Nomadic Culture: Towards An Understanding of the Cultural Impacts of Nomadic Computing

The increasingly mobile workforce, organizations’ desire to be flexible and reactive, changing organizational structure and management style, and the wide availability of enabling technologies to support nomadic computing are gradually influencing the characteristics of an organization that eventually contribute to the organization’s culture. This study attempts to investigate the cultural impacts of nomadic computing. We coined the term “nomadic culture” to describe a collection of artifacts, beliefs, and basic assumptions that supports the technologies and procedures enabling an increasingly mobile workforce to achieve efficiency and effectiveness. This study offers a conceptualization of nomadic culture and proposes a framework for understanding the factors that affect the rate of formation of nomadic culture. Future research directions are also discussed.