Cellular telephones and wireless BlackBerry e-mail devices may be addictive, but most business executives insist that mobile technology has improved the balance between their work and home, a study said Thursday.

The study, by executive recruitment firm Korn/Ferry International, found that four out of five executives globally are always connected to work through mobile devices, such as cell phones, PDAs (personal digital assistants), laptops or pagers.

More than a third of 2,300 executives surveyed in 75 countries believed that they spent too much time connected to communications devices.

But more than 77 percent of respondents said they believe that mobile-communication devices primarily enhance their work-life balance rather than impede it.

Jim Craig, a spokesman for strategic communications firm Sitrick in New York, said his handheld BlackBerry has made a significant difference--and was mostly positive.

"It has helped me manage things without being (in) the office all the time. I travel a lot to South America, and I can use it there, in the street, or in New York," Craig said. "It has also made me much more efficient. Addicted? Some people have said that I am. It really is a part of my life now."

The BlackBerry, made by Ontario-based Research In Motion, became a technology must-have in the late 1990s as a tool that delivers e-mail automatically to users on the move as well as providing phone, text messaging, Internet, organizer and corporate data applications.

It is now jokingly called the CrackBerry by many users.

In the quarter ended on June 3, RIM shipped 1.2 million devices with the total number of BlackBerry subscribers rising by 680,000 to about 5.5 million, though the firm now faces competition from rival wireless devices entering the market.

The survey coincided with a U.S. academic warning that keeping employees on electronic leashes such as laptops, BlackBerrys and other devices could lead to lawsuits by those who grow addicted to the technology.

Gayle Porter, associate professor of management at the Rutgers University School of Business in New Jersey, wrote a paper now under review saying workers whose personal lives suffer due to work-induced tech addiction could turn on their employers, potentially suing them.

"These people that can't keep it within any reasonable parameters and have these problems in their lives at some point may say, 'My life is not all that great. How did this happen? Who can I blame for this?'" Porter said in an interview Thursday. "And they're going to say, 'The company.'"

In many major North American and European cities, businesspeople can be seen gazing nose-down into their BlackBerry screens, tapping out terse e-mails.

Porter says she isn't picking on RIM or the BlackBerry in particular, but she notes that terms like CrackBerry show that "there is, however lightheartedly, some acknowledgment that many people have kind of gotten out of control with using these devices."

Others complain of simply being unable to unplug at home, with laptops, e-mails or conference calls keeping them working into the wee hours.

Addiction to technology--blamed by critics on the seeming ubiquity of portable e-mail devices, smart phones, cell phones and laptops, coupled with long working hours--is hardly a new phenomenon.

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