Flexibility in Digitalized Working Worlds: Use and implications of telecommuting and digital work communication across European countries

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IIn the current debate about the digitalization of work, the promise of locational flexibility is one of the most prominent features. Digital technologies such as information and communication technologies have increasingly made it possible for workers to communicate with supervisors and colleagues and to access work-related data and information from anywhere, regardless of their location and official working hours. According to existing research, this digitally induced flexibility may be associated with both risks and opportunities. On the one hand, such studies suggest that employers may take advantage of such flexibility by expecting employees to be more available for work; on the other hand, digitally induced flexibility may be a way for employees to better integrate their work and personal lives.The main objective of this research project is to identify the factors which determine 1) whether digital-induced opportunities for flexible working serve the flexibility interests of employers and/or flexibility interests of employees and 2) whether digital-induced opportunities of flexible working weaken or strengthen gender and class specific patterns of labor market involvement and perceived conflicts between work and personal life. For this purpose this project studies a) the importance of the interplay of digital infrastructures and societal institutions (e.g. family and labor market policies) for the use and implications of digital work communication and telework, b) how this varies in dependence of gender and occupation, and c) how employee perceived organizational work culture which follows or deviates from the norm of an ideal worker who has few family obligations and prioritizes work mediates or counteracts national influences.Based on the initiated rotating module of the of the European Social Survey 2020/21 with more than 25 countries hierarchical analyses will be applied considering individual as well as country specific information.