Interaction zones for remote workers: negotiating interlocking spaces

Current work into Interaction Space Theory addresses the needs of remote workers who spend prolonged periods away from their own organisation to conduct projects on behalf of their clients. Often based at the client’s own office or project site, these remote workers can on occasion struggle to sustain visibility, identity with and a sense of belonging to their own organisation. Drawing upon empirical research conducted for the SANE project this paper attempts to illustrate how individuals negotiate the physical, social and organisational boundaries that in turn form interlocking spaces between competing zones of interaction. It investigates how remote workers might utilise technological resources to reduce some of the existing constraints to human social interaction between participants at remote and co-located settings.