Mobile Information Technology (MIT), work autonomy and organisational control: a study of remote service engineers

Mobile information technologies (MIT) have become such an integral part of our personal and work life that their use is almost taken for granted. This form of information technology provides a form of connectedness in the workplace that has fostered growing scholarly interest in the implications of MIT enabled connectivity on organisational control and work autonomy. While a wide range of different workers use this type of information technology for work purposes, the focus of most studies on MIT use and its implication on organisational control and work autonomy has been on professional workers. As a result, there are limited theoretical insights on how the use of MIT by non-professional workers impacts on their work autonomy and organisational control. Therefore, this study addresses this gap by examining how remote service engineers, a group of non-professional workers, use mobile information technology in performing their work and the implications this has for their work autonomy and organisational control. [Continues.]