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Part of a general trend towards remote work, teleworking is a naturalresult of the information revolution, fuelled by the growth ofknowledge work and the rapid advance in technology. The trend isconsistent with predictions made by futurist Alvin Toffler in his 1980book The Third Wave, that the location of work would outgrow typicalsites such as offices or factories, and begin to take place in alllocations.

Teleworking is especially becoming popular in high-technologyorganisations. During my work placement at Intel Corporation, I wasalso exposed to various team members teleworking from home one to twodays per week. While this trend is popular with employees, it behovestoday’s high-technology company to consider the impact of teleworkingon innovation. This sector of the business environment is particularlydependent on innovation to remain viable, and it is important,therefore, that the initiation and implementation of innovation not besacrificed to worker preference.

Examination of various sources reveals a lack of consensus as to thedefinition of teleworking, or as it is sometimes called,telecommuting. ‘Teleworking’ is more common in European literature,while ‘telecommuting’ is more common in but not limited to Americanliterature. Unfortunately, this lack of a universally accepteddefinition of teleworking causes problems academically; as either termcan be used to mean ‘home-working’, ‘working-at-a-distance’, ‘off-siteworkers’, or ‘remote-workers,’ it hinders the ability to comparefindings from different sources. Therefore, it is necessary to chooseand define a single term before proceeding.

The term ‘telework’ is generally preferred on this side of theAtlantic, and will be used here. Huws, Korte, and Robinson (1990)define telework as work “which is independent of the location of theemployer or contractor and can be changed according to the wishes ofthe individual teleworkers and/or the organisation for which he or sheis working” (10). Olson (1988) argues, “the term telework is used torefer to organisational work performed outside of the normalorganisational confines of space and time, augmented by computer andcommunications technology. The work is not necessarily performed in thehome (77). The EU holds that ‘telework’ “covers a range of new ways ofworking, using the telecommunications as a tool and, for at least partof the time, outside a traditional office environment (EuropeanCommission, 1996, 11).

Jack Nilles defined telecommuting as “an arrangement that entailsworking outside the conventional workplace and communication by way oftelecommunications or computer-based technology' (Bailey and Kurkland,2000). According to The American Telecommuting Association, 2002,telecommuting is “ replacing or supplementing physical travel to theoffice by using modern telecommunications equipment to bring officeresources to the employee. While computers serve to augmenttelecommuting, it is possible to telecommute with only paper, penciland telephone.”

Distilling the above into a workable definition, important elements of telework for the purpose of this study include:

▫ the person doing the telework is an employee of the organisation for which she or he works

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