‘Mental mobility’ in the digital age: entrepreneurs and the online home‐based business

• Author: Elizabeth Daniel,MariaLaura Di Domenico,Daniel Nunan
• Published date: 01 November 2014
• Date: 01 November 2014
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ntwe.12034

‘Mental mobility’ in the digital age:

entrepreneurs and the online home-based

business

MariaLaura Di Domenico, Elizabeth Daniel and

Daniel Nunan

Home-based online business ventures are an increasingly per-

vasive yet under-researched phenomenon. The experiences and

mindset of entrepreneurs setting up and running such enter-

prises require better understanding. Using data from a qualita-

tive study of 23 online home-based business entrepreneurs, we

propose the augmented concept of ‘mental mobility’ to encap-

sulate how they approach their business activities. Drawing on

Howard P. Becker’s early theorising of mobility, together with

Victor Turner’s later notion of liminality, we conceptualise

mental mobility as the process through which individuals

navigate the liminal spaces between the physical and digital

spheres of work and the overlapping home/workplace, enabling

them to manipulate and partially reconcile the spatial, tempo-

ral and emotional tensions that are present in such work envi-

ronments. Our research also holds important applications for

alternative employment contexts and broader social orderings

because of the increasingly pervasive and disruptive influence

of technology on experiences of remunerated work.

Keywords: digital entrepreneur, home working, home-based

business, liminality, mental mobility, non-standard work,

self-employed, work–life balance.

Introduction

Advances in information technology (IT) have meant that, for many, work is an activ-

ity rather than a place (Felstead et al., 2002). Consideration of the workplace as spa-

tially static has now become redundant. The home has once again become an

important location for work with the decline of home–work spatial demarcations.

Previous studies on effects upon the individual of home-based working focused

mainly upon employees working for relatively large organisations and

management–staff relations of control, trust, performance-monitoring and work–life

balance (e.g. Felstead and Jewson, 2000; Brocklehurst, 2001; Hill et al., 2003; Shumate

MariaLaura Di Domenico (m.didomenico@surrey.ac.uk) is Professor of Entrepreneurship & Organi-

zation and Director of Research at the Surrey Business School, University of Surrey, Guildford, UK.

Elizabeth Daniel (elizabeth.daniel@open.ac.uk) is Professor of Information Management at The Open

University Business School (OUBS), Milton Keynes, UK. Daniel Nunan (d.f.nunan@henley.ac.uk) is

Assistant Professor of Marketing in Henley Business School, University of Reading, Whiteknights

Campus, Reading, UK.

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© 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd266 New Technology, Work and Employment

and Fulk, 2004; Tietze et al., 2009; Tietze and Musson, 2010; Sturges, 2012). Such

studies concentrated on the increasing need to effectively coordinate employees who

are decentralised and distributed as well as working practices that have become

more virtual (Sorensen, 2004). Others have considered IT professionals and consult-

ants working away from home at client-defined sites and locations (Ahuja et al., 2007).

Despite their economic importance and number, relatively little research has been

conducted on home-based businesses, which are typically invisible to researchers

and even wider society (Mason et al., 2011).

We explore home-based online business entrepreneurs’ self-reported experiences,

unpacking the complexities inherent in their fluid contexts. These entrepreneurs use

technology to enable business growth beyond their home’s spatial limitations, while

remaining located there. Through an empirical, inductive study of daily, ‘lived-reality’

articulations, we advancetheoretical understandings of negotiations between entrepre-

neurial activities and self-experiences in the dual home–work place. We thereby

explore issues arising from deeper individual self-experiences atthe home–work inter-

face and entrepreneurial attempts to manipulate, reconcile or even overcome the

spatial, temporal and emotional tensions manifest in running home-based ventures.

Through our findings, interpretative analysis and theorising of (im)mobility and

liminality, we put forward the empirically informed concept of ‘mental mobility’. We

argue that to successfully navigate boundaries between home spaces, which are physi-

cally and socially constrained, and virtual technological spaces, which are spatially

unconstrained, these business owners develop mental mobility to avoid the risks of

spatial ambiguity and dissonance.This emerged through our inductive iterative analy-

sis of the collated data and interpretations. We drew inspiration from Becker’s early

work on mobility and his original coinageof the term. However, we go beyond this and

provide unique theorising, arguing that the mental mobility concept holds much

potential and requires careful reconsideration, novel conceptualisation and new

attempts at theoretical definition in terms of the technological abilities now pervasive

in society. We thus contribute to extant understandings of technological mobility and

work practices, especially the experiences of autonomousand arguably ‘liminal’ actors

such as entrepreneurs, and to the emerging literature on home-based businesses,

particularlyin terms of the significance of recent technological changes and ubiquitous,

online mobile digital access within the home and other nontraditional work spaces. We

respond to calls for greater theoretical development and empirical study of the phe-

nomenon (Loscocco and Smith-Hunter, 2004; Walker and Webster, 2004; Thompson

et al., 2009; Mason et al., 2011).

The paper has four parts. We begin by discussing home-based businesses and the

home’s changing role in relation to technological impacts on work location. Through

considering non-spatial mobility and IT’s increasing role in communications, we

unpack and extend Becker’s early theorising on mobility and Turner’s notion of

liminality to support our conceptual and empirically derived arguments. Secondly, we

outline our research methods and analytic approach for this study of 23 entrepreneurs

running home-based online businesses. Thirdly, we present our interpretations

through the lens of mental mobility and its importance in home-based workplaces. We

conclude with the study’s key implications and contributions.

Home-based online business entrepreneurs as liminal actors:

theorising technological mental mobility

The interfacebetween work and other life dimensions has received increased academic

attention (Nippert-Eng, 1996; Perlow, 1998; Fleming and Spicer, 2004). Much research

focuses on employees of external organisations, with limited research explicitly on the

home as the business location of the self-managing, self-employed, often lone-working

entrepreneur (exceptions include Loscocco and Smith-Hunter, 2004; Di Domenico, 2008;

Walker et al., 2008; Di Domenico and Fleming, 2009; Thompson et al., 2009). As more

autonomous actors, they are not under the direct control of existing organisational

© 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd ‘Mental mobility’ in the digital age 267