ABSTRACT
Farming-related employment, the traditional base of the rural economy, has been in continuous decline being replaced by manufacturing and particularly service sector employment. Self-employed telework also appears to have the greatest relevance for rural areas. The chapter presents an overview on the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book aims to redress the empirical imbalance by drawing upon a considerable amount of empirical evidence to present a critical, objective and rigorous analysis of telework from the perspective of individual teleworkers, policy makers and organisations based in, and around, two geographically contrasting rural case study areas, one located in rural Wales and the other in the South East of England. It attempts to establish the extent to which certain factors, for example organisational change, the aspirations of individual teleworkers, and telework facilitation policy, are underpinning the development of self-employed telework in rural areas.
