New ways of working and power issues: how does telework transform employment relations?

While telework has been of great interest for scholars over the past decades, the analysis of the literature on the practice reveals that little is known about the power issues that occur from the negotiation of teleworking practices to their effective uses by social actors. Therefore, this research aims at questioning the ways telework uses are regulated through social dynamics, and how this social regulation process produces social norms. To do so, this paper aims to reintroduce the political dimension underlying the process of building social relationships in organizations by proposing an original articulation between the social regulation theory and the French theory of conventions in management. The results of a case study conducted within an insurance company located in Belgium (31 interviews) show to what extent social dynamics led to different logics of managing telework despite a common management policy on telework. The latter reflects an evolution of the normative framework through which the message has moved from "you must be in the office and work your hours!" to "organize yourself but be efficient!". These results aim at questioning how telework transforms the employment relations by providing spaces for emancipation or, on the contrary, by alienating workers.