The duality of mobility: understanding fluid organizations and stable interaction

Masao Kakihara Department of Information Systems London School of Economics and Political Science Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, United Kingdom Tel: +44 (0)20 7955 7655, Fax: +44 (0)20 7955 7385 [email protected] Abstract Debates concerning mobility are proliferating. Once looking at the issues of mobility, however, one can immediately find a vacuum within this emerging debate. The current mobility literature lacks a well-defined common ground and an effort for theorization, both of which are essential for sustainable development of any scholarly discourse in social sciences. To alleviate this, we propose to build an analytical lens that can integrate mobility studies in a coherent manner and facilitate the practice of theorization on mobility within the study of mobile devices and organizations. We do so by connecting two diverging perspectives on mobility that emerge from the current literature; one sees mobility as creating perpetual, stable and controllable contact, while the other views mobility as creating fluidity through the formation of ad-hoc, decontextualized contacts. By connecting these two views, we present the duality of mobility: stability in the interaction with routines creates/enables fluid organizations; thus, this perspective synthesizes mobility as stability.