ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at various social relations within a distributed group of knowledge workers and analyzes how these relations are related to the daily use of short message service (SMS), emails, and mobile phones. It explores the geographical distance involved in distributed work, the psychological distance between the distant workers, and their mediated interaction patterns. The chapter describes how a distributed work group can be studied as a social network approach, constituted by a range of formal and informal social relations and a group of distributed workers as inter-connected by a multitude of social relations. It provides a rough analytical framework drawing a distinction between subjectively perceived relations and interaction-based relations in groups. The chapter also looks at three different relational qualities—trust, friendship, and expertise—in addition to interaction-based relations and formal or prescribed relations. It also provides a presentation of the formal structure of the group and the network structures indicating perceived and interaction-based relations.
