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Despite advances in information technology, telecommuting, or work away from the workplace (at home, on the road, etc.) via low‐bandwidth telephone lines, remains an inhibited phenomenon. High bandwidth communication available at the workplace, on the other hand, enables members of virtual teams to collaborate with peers and share information and knowledge despite being dispersed at several work locations. Members of virtual teams thus substitute real proximity to information resources and to knowledgeable peers with virtual proximity and are better positioned for effective group collaboration than telecommuters. The "telecommuting paradox" is that, despite enormous improvements in IT, the prevalence of telecommuting is lower than expected. In an attempt to shed light on the paradox, focuses on the infrastructural factors that have affected telecommuting throughout its history.

The changing role of technology in the virtual workplace has been accompanied by a proliferation of research activity focusing initially on the technical aspects and, more recently, on the social and political aspects of the diffusion process, including power and politics. This paper builds on the work of Kling and Markus on power and politics in IT, extending it to e‐mail and more specifically, to the use of e‐mail for petty tyranny. Reviews the literature on petty tyranny and its implications to IT and e‐mail. Presents a case study in which e‐mail was used by a department chair to manipulate, control, and coerce employees. The discussion links the events in the case with the literature on petty tyranny. In conclusion, demonstrates that e‐mail features make it amenable to political abuse and elaborates on the more general, theoretical, practical and ethical implications from this research.