“Oh! Teleworking!” Regimes of engagement and the lived experience of female Spanish teleworkers

• Author: Ana Gálvez,Jose M. Alcaraz,Francisco Tirado
• Published date: 01 January 2020
• Date: 01 January 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/beer.12240

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  wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/beer Business Ethics: A Eur Rev. 2020;29:180–192.

© 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

What you always hea r is: “Oh! Teleworking! A day

off!” You have one day off eve ry week, don’t yo u?’

And then, tho se of us who really telewor k…you feel as

if you need to demon strate that you really are work‐

ing. (Intervi ewee, FG3 woman 8)

|

One of the main adv antages attributed to teleworking lies in t he sug‐

gestion that it al lows people to reconcile work a nd family life. Since

the 1990s, a great num ber of authors have agree d that this reconcili‐

ation is the great ch allenge facing our soc iety and that telework ing is

an ideal soluti on to this challenge (Gregory & Mil ner, 2009; Moore,

2006; Tremblay, 2002). Howe ver, further stu dies show that this

situation is more co mplicated than the op timistic view initiall y envis‐

aged (Kossek & Laut sch, 2017; Mirchandan i, 1998, 2000; W hittle

& Mueller, 2009; Yao, Tan, & Ilies, 2017) . Additionally, it has b een

observed th at the decision to ch oose whether o r not to engage in

telework depends, among other important variables, on the would‐

be teleworker's o ccupational cat egory or gende r (Gold & Mustaf a,

2013; Jaakson & Kall aste, 2010). In countri es such as Spain, f or

instance, tel eworking is often pres ented as a tool for workers to h elp

them achieve a bet ter work–life balance. In organisatio ns that offer

it to this end, it is mai nly women that take advantage of t he model,

and the classic gender divide is thereby further propagated.

In general, ana lyses about telework have lar gely focused on listing

the strategie s of reconciliation that e nable teleworking an d on examin‐

ing technical a nd ergonomic provision s. This literature has con sistently

neglected t wo very important asp ects associated with the i mplemen‐

tation and usa ge of this new way of working (Bailey & Kur land, 2002).

The first is th e lived experience (i.e., the meanings , perceptions, an d con‐

ceptualisatio ns) of women who work remotely and who are t he main

targets of the p ressure to balance work and eve ryday life. Few papers

have tried to analy se these or simila r issues explici tly (e.g., Fonner &

Stache, 2012; Half ord, 2005; Ibrahim, 2012) an d to our knowledge no

research like this h as been carried o ut in Spain. The seco nd aspect is re‐

lated to the ethical dimension involved in teleworking. The implications

and consequen ces, both moral and et hical, of this way of workin g have

been systematically sidelined when compared to the alleged advan‐

tages it offer s in terms of work and family life orga nisation. We con‐

sider those tw o aspects to be of par ticular relevance since t hey lead to

direct inquiry into discourses and practices surrounding telework and

its impact on p eople's daily lives.

Received: 6 Marc h 2018 

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  Revised: 9 May 2019 

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  Accepted: 28 July 2019

DOI: 10 .1111/bee r.12240

ORIGINAL ARTICLE





1|2|3

1Estudis de Ps icologia i Ciències d e

l'Educaci ó, Universitat Obe rta de Catalu nya,

Barcelona, Spain

2Departm ent of Social

Psycholog y, Universitat Autòno ma de

Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

3Munich Business School, Munich, Germany



Ana Gálvez, E studis de Psicolog ia i Ciències

de l'Educació, Universitat Oberta de

Catalunya, 22@ (Rambla Poblenou, 156),

Barcelona, Spain

Email: agalvez@uoc.edu



This research expl ores female teleworker s' domestic and wor k experiences in th eir

day‐to‐day lives. We draw on focus groups an d interviews car ried out in Spain and

use the pragmatic regime s of engagement framework developed by Luc B oltanski and

Laurent Thévenot to an alyse them. Their model furt her develops contributions from

post‐humanist discourse (sp ecially from G. De leuze, F. Guattari and A . Badiou) and

from the so‐calle d “empirical ethics”. This allows us to explore im portant issues about

the temporal‐spat ial and material worlds t hat shape the daily live s of these women,

their perceived agenti al capacities, and their mor al and ethical considerations r egard‐

ing telework. Our pa per contributes to the e xisting critic ally oriented (qualita tive,

interpretative) bod y of work that examines tel eworkers’ lived experi ence by provid‐

ing and illustrati ng important clues for examinin g ethical issues on work–life balance

and gender roles.