ICT Enforced Boundary Work: Availability as a Sociomaterial Practice

The aim of this chapter is to show how ICT is used by employees to manage temporal and spatial availability for work and private matters. This sociomaterial practice is described in terms of ICT boundary work. The chapter is based on a case study into three multinational industrial companies in Sweden. Time diaries and semi-structured interviews with a sample of thirty-eight employees were used to see how they manage the challenges of digital working life. The results suggest that there is a wide variety between different practices of managing work and private life. These practices seem to be related in part to personal preferences (to integrate or separate the spheres of work and private life) and in part to contextual variables such as workload, technological infrastructure and the practices of colleagues and family members. It becomes evident that availability—or what it means to be accessible in time and space and responsive to the needs and wants of others—cannot be seen as a dichotomous outcome (i.e., being available or not). Our results also indicate that despite being constantly on call, employees may yet manage the technology in ways that allow separation to some degree when it is wanted.