ABSTRACT

Since the late 1970s, teleworking has been given regular attention in many areas of media, policy, and research. Within this relatively long time period, telework as a concept has been addressed and readdressed with different terminology and definitions. In earlier days, telework was primarily associated with working at home, or working at the company’s peripheral plants. Information and communication technologies provided necessary conditions for different kinds of telework practices (cf. Huws, 1996). During the 1970s the concept of telecommuting was introduced (Nilles, Carlson, Gray, & Hanneman, 1976). In the 1980s and 1990s the term teleworking came into vogue as a broader classification of remote work (Korte & Wynnes, 1996; Nilles, 1998). More recently, the telework concept is guided by terms like nomadic working, hotdesking, mobile computing, working at home, hoteling, and home-based business. Remote workers may be called road warriors or mobile workers (cf. Pratt, 2000).