Making Home Work Places

Abstract

This exploratory paper makes the case for deepening and expanding CSCW research on how knowledge and digital professionals work at home. The steady rise of flexible and “mobile” working policies and burgeoning of freelance work and solo entrepreneurs, means that working from home is now commonplace. Yet, there is a dearth of investigations in relation to how people make working from home ‘work’. In response to this gap, this paper focuses on how homes become sites of complex coordination and negotiation for those people who use them as workplaces. In particular, the paper reviews the relevant literature and shows how it frames debates about working from home. Additionally, it opens up a set of research questions which should be urgently tackled. We argue that CSCW research needs to attend more closely to those intricate emplaced negotiations and coordination efforts that occur at home, not only to collaborate remotely with colleagues and clients, but also in relation to the more ‘intimate’ relationships of households families, as well as how both sets of relationships are shaped by the spatial and environmental organisation of the home as a shared space for most.