Kolloquium: Carol Saunders (University of Central Florida) "Remote, Mobile and Blue-Collar: ICT-Enabled Job Crafting to Elevate Occupational Wellbeing"

Abstract:
Blue collar remote and mobile workers (BC-RMWs) such as repair/installation engineers, delivery drivers and construction workers, constitute a significant share of the workforce. They work away from a home or office work-base, at customer and remote work sites and are highly dependent on ICT for completing their work tasks. Low occupational wellbeing is a key concern regarding BC-RMWs. The objective of this research is to understand how BC-RMWs can use Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to elevate their occupational wellbeing. Drawing from the Job Demand – Job Resources theoretical framework in occupational psychology, we theorize that the distinctive work characteristics faced by BC-RMWs can be viewed in the conceptual framing of job demands. We conceptualize BC-RMWs’ practices of ICT use as possible ways to gather resources to tackle these demands. We conducted a study of 28 BC-RMWs employed in two private sector firms (telecom service provision and construction industries) in the UK, across 14 remote work sites. Based on our findings, we develop the concept of ICT-enabled job crafting and theorize how ICT-enabled job crafting by BC-RMWs can help them increase their job resources to tackle their job demands, and consequently increase their occupational wellbeing. The empirical context of the paper, that is, the study of BC-RMWs provides further novelty as these kinds of workers and their distinctive and interesting work conditions have not received much attention in the literature.

Reference: Tarafdar, M., & Saunders, C. (2022) “Remote, Mobile and Blue-Collar: ICT-Enabled Job Crafting to Elevate Occupational Wellbeing,” Journal of the Association for Information Systems, forthcoming. DOI: doi: 10.17705/1jais.00738