Title: Productivity impacts of mobile office service

Authors: Maiju Vuolle

Addresses: Department of Business Information Management and Logistics, Tampere University of Technology, P.O. Box 541, FI-33101 Tampere, Finland.

Abstract: Mobile business services have shown a lot of potential for improving the productivity of mobile workers. However, evaluating productivity impacts has been challenging due to the nature of these services. This paper aims to understand and evaluate productivity impacts of a mobile office service. The potential impacts are first identified in two mobile work groups by means of a literature review. After that, an empirical case study is conducted in a telecommunications company with knowledge workers and sales people using a mobile office service. The case study includes data from interviews, group discussions and a questionnaire (N = 115). The results show that the main productivity impacts from the use of the mobile office service examined in the case study are: the ability to accomplish tasks that need a rapid reaction or response, better situation awareness and better utilisation of idle time while on the move.

Keywords: mobile business services; mobile offices; mobile e-mail; electronic mail; email; m-business; mobile calendars; knowledge workers; sales forces; productivity impact; mobile work groups; telecommunications industry; tasks; rapid reaction; rapid response; situation awareness; idle time utilisation; mobility; Finland; intellectual capital; service productivity; services technology; services management; office services.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSTM.2010.035782

International Journal of Services Technology and Management, 2010 Vol.14 No.4, pp.326 - 342

Published online: 04 Oct 2010 *

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