One of the main goals of my dissertation is operationalizing this idea of “always on.” But something I’ve been wrestling with this week is the difference between being always on and being always available. I’m still working this out, but I’m starting to wonder if what I’m actually interested in being always available.

Being always on implies action, behavior. A person who is always on is constantly engaged, always doing something or talking to someone.

Being always available suggests something more akin to a state of preparedness. It’s being ready for interaction, but not necessarily always engaged in interaction.

Theoretically, I think there are a few key differences suggested by these two terms. There’s a difference between degrees of participation; always on is active participation, but always available is more passive. There’s also a difference between communication direction and control; always on implies individual as sender and seeker, always available implies individual as receiver.

Then again, the popular use of the term “always on” suggests that a person is constantly connected to the world via the internet and any number of ICTs, even if that person is not actively using those connections. The fact that I can check my email and get directions on my cell phone whenever and wherever I want means I’m always on. Or does it?

Looks like I’ve got some thinking to do.

They suck really hard. I thought that once I got to the dissertation stage, when I was finally done with coursework after a combined 8+ years of all this higher education, that I’d flourish and really start to crank out the work. Ha ha, I was so wrong!

I’m already far too subject to my own moods and whims; I am the queen of rationalizing taking an afternoon or a day off. Combine that with this newfound independence and bam! All of a sudden I realize that, until yesterday, I haven’t made any progress in a month. How does a person lose a whole month??

Anyway, it looks like I’m going to have to work on the whole discipline thing. I know I’m not the first person to get to this point and realize this, but it’s funny how staunchly I believed it wouldn’t happen to me. I just love these reminders of how normal I am. Really, it makes me feel so special. Like a snowflake.

I’ve finally completed revisions on my prospectus! (Maybe later I’ll post about how hard it is for me to make and meet my own internal deadlines.) I’m pretty pleased with the general direction in which I’m heading, but of course there are myriad areas for improvement. I guess that’s why I have a committee - nothing like getting your hard-fought work ruthlessly critiqued by those who are older and wiser.

My working title is: How does being “always on” impact our experience at work?: Exploring continuous connectivity from an organizational communication perspective. Here’s a brief overview of my project (excerpted from the prospectus itself):

The list of significant information and communication technologies (ICTs) gets longer every year. As of right now, this list includes well-established technologies such as cell phones and email, as well as more recent innovations like Blackberries and the iPhone, instant messaging (IM), and increasingly ubiquitous wireless internet access. Together, these technologies form a nearly seamless web of connectivity, a state of perpetual contact, where an individual is “always on.”

With my dissertation, I seek to understand the implications of being always connected to the world via these technologies, with the ultimate goal of developing a model of being always on. We are quickly approaching the point of perpetual contact, where we can be reached at any time in any place, anywhere in the world. Cascio and Shurygailo (2003) refer to this as the “new paradigm of work—anytime, anywhere, in real space or in cyberspace” (p. 362). How does this state of being always on impact communication?

Technology use tends to fall along a continuum; some people cannot seem to ever turn their cell phones off, even when they are at home or on vacation, yet others refuse to buy a cell phone at all. Some people are required to keep phones or pagers on at all times because of their jobs, and others are constantly using their phones to project an image of status or importance. By talking to individuals at all points in the continuum of perpetual contact, from the non-users to the super-users, I will get a more comprehensive and complete view of the important issues of being always on. I want to learn how individuals make sense of being always on (or being always off). I want to learn about the positive and the negative effects. I want to know how this shapes their experiences at work, as well as how this affects their home lives. My ultimate goal is to develop a comprehensive model of being always on, from antecedents to processes to consequences.

This research has real implications to our everyday lives, both as members of organizations and as people living in contemporary society. These implications range from learning more about how to be productive at work to how to effectively communicate across physical and temporal distances, from how to manage a multitude of communicate technologies and an increasing amount of information to how to balance work and life concerns. These are issues all of us deal with every day, even when we are not at work. Understanding these issues can help us be more productive and more healthy.

I’m currently involved in an interesting project investigating the use of ICTs during organizational meetings. Specifically, we’re looking at the different ways people use ICTs (such as Blackberries and other smartphones/PDAs, IM, email, etc…) to multitask during meetings. We’re most interested in the communicative aspects of multitasking (termed “multicommunicating” by Reinsch, Turner and Tinsley in a forthcoming Academy of Management Review article). This includes behaviors such as venting to others, providing social support, furthering understanding of meeting content, etc… during a meeting. When done with ICTs, these interactions become almost invisible, like a form of digital note passing.

What makes this study interesting to me is its connection to my work on being always on. Preliminary findings are fairly interesting. For example, we’re not seeing a relationship between a person’s age and her tendency to multicommunicate with ICTs during a meeting. Going into this study, I would have expected that younger employees (let’s say 40 and below) would be much more likely to do this, but our results aren’t really showing that. I wonder how age will factor into my dissertation work. Maybe younger people are not more likely to be always on…

One thing we are confirming is the importance of organizational norms. This is one of those “well, duh” sort of conclusions, but it’s great to demonstrate it with data. It looks like people are more likely to multicommunicate in meetings if they feel that others in their organization also do it, and that it’s acceptable and appropriate to do so.

Anyway, there’s a lot more going on with our data, so as we’re figuring it out, I’ll post more.

Okay, I took a very, very long winter break. But I’m back to work and will be posting somewhat regularly again.