Analysis of the state of the art of the diffusion of smart working in Europe

Smart Working consists in an important organisational phenomenon defined by the Smart Working Observatory from Politecnico di Milano as ‘a new management philosophy founded on people having the flexibility and autonomy in choosing their spaces, their working hours and the tools they use, in return for being more accountable for the results’. Among the similar concepts to Smart Working, which vary between countries and perspectives and present different definitions and terminologies, ‘Work Smart’, ‘New Ways of Working’ or ‘New World of Work’ and ‘Flexible Working’ can be cited. The present thesis consists in identifying and analysing the dissemination of the state of the art in terms of diffusion of Smart Working and of organisational flexibility policies in the European panorama. The objective is, on the one hand, to provide a description of the European scenario in terms of the adoption of Smart Working practices in the private sector and, on the other hand, to identify the main differences between the Italian context and that of the most relevant European countries on this topic, which represent the best practices and trends. The work is focused on the study of the different smart working aspects, specifically referring to time and place flexibility, regulation and technology availability.