BUILDING DIGITAL WORKPLACES: THE BYOD APPROACH.

Abstract

The aim of our research is to provide an explorative analysis of the BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) phenomenon in order to understand if and how it can contribute to the creation of Digital Workplaces able to fulfill present and future market requirements and to minimize the Workplace Gap. The discussion about drivers and barriers of a BYOD strategy is still open and Italian companies are now approaching this topic. We conducted a research, based on semi-structured interviews, among firms that pioneered the implementation of BYOD in Italy in order to examine the perception of companies’ managers towards this topic. A Storytelling approach based on an Open Coding technique was used to analyze the results. The main findings show that companies interviewed are still experimenting with BYOD. Its implementation has to deal with both environmental factors and cultural dimensions and it varies according to the reasons that pushed companies towards its adoption. Nevertheless the companies interviewed present common traits: they all adopt a mixed strategy based on the choice between personal and corporate devices; limitations to BYOD adoption mainly depend on the internal compliance to the information security system; all Functions are involved in the program but top management and “workers on the move” are benefiting the most from its implementation, so far; enhanced mobility and cooperation both internal and external together with the self-organization of resources are perceived as BYOD main benefits; BYOD related policy is still a work in progress and some companies expect legislation to propose relevant guidelines.