Using multipresence strategy as coping method in mobile work

Purpose. The pivotal property of mobile information and communication technology (mICT) is to enable mobile, multilocational work. mICT enables doing various tasks in different places creating also pressures to be ‘present’ that is being socially available for others face-to-face or virtually. Social presence is defined as the ‘sense of being with others’ (Biocca et al., 2004, p. 456). Jackson (2002) and Golden (2009) conceptualised dual presence to handle both face-to-face presence in a physical location and virtual presence in a work domain. As mICT enable synchronous and asynchronous communication almost anywhere, we argue that the phenomenon of presence is more diverse than allowed by the dual-presence approach.
Design. Highly mobile employees (N=25) were selected from four companies. We looked for the communication events where an interviewee worked in some physical place and simultaneously communicated virtually with others.
Results. Altogether 344 communication events were identified. In all of them, synchronous or/and asynchronous technologies were used for communication. The events occurred in the main workplace (N=114), at home (N=104), in moving places such as taxis (N=51), in third places such as hotels (N=53), and secondary places such as customer premises (N=22). When the contents of communication events were analyzed in details, we found three types of presence strategies: virtual, dual and multipresence. Then, the specific causes and the circumstances that lead to a multipresence strategy were studied as well as the benefits and costs attached to these events.