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While the productivity paradox has now officially been pronounced dead, the argument and the evidence for this assertion are both at a macroeconomic level. What has been less closely examined is the microeconomic impact of recent developments in ICT on the productivity of office and knowledge workers. There is an assumption, readily seen in many advertisements for mobile technology, that multi-tasking, WiFi connected laptops, Blackberrys, smart phones and so on are good for business and make people more effective and productive. This may be true some of the time and there is some limited research which supports claims that these technologies increase productivity. However there are also emerging concerns that, in certain environments, these technologies may actually reduce productivity in both the short and the long term.
This paper examines this problem and explores research literatures in multitasking from a number of fields including organisational behaviour and ICT. While there is a long research tradition in the former, there has to date, been relatively little research in the ICT literature and almost none is to be found in the ICT evaluation literature. In particular, there is limited empirical evidence as to whether and when ICT enabled multitasking adds to or detracts from worker productivity and organisational output and such evidence as there is is problematic. Given the pervasive nature of this form of working and the increasing variety of tools which facilitate it, there is a strong case for more research into its implications. Drawing on these literatures, a framework of 36 theoretical multitasking situations (which distil down to 20 practical situations) is developed and analysed. It is proposed that while some of these are quite similar, others are fundamentally different and consequently that findings from one context cannot be generalised to others.
Keywords:
multitasking, multicommunication, productivity, effectiveness, efficiency, ICT evaluation
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