ABSTRACT
Distributed work, describing one of the most rapidly growing workplace and organisational trends, has as many definitions as there are people studying or practising it. Distributed work can be defined as work activity conducted by groups or teams of people separated from each other in time and space, with advanced communication technologies being used to co-ordinate the work processes taking place. Distributed work is concerned with the central or core business function of the enterprise, and as such the outsourcing of support functions to external agents should not be classified as distributed work. Irrespective of the exact definition employed, distributed work includes workers, managers and the technology that enables them to complete tasks at a distance from each other (Grantham and Nichols 1993). The extent of this phenomenon is hard to measure. Estimates of teleworking in the US vary from a conservative figure of 4.47 million persons (ISDW 1996) to a high of 7.9 million (Rane 1995). The European Union has set a goal of having 20 million teleworkers in Europe by 2002.
