Give me a mobile phone, and I will work harder! Assessing the value of mobile technologies in organizations : an exploratory research

Organizations have only recently realized the opportunities offered by the implementation of mobile technologies. Disrupting the spatial and global boundaries of organization, mobile technologies are indeed supposed to bring lots of benefits for organizations. It is now time to confront such supposed benefits to reality in order to know what are the real advantages and opportunities brought by mobile tools within firms. An exploratory empirical study, involving 80 managers in ten French companies, highlights different kinds of advantages and opportunities. This research shows that organizational and individual benefits are tightly intertwined and that each kind of benefits largely relies on the existence of the others. That is why we were led, in support of M.Mauss theoretical perspective, to conclude that the benefits brought by mobile tools in organizational contexts are linked to a "gift counter-gift" logic.