wish to display to the caller and what is the relationship between the two people? The rhythms of coupling and uncoupling technology from social action can vary across individuals, situations, tasks, and over time (Dourish, 2001; Green, 2002; Orlikowski, 2007, p. 138ff). The user experience of ubiquity is therefore complex and an emerging property of the situation, and is shaped by a variety of factors ranging from practical matters of technology (Sørensen and Pica, 2005) and situation (Sørensen and Gibson, 2008) to fundamental issues of the person’s emotional state (Ljungberg and Sørensen, 2000).

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!2!The!following!sections!draws!on!arguments!and!some!text!from!(Weiser,!1991)!

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The global diffusion of mobile telephony has, for example, led to emerging social practices (Ciborra, 2006; Ling, 2008). The individual user’s ongoing relationship with ubiquitous computing technology can contain elements of control, harmony, interruptions, and overload. When users and their immediate ubiquitous technology entirely define the situation, the users may still perceive the relationship as problematic.

Ubiquitous technology can provide support for the management of interaction, for example providing the user information about requests for interaction, supporting the management of information about others, providing an audit trail of past interaction, by supporting the prioritisation and filtering of interaction (Licoppe, 2004), and even the negotiation of availability (Ljungberg, 1999). This type of support for the individual managing their own interaction can be compared with the use of coordination mechanisms in collaborating groups (Carstensen and Sørensen, 1996; Wiberg and Whittaker, 2005).

Affordances and Performances

One way of understanding the complex interrelationships between social practices and technological opportunities is to distinguish between technology as opportunities and technological practices. This implies considering technology affordances and –performances. Arnold (1996) characterises the use of technology as affordances subjected to simultaneously contrary performances in contrast to the traditional assumption of the affordances serving as simple means of achieving a purpose. Mobile computing technology will, for example, most often both follow the user and offer access to instant connections with others, and thereby facilitate the user’s mobility and provide an uniquely fixed point of contact (Arnold, 2003, p.243). Technology performances are results of technological affordances – possibilities for action – meeting inherently contradictory situations. Gibson’s (1977; 2003) original definition of affordances denotes latent action possibilities independent of perception. Norman (1979) popularised the concept in the discussion of the design of everyday objects and here, as opposed to Gibson, emphasised perceived affordances (Norman, 1988; Norman, 1999). Whereas Gibson’s original definition emphasises possible usefulness of a technology, Norman’s perceived affordances emphasises the usability of a technology (Gaver, 1991). As this paper is not concerned with issues of technology usability, the properties of ubiquitous computing artefacts are only characterised in terms of affordances – latent possibilities for future action.

The assumption that technology will recede into the background and have a harmonious relationship with the user is questionable if the technology mediates user interaction with remote people and systems. The technology will enable the user-technology context to be penetrated by remote requests for interaction, messages, alerts, etc as well as extend the user’s ability to equally engage in remote interaction with others (Gaver, 1991; Kakihara and Sørensen, 2001). In the simple case of a mobile phone call, anyone possessing the unique telephone number associated with a specific SIM (subscriber identity module) card will be able to instigate a call, which the recipient can decide to accept or reject. If the call is accepted, a simple connection is established allowing the two people to engage in a conversation.

Symmetry and Asymmetry

Particularly interesting is the discussion of asymmetry in the situation between instigator and recipient as the request for interaction may be disruptive or the interaction itself may not suit the recipient (Ljungberg and Sørensen, 2000; Nardi and Whittaker, 2000; Wiberg and Whittaker, 2005).

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However, even if the interaction is deemed disruptive, it may still be perceived as beneficial (Ljungberg and Sørensen, 2000). The technological affordance offering one party remote access to another person raises the issue of interruptions, which has been researched extensively in the context of HCI (see for example the extensive list of references at www.interruptions.net). From the perspective of the recipient, this asymmetry can partly be caused by the combination of a technology affording interaction symmetry and the instigator of the interaction having limited or no insight into the recipient’s general context and specific interaction preferences. Providing technological affordances for interaction asymmetry is, therefore, a possible means in redressing the situation. In the example above, the recipient may decide to reject the request for interaction based on information about the identity of the caller. The affordance of allowing the recipient to be informed about the identity of the caller, or indeed of the subject to be discussed, can be interpreted as the embedded assumption that this information matters for the decision to accept or reject the call (O'Conaill and Frohlich, 1995; Ljungberg, 1999; Wiberg and Whittaker, 2005).

The affordance of interaction symmetry implies that the technology offers all parties equal status in the interaction. Affording interaction asymmetry conversely means offering action possibilities prioritising interaction, for example through rules stipulating how interaction unfolds. SMS messaging affords interaction symmetry, as a text message sent is received, and as the technology does not prioritise messages, people, or contents. Instant messaging systems typically affords interaction asymmetry by providing rules regulating parts of the interaction, for example, requesting approval for a person to be included with the sphere of possible interaction (buddy list), and indeed the possibility to block existing members of that sphere. Technology offering interaction symmetry will leave the cultivation of interaction ubiquity entirely to the user, while technology affording interaction asymmetry supports the user in managing their interaction through supporting prioritisation.

Encounters and Relationships

If we, furthermore, distinguishes between technological affordances enabling encounters where memory of the interaction is not supported by the technology, and those mediating ongoing relationships by recording aspects of the interaction (Ljungberg and Sørensen, 2000), then we can expand the unfolding of the socio-technical relationship in terms of a complex relationship between affordances and performances. Encounters imply the technologically embedded assumption of algorithmic codification, whereas the mediation of relationships places importance in the cultivation of data (Mathiassen and Sørensen, 2008). As an example, consider the core affordance of a standard mobile phone, the possibility of establishing connections with other mobile phones, either synchronously through a voice call or asynchronously by SMS or MMS messages. Each such connection is treated as an instance of an encounter between the two telephones and no specific assumptions are made regarding relationships between individual connections other than their chronological ordering and their type – incoming or outgoing. This core affordance defines the mobile phone as a device for encounters with little or no support for memory management for an ongoing relationship consisting of multiple such encounters (Wegner, 1997). Messages are organised in separate folders for sent and received messages. Each of these folders lists messages by their time-stamp as a record of the stream of encounters. As opposed to this approach, the Apple iPhone implementation of SMS messaging draws on an instant messaging metaphor. SMS messages are organised as a series of ongoing interaction relationships. The iPhone organises sent and received SMS messages as conversations between the phone user and contacts in their address book. Although

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this organisation of messages does not fundamentally alter the core mobile phone affordance to provide possibilities for encounters, it offers the additional affordance of encounters being organised as a series of relationships.

Diverse Affordances for Cultivating Ubiquity

Combining the priority and memory affordances results in four types of affordances, which can offer a diverse portfolio of opportunities for the individual engaging in cultivating ubiquity through mobile information technology (see Figure 1): Connections offer possibilities of symmetrical encounters; Filters embedded asymmetrical prioritisation of encounters; Mediators afford symmetrical interaction in ongoing relationships; and Coordinators provide opportunities for interaction asymmetry in ongoing relationships.

Figure 1: The diversity of affordances for interaction ubiquity defined in terms of assumptions about technological interposition and interaction priority.

The four types represent a diversity of affordances, which will be perceived and instantiated depending on the particular user’s preferences, need, and particular situation. The four types can each influence the extent to which the individual can cultivate interaction ubiquity to best suit their perceived needs. Figure 1 illustrates the four categories of affordances through examples.

Cultivating Ubiquity in Operational Policing

The following briefly explores the simple categorisation in affordances evoked by the operational police officers in Study 4, Table 2. In this study the technology subjected to most intense cultivation of ubiquity and most highly rated by the police officers was the personal radio mounted on the officer’s shoulder (Mathiassen and Sørensen, 2008). The radio was usually the only remaining technology in use during critical incidents demanding the officer’s full attention and thereby in this situation offering the optimal sense of interaction ubiquity. Officers would remain in constant contact with the control room during incidents to report progress, to rapidly gather information, to coordinate efforts with other officers, and to request further assistance in case it was needed. In terms of technical affordances, the two-way radio system offered un-prioritised constant two-way connection between the police officer and the control room. In order for this to work, the police apply strict discipline as to how the shared radio waves are used. Officers themselves also apply highly selective audio filtering to the stream of radio messages broadcast and through this maintain peripheral awareness of ongoing and upcoming incidents similar to that documented from studies of traders and underground train control room operators (Heath and Luff, 2000; Pica, 2006).

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The radio has now been supplemented with vehicle-based mobile data terminals (MDT). These terminals provided officers with a more effective means of gaining detailed case information about an incident before they arrive at the scene. The technology could also provide information about related incidents involving the same address or the same citizens. This allowed much more comprehensive briefing as the information would be filtered and only sent to the particular vehicle deployed for dealing with the incident and not on shared frequencies with implicit demands of keeping interaction brief and to the point. Streaming data to the car also suited the officers as the officer in the passenger seat could read out the information and continue to negotiate over the radio at the same time. This system was indeed so effective that over time there was a gradual shift away from using the two-way radio system for pre-incident briefing and towards reliance on the more effective dedicated streaming to the relevant car. One side-effect of this shift from an ongoing relationship with interaction symmetry, where information was freely pulled by all officers listening to the main frequency, towards dedicated and filtered push of information, was that only those obtaining the information had an overview of the situation while everyone else was more or less in the dark.

The data terminal also embedded a updated list of current incidents registered, which much like the queue of customer requests in a taxi system, presented for the dispatch office a semi-automated way of coordinating the allocation of incidents to police vehicles simply by allowing officers to pick incidents themselves on the touch screen in the vehicle. From the point of view of the individual officer in a vehicle, the active queue of incidents represented mediation of ongoing available and completed jobs with the possibility of prioritising which job to select. The officers also evoked connectors when sending messages similar to SMS messages between the mobile data terminals installed in their patrol cars as well as using mobile phones to contact witnesses and colleagues to gather critical information or for instant micro coordination (Schmidt, 1993). Figure 2 summarises the diversity of affordances in the police case.

Mobility and Technology

The distinction between technology affordances and –performances illustrates the need to distinguish between technological opportunities and these opportunities cultivated through complex and contradictory practices into individual- and organisational routines. The example challenges the notion of ubiquity as a natural and unproblematic continuation of technological development and focusing on everyday performances cultivating ubiquity. This was merely meant as an illustration of the importance of the relationship between a diversity of technological affordances and their complex and contradictory deployment in performances. The often-promoted assumption of mobile technologies as technologies enabling communication “anytime and anywhere” (Makimoto and Manners, 1997; Ling, 2004) does poor justice to both the diversity of possible affordances in action and indeed even more to the sociomaterial performances. Understanding salient aspects of enterprise mobility requires attention to the ways in which the construction of space and technology performances interrelates and this in turn demands that both sides of the artificial socio-technical divide must be considered.

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Figure 2: The diversity of affordances for cultivating ubiquity in the operational policing case.

While the significant body of research on the social impact of the mobile phone delivers excellent results on how social practices engage the technology, then the lack of unpacking of the black box of affordances translated into performances implies a weakness in the ability to explain more complex portfolios of mobile affordances than the connector. This may not be a significant issue when the main aim was to understand the practices emerging from the initial wave of mobile technology adoption with voice- and SMS encounters forming the main usage of the mobile phone. The studies of mobile phone use also tend to emphasise emerging technology performances, as the primary domain of study is the everyday consumer. However, enterprise mobility is characterised by complex portfolios of mobile technology affordances, as illustrated in the police example, and as evident in the range of studies listed in Table 2. Furthermore, organisational life is characterised by a variety of balancing acts between emerging- and planned technology performances depending on the degree of individual discretion. This implies that enterprise mobility characterises situations with significant variety of relationships between affordances and performances.

Conclusion

This paper is meant to serve as a position statement informing a discussion of the research agenda for mobilities research, in particular with respect to the role of mobile information technology. The paper discussed a range of research discourses with a significant interest in understanding aspects of mobility. The paper in particular considered enterprise mobility – the organisational deployment of mobile- and ubiquitous information technology. It was proposed that the blurring of boundaries as a result of both technological and organisational developments makes it necessary to seek a broader range of theories than those within one strictly focused field or discipline in order to address the challenges comprehensively. As a way of a simple example, the cultivation of interaction ubiquity through a diversity of technology affordances was discussed. The main aim was here to illustrate in a concrete manner that opening the black box of technology can contribute to extending the discourse of mobility and information technology. It has also been the aim to illustrate that in the general mobilities discourse, the role of information technology ought to be considered more carefully. The pragmatic perspective adopted emphasising individual interactional processes as the unit of analysis is obviously both an explicit choice and a limitation.

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