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    Virtual mobility and the lonely cloud: theorizing the mobility-isolation paradox for self-employed knowledge-workers in the online home-based business context

    Daniel, E. and Di Domenico, M. and Nunan, Daniel (2018) Virtual mobility and the lonely cloud: theorizing the mobility-isolation paradox for self-employed knowledge-workers in the online home-based business context. Journal of Management Studies 55 (1), pp. 174-203. ISSN 0022-2380.

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    Abstract

    We advance both mobility and paradox theorizing by advocating the new concepts of “mobility-isolation paradox” and “paradoxical imagination”. These emerged from examining the nuanced, multifaceted conceptualizations of the mobility-isolation tensions facing home-based, self-employed, online knowledge-workers. We thereby enhance current conceptual understandings of mobility, isolation and paradox by analyzing knowledge-workers’ interrelated, multidimensional experiences within restrictive home-based working contexts. We compare the dearth of research and theorizing about these autonomous online knowledge-workers with that available about other types of knowledge-workers, such as online home-based employees, and the more physically/corporeally mobile self-employed. This research into an increasingly prevalent knowledge-worker genre addresses these knowledge gaps by analyzing home-based knowledge-workers’ views, and tensions from paradoxical pressures to be corporeally mobile and less isolated. Despite enjoying career, mental and virtual mobility through internet-connectedness, they were found to seek face-to-face social and/or professional interactions, their isolation engendering loneliness, despite their solitude paradoxically often fostering creativity and innovation.

    Metadata

    Item Type: Article
    Additional Information: This is the peer reviewed version of the article, which has been published in final form at the link above. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving.
    Keyword(s) / Subject(s): Home-Based Online Businesses, Isolation, Knowledge-Worker, Mobility, Paradox Theory, Self-employment
    School: Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Business and Law > Birkbeck Business School
    Depositing User: Daniel Nunan
    Date Deposited: 05 Oct 2017 06:21
    Last Modified: 02 Aug 2023 17:35
    URI: https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/19906

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