Terminology

Telecommunication – distance working

Information and communication technology (ICT) provide a range of possibilities to perform activities at a distance, including shopping, education, and working. Telecommuting is often defined as arrangement for a salaried worker to work from home or at a telework centre with remote supervision. The definition does not cover self-employed, contract workers, field work, off-shore information processing and teleconferencing or overtime work at home. It is however important to point out that the diffusion of the new ICT along with the changes in organization have increased the share of these activities as well as telecommunication in the society with implications for transport and land use.

A wide range of terminology has been to describe working arrangements where a worker is separated in time and space from his permanent work place. The common terminology during the 1980s covered telecommuting, teleworking, location-independent work, telematics, flexiplace, satellite offices, neighbourhood centres, telecottages, telecenters, remote working and many others. In the 1990s, new concepts such as hot desking, hotelling and motelling, and campus/university model organisations are being added to the telework lexicon (Wood, 1997).
Wood provides taxonomy of alternative work environments that can be created by applying telework principles. The following taxonomy relies heavily on Wood’s version (European Telework Online an Internet portal for teleworking, telecommuting, and related topics provides definitions for telecommuting and other e-activities, http://eto.org.uk/.
Home-based telecommuting. Under this model home becomes a legitimate workspace. Telecommuting can be preformed on a full-time basis, even though it is most often preformed on a part-time basis, one or two days per week. However, conversion of some home space into legitimate workspace raises many complex issues, such as occupational health and safety, tax considerations or workers' compensation and accident claims. At the individual level, the use of homes as the centres of information-based work have increased rapidly. Such initiatives require risk-taking by the individual, investment in new technology, a home office and a reasonably high degree of computer literacy and business ability. At the organisational level, the number of home-based telecommuting schemes have increased significantly, although not all have formally written telecommuting policies.
Teleworker, as distinct from telecommuter, describes a self-employed, home-based information worker. Because the need to commute is eliminated, a teleworker is free to live and work in any location. Teleworkers need not be limited to the employment available in their communities as they can bring their jobs with them.
Virtual Office. Terms such as “hot desking”, “hotelling”, “motelling” and “campus” describe the transformation of spatial arrangements of work. The key drive is to reduce office overheads and facilities costs and disperse workers to get closer to the customer. The reduced office space is shared on an advanced booking basis. Each “hot desk” is a workstation that provides technological support with computers, mobile telephones, faxes, etc. Recent research indicates that in some businesses between fifty and eighty percent of office desk space may be empty on any given day. Then the introduction of a virtual office is a sound business decision. A small but increasing number of high technology environment companies have adopted the virtual office approach.
Satellite offices. The terms satellite office and neighbourhood centre typically refer to the relocation of employees to a fringe-located, high-technology office environment. Users in neighbourhood centres typically come from a diverse range of organisations and rent these facilities. Cost saving of high-rent office space is the drive behind this arrangement.
Telework centre, telecentre or telecottage is usually located in or in the vicinity of a residential area facilitated by up-to-date telecommunication facilities. Large high-tech companies have embraced this arrangement. It can serve employees of a single or multiple firms. Geography rather than business function is the determinant of the location of a telework centre. Advantages of this arrangement are lower costs of office space, lower levels of staff turnover, higher levels of job satisfaction and improved quality of work life.
Mobile teleworkers. Recent statistics show a substantial number of workers that effectively have no fixed office space and are entirely mobile information workers. Savings on office overhead costs and the necessity to get close to the customers have been the drive for the increase in the number of fully mobile teleworkers.
The changes in IT and telecommunication technology is so fast and the unfolding of information society is so swift that the precise implications and impacts of this growth on telecommuting/teleworking is not yet fully understood.
There are key strategic decisions for management such as which technologies to invest in and who should pay for these, where to locate employees (in a central office, in a satellite office, in a telecentre or in the home), design of autonomy in work, control of output and performance measures.

Use of ICT in activities other than work

Many activities other than commuting to work have been affected by ICT. Examples of these include:

Distance Learning, Tele-education

The existing telecommunications infrastructure is used for education, training, and lifelong learning in five basic ways:

1. Instructing with video;
   
2. Gathering information from remote libraries and databases;
   
3. Communicating using two-way asynchronous capabilities such as e-mail and chat;
   
4. Distance learning;
   
5. Electronic transfer of instructional software and simulations.
   Even though the quality of education at universities is still determined by the intensity of face-to-face interactions, there are large-scale experiences of “distant universities,” and regardless of their quality they are now second-option forms of education. Distance learning universities could play a significant role in the future.

Tele-Banking
As banks are offering on-line customer services and automated teller machines, the consolidated bank branches continue as service centres, to sell financial products to their customers through a personalised relationship. Thus a system of branch office sellers, automated tellers, customer service-by telephone, and online transactions constitutes the new banking industry. Banks’ interest in Internet banking is due to its very low transaction costs and that those who are most likely to use Internet banking constitute attractive demographic and economic customer groups.

Telemedicine

ICT has affected health services in two complementary ways. On the one hand on-line communications and high-resolution video transmission allow for the distant interconnection of medical care. Computer and telephone are now used for regular health checks. Neighbourhood healthcare centres are supported by information systems to improve the quality and efficiency of their service. Yet, on the other hand, in most countries major medical complexes emerge in specific locales, generally in large metropolitan areas. Such medical complexes are a major economic and cultural force in the area and city where they are located.

E-government

ICT has affected the media through which governments are providing services and public information and hence the promoted emergence of digital government, as it is called. The scope of application of ICT to the function of government is quite wide such as applications to services to support: public management processes, policy makers, analysts and evaluators, complex public service programmes and direct citizen contact. The purpose of digital government is to overcome the barriers of time and distance to perform the business of government when and where they are demanded. It can quickly transfer funds, answer questions, collect and validate data and keep information flowing smoothly within and outside government.

E-commerce

The difference between electronic commerce and physical commerce is the modes of communication and the flow of information. The core of the difference is the reduced cost of communicating, transmitting, and processing information. Information about prices, products, and availability can be gathered by visiting various sellers' web sites or by using “Intelligent agents” that can gather and aggregate the necessary information. The OECD (2002) has developed two definitions of electronic commerce transactions, based on a narrower and a broader definition of communications infrastructure and guidelines for their applications as presented in the following table.

Source OECD (2002)

A further taxonomy related to e-commerce is related to who is trading with whom. The focus in literature has been on businesses and consumers. That produces four options as follows:

• Business to Business (B2B) is the electronic commerce between companies. This is by far the largest segment among the four.
  
• Business to Consumer (B2C) is the electronic business aimed at consumers.
  
• Consumer to Business (C2B) is the reverse of B2C
  
• Consumer to Consumer (C2C) is the electronic commerce between individual consumers.

E-commerce is mainly concentrated in the first two categories: B2B and B2C.
The ICT is introducing increasingly new products and services, some real and some virtual and has dramatically affected how business is being transacted. There is a transition from the traditional marketplace to the electronic marketplace. This transition is happening at three levels of economic activity.

• The first level is that the products and services are reshaped to accommodate an electronic marketplace whose important characteristics are that they are information-based.
  
• The second level is marketing management systems. Businesses organise their selling efforts via systems that are significantly different from those in current use.
  
• Finally the markets themselves are affected as a result of the first two levels.
  
• The ability to satisfy consumers in the electronic marketplace implies faster product delivery, higher potential frequency of delivery, greater flexibility and lower costs. Associated with e-commerce are reduced inventories and a related reduction of risk of obsolete inventories as the demand for goods and services are electronically linked through just-in-time inventory and integrated manufacturing techniques.

Technology

Telephone and Personal Computers (PCs) are the most common technologies used by telecommuters. Modem and fax machines are also quite popular. Although the telecommunication services and equipments available seem to be adequate for most current telecommuting, a more advanced telecommunication infrastructure would be important in promoting the future growth and sophisticated use of telecommunication. These include wide-bandwidth services for video functions and transfer of very large quantities of data.

A more advanced telecommunications infrastructure is also the key to the promotion of the use of ICT by businesses, government and in other societal uses.