Is personal Internet use at work primarily the domain of lower-status employees, or do individuals higher up the organizational hierarchy engage in this activity at equal or even greater levels? We posit that higher workplace status is associated with significant incentives and greater opportunities for personal Internet use. We test this hypothesis using data collected via a recent national telephone survey (n = 1,024). Regression analyses demonstrate that, contrary to conventional wisdom, higher-status employees, as measured by occupation status, job autonomy, income, education, and gender, engage in significantly more frequent personal Internet use at work.

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Many contemporary analyses of personal Internet use during work explain the behavior in terms of workplace disaffection. However, evidence for this interpretation is mixed. This article posits that an approach emphasizing the expected outcomes of Internet use more effectively explains the behavior. The 2 approaches are tested using survey data collected from more than 1,000 U.S.-based computer-using workers. About 4/5 of those workers do engage in personal Internet use during work. Regression analyses show that workplace disaffection factors, such as stress and dissatisfaction, have no significant influence on the extent of web surfing or personal e-mail use during work. In contrast, factors which shape the expected outcomes of personal Internet use during work, such as a generalized positive perception of the utility of the Internet, routinized use of computers, job commitment, and organizational restrictions on computer use, are very significant predictors of such behavior. These results suggest that employees use the Internet for personal purposes at work for many of the same reasons that they use it elsewhere. Implications of these findings are explored.

Telework has been the subject of study for longer than a quarter century, yet its causes and consequences are poorly understood. A key reason for this shortcoming is that scholars define and use the concept in many different ways. This article presents a taxonomy of telework, distinguishing among three distinct forms: fixed-site telework, mobile telework, and flexiwork. It then offers a series of research questions about the associations among these three types of telework and a variety of other factors. Using data collected in a national telephone survey of more than 1,200 U.S. computer-using workers, the authors empirically demonstrate that the three types of teleworkers are unique along key dimensions regarding their individual characteristics, organizational and technological contexts, and the impacts on their work.

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