Do you fear telework. Understanding the Petrify Effect.

Telework is a chance to improve social, economic and environmental sustainability through the use of ICT. However the take up of telework has, up to now, been very slow: on average in the EU teleworkers account for only 1.7% of the total labor force. The article focuses on the cultural barriers visible in employees' and employers' attitudes to telework. Hence, the articles applies the theory of social institutionalization of Berger and Luckmann (1966) to the on-site working paradigm in order to understand how it produces a set of values opposed to the adoption of telework. To systematize and generalize how these barriers arise, the article introduces a new heuristic concept, the petrifying effect and examines its emergence through an ongoing case study, in which 20 employees of Turin’s municipality spend 80% of their time teleworking