Virtual work in Portugal: a literature review

Despite having been one of the first countries in Europe to introduce provisions in the labour law to promote virtual work and having made strong investments in ICT infrastructure, the adoption of virtual work in Portugal lags significantly behind most European countries. This paper examines the literature, official documents and databases to understand this lag. We found that, notwithstanding the difficulty to measure virtual work, it is possible to say that there were 1.8% of workers in 2005 involved in virtual work. In 2010, less than 3% were involved in virtual work, and in 2015 it grew to 8.2%. The paper identifies two main factors hindering the growth of virtual work: the legal framework and the organisational aspects of work.