Corporate Nomads: Working at the Boundary Between Corporate Work and Digital Nomadism

Digital nomads are knowledge workers who leverage information technology (IT) to perpetually travel while working independently of any organizational membership. Corporate nomads are individuals who adopt a nomadic lifestyle but remain permanent employees, which places them in a field of tension between corporate work and digital nomadism—two conceptions of work previously deemed incompatible. To resolve this professional paradox, we conducted qualitative interviews with corporate nomads to better understand how they succeeded (or failed) in holding together two disparate fields with competing values and worldviews. Drawing on ideas from the boundary work literature, we developed a process model of boundary coworking in the context of corporate nomadism. The model incorporates the finding that corporate nomadism unfolds along three phases: (1) splintering, (2) calibrating, and (3) harmonizing. This requires mutual engagement in IT-driven boundary work from both the corporate nomad and their organizational environment. Consequently, corporate nomadism can be understood as an extreme form of “working from anywhere” in which individuals work as spatiotemporal outliers within otherwise settled organizational structures. Practitioners may find value in this study because it discusses managerial implications for recruiting, leading, and retaining corporate nomads.