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One of the main reasons businesses adopt Information Systems (IS) is to improve productivity (Mithas, Ramasubbu, & Sambamurthy, 2011). Organizations have realized improvements in productivity with the adoption of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) and in particular mobile devices (Hitt & Brynjolfsson, 1996; Wakefield & Whitten, 2006). The IS discipline centers on the idea that the use of IS will expedite business processes and ultimately increase profits and or lower costs. The adoption and use of mobile devices has progressed at an unprecedented rate in recent years (Lee et al., 2019; Prasopoulou, Pouloudi, & Panteli, 2006). The level at which employees are using their mobile devices to conduct work activities is also continuously increasing (Doargajudhur & Dell, 2018; Sørensen & Gibson, 2008).
Research on mobile device use is severely lacking and the importance of this subject will only increase as technology evolves and mobile devices become increasingly interconnected with our everyday lives. It is very important that firms understand the importance of the decisions they make in regard to supplying mobile devices and the influence that may have on the work-life balance of their employees. A small amount of qualitative research has been conducted that discusses mobile device functionality (Fui-Hoon, Siau, & Sheng, 2005) which is in contrast to the large amount of research found on the dysfunctionality (Mazmanian, Orlikowski, & Yates, 2004; C. Middleton & Cukier, 2006; Turel & Serenko, 2010; Wright Jr, Mooney, & Parham, 2011) of mobile devices. If mobile devices are so dysfunctional then why are so many companies supplying their employees with this technology? The dynamics of traditional work environments and designated work hours have drastically changed with the introduction of mobile devices and the implementation of software allowing online collaboration and social network utilization.