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Is there a price telecommuters pay? Examining the relationship between telecommuting and objective career success
Abstract
Telecommuting has long been noted for its ability to foster work-family balance and job satisfaction. However, for employees seeking to advance in their careers, it is commonly advised to exercise caution, since telecommuting is often viewed as signaling a lack of dedication to one's career. Despite the prevalence of such advice, almost no research has investigated if telecommuting actually impacts career success in objective terms. Integrating research on the flexibility stigma and signaling theory, we first compared the career success of telecommuters and non-telecommuters using a sample of 405 employees matched with corporate data on promotion and salary growth. Then, we examined the relationship between extent of telecommuting and career success as well as the moderating influence of contextual factors. Results indicated telecommuters and non-telecommuters did not differ in number of promotions, but telecommuters experienced lower salary growth. Additionally, extent of telecommuting was negatively related to promotions and salary growth, indicating it is not simply telecommuting per se that effects career success, but rather the extent of telecommuting. Moreover, work context played a highly influential role. A greater number of promotions were received by extensive telecommuters when they worked where telecommuting was highly normative, and when they engaged in higher supplemental work. Extensive telecommuters with higher supplemental work and higher face-to-face contact with their supervisor also received greater salary growth. Together, results challenge previous research that has tended to portray telecommuting as harmful to one's career success by providing a more informed understanding of how to harness its benefits.
... However, prior to this pandemic, telecommuting was offered mostly as a voluntary part-time arrangement to employees. Advocates of telecommuting have also recommended part-time telecommuting for reaping the advantages of this arrangement without having to deal with its negative effects (Golden & Eddleston, 2020;Van Steenbergen et al., 2018). Generally, telecommuting offered before the pandemic was part-time telecommuting since employees usually worked from home only for a few days in a week and/or month and this sort of work arrangement was voluntary in the sense that workers themselves willingly opted for it . ...
... Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, telecommuting has attracted practitioners and researchers across disciplines because of the benefits it provides. Some of the reported benefits of telecommuting are greater flexibility, increase in job satisfaction, increased performance, higher productivity, better worklife balance (WLB), increased organizational commitment, decreased absenteeism, lower employee turnover and cost-saving not only for the organization but also for the employees (Delanoeije et al., 2019;Golden & Eddleston, 2020;Golden & Gajendran, 2019;Kwon et al., 2019;Nakrošienė et al., 2019;Van der Lippe & Lippényi, 2019). Most of the studies on telecommuting have focused on only one of its positive outcomes such as job satisfaction or productivity (Feng & Savani, 2020;Giovanis, 2018;Golden & Gajendran, 2019;Van der Lippe & Lippényi, 2019). ...
... The extent of telecommuting was assessed on a nominal scale by asking individuals how many days they telecommuted in a week. Additionally, in conformity with previous research and to add more robustness, employees were also asked to state how many days they telecommuted in a month (Golden & Eddleston, 2020;Golden & Veiga, 2005). A list of questionnaire items with their source of adoption has been given below in Table 2. ...
The present study measures the influence of telecommuting on job satisfaction by taking job autonomy, schedule flexibility and work control, work–life balance and reduced job stress as outcome variables of telecommuting. The role of job satisfaction has also been investigated in determining organizational commitment and turnover intention. Confirmatory factor analysis was done to test the fitness of the data to the model along with ensuring the convergent and discriminant validity of the data. For testing the proposed hypotheses, the structural equations modelling technique was used. Results from the study confirm the role of telecommuting in enhancing the overall job satisfaction of employees which in turn improves their level of organizational commitment and reduces turnover intention. The findings of the study contribute empirically to the literature on voluntary part-time telecommuting and provide implications for the proper adoption of a part-time telecommuting arrangement post-COVID-19 and the using of telecommuting as a talent retention strategy.
... Estimates suggest that less than 3% of the American and European workforce were working remotely more than half of the week before the COVID-19 pandemic (Eurofound, 2017;Wang et al., 2021). Consequently, most research on remote work (a) has been conducted in contexts in which remote work was infrequent, and (b) has conflated high-intensity and occasional WFH (Golden & Eddleston, 2020;Wang et al., 2021). Furthermore, research has predominantly focused on WFH outcomes (Beauregard et al., 2019), devoting much less attention to the causes and mechanisms leading to employees' successful adjustment to high-intensity WFH. ...
... Consistent with this idea, the literature on remote work generally shows that high-intensity (vs. low-intensity) remote work is associated with less positive work and career outcomes (Allen et al., 2015;Golden & Eddleston, 2020). Taken together, these findings suggest that a lack of visibility in the workplace exposes high-intensity remote workers to unique challenges that may hamper their adjustment to the WFH situation. ...
... That is because cues about appropriate behavior provided by the work context (i.e., climate perceptions) help to reduce the uncertainty associated with unfamiliar situations (Salancik & Pfeffer, 1978). Recent evidence suggests that the work environment is indeed a critical factor that contributes to individual WFH outcomes (Adamovic et al., 2021;Golden & Eddleston, 2020). ...
The COVID-19 pandemic has precipitated a massive adoption of high-intensity work-from-home (WFH), a form of work organization that is expected to persist. Yet, little is known about the predictors and mechanisms underlying employees’ successful adjustment to high-intensity WFH. Drawing on signaling theory, we identify psychological climate for face time (i.e., an employee’s perception that their organization values physical presence in the office) as an antecedent of WFH adjustment. We argue that when WFH employees perceive that their organization encourages face time, they may view availability as a signal of their dedication to work, replacing visibility. Consequently, they feel expected to be extensively available (e.g., check emails outside of regular working hours). In turn, these perceived expectations predict lower adjustment to WFH. We further explore whether this process differs in the US and two European countries, France and Spain, given different employment protection and right to disconnect legislations, and different meanings attached to work ethics. In a two-wave study on a sample of 532 full-time WFH employees, structural equation modeling analyses show that perceptions of availability expectations mediate the negative relationship between psychological climate for face time and WFH adjustment, and that this process is accentuated in the US.
... Such isolation could also put pressure on workers to more actively engage in supervisor impression management, in an effort to gain greater visibility (Barsness et al., 2005). The findings of a recent study (Golden and Eddleston, 2020) suggest that, while remote working per se does not impact career progression, a lack of frequent face-to-face interaction with managers can impair one's career progression and salary growth. This is coherent with studies based on the data from the early days of remote work (Konrad and Yang, 2012). ...
... The findings also confirm the positive effects of high-quality of LMX in remote work settings. Studies argue that these positive effects are strengthened by the normativity of remote work in organizations (Gajendran et al., 2015;Golden and Eddleston, 2020;Martínez-Sánchez et al., 2007), frequent leader-subordinate communication, a high degree of dispersion (Gajendran and Joshi, 2012), and extensive time spent working remotely . At the same time, it has been suggested that the moderating effect of the extent of remote work on job satisfaction may be curvilinear (Golden, 2006b;Virick et al., 2010), meaning that workers are most satisfied when they experience a high quality of LMX in combination with a moderate extent of remote work. ...
This review discusses the challenges associated with the sustainability of remote workplaces, which have become more prevalent due to the growing trend of work digitalization and the pandemic-induced push to remote work. These challenges are highlighted in literature across various disciplines, including information systems, but these discourses have remained isolated from each other. In this review, we consolidated and synthesized research on remote work from the perspective of individual workers by reviewing 187 articles published between 1999 and 2020 in recognized academic journals from fields including information systems, organizational studies, economics, human resources, sociology, and psychology. We identified five key themes that concern opportunities and challenges to sustainable remote workplaces: (1) key characteristics , (2) work-life boundaries; (3) health and well-being; (4) social interaction, and (5) leadership. Building on our findings we created a framework that recognizes two interrelated categories of factors influencing remote workplace sustainability-rigid base characteristics and contextual remote workplace variables-that together shape the trajectory of remote workplace sustainability in the long term. The framework also identifies the potential role of information systems in modulating the impact of the base characteristics to build continuities that encourage more sustainable remote workplaces. The paper concludes by offering a research agenda for information systems for sustainable remote workplaces based on the three IS theoretical frames: inclusion, dignity, and boundary objects.
... They believe that Frontiers in Psychology 04 frontiersin.org their own efforts determine work performance, which can enhance employees' confidence, stimulate their morale, and enhance their autonomy (Golden and Eddleston, 2020). Finally, the reduction of direct supervision in telecommuting weakens employees' work tension and discomfort, allowing them to try new ways of working freely and boldly, thus enhancing their perception of job autonomy (Harker Martin and MacDonnell, 2012). ...
... First, this study deepens the understanding of the effectiveness of telecommuting and expands the in-depth analysis of the effects of telecommuting on employee' work engagement. Previous research on telecommuting has mostly been conducted in a Western context (Golden and Veiga, 2016;Silva-C et al., 2019;Golden and Eddleston, 2020), leading to limited generalizability. Driven by the digital wave sweeping the world and the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, telecommuting has emerged in China at an unstoppable pace. ...
Purpose
Drawing on the Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) model, this study aims to explore how telecommuting affects employee’ work engagement, and consider how perceived supervisor support moderates this effect.
Design/methodology/approach
A time-lagged study was conducted on 286 employees from four enterprises in southern China.
Findings
The results showed that telecommuting both decreased work engagement by triggering work–family conflict and enhanced work engagement by increasing job autonomy. In addition, perceived supervisor support enhanced the positive direct effect of telecommuting on job autonomy and the indirect effect on employee’ work engagement, while perceived supervisor support weakened the negative direct effect of telecommuting on work–family conflict and the indirect effect on employee’ work engagement.
Originality/value
This study enrich the literature on telecommuting and employee engagement, and emphasize the importance of perceived supervisor support in this context. Additionally, this study provides some practical implications for companies to adapt and manage telecommuting.
... Currently WFH still face various barriers. Golden and Eddleston (2020) find empirical support in survey based research for some negative outcomes in promotions, raises, and career success for those pursuing flexible work arrangements including WFH. Firms that have not adopted WFH are likely to doubt productivity of WFH workers (see Aguilera, et al. 2016), though WFH were also found to be more productive than traditional office work (SHRM 2018) due to reasons such as less absenteeism. ...
... There is also general managerial concern on control and surveillance for WFH workers (Coenen and Kok 2014), or a career path concerns with limited in-person presence (Golden and Eddleston 2020), both related to an appropriate psychosociological distance (Belanger, 1999;Taskin and Devos 2005;Wilton et al., 2011). Best practice human resources policies need to be further discussed for a healthy and sustaining labor relations. ...
While work from home (WFH) becomes the new norm in the COVID-19 pandemic and while small businesses could be more vulnerable in crisis, whether the WFH norm will fade after the stay-at-home mandate ended and whether WFH could be a Schumpeterian “creative” force that helps small businesses do well in the pandemic is unknown. The study first builds a theoretical framework based on marginal revenue product cost utility theory subject to a “contagion” agglomeration parameter and argues that WFH is a rational choice for businesses. Then, we compiled from multiple data sources an up-to-date real-time daily and weekly multifaceted data set tracking WFH propensity from March 20 through July 28. Our empirical analysis estimated a variety of fixed-effects panel data models, population-averaged generalized linear panel-data models with the generalized estimating equation (GEE) approach, and two-level mixed-effects panel-data models. After controlling for the local pandemic, economic, and demographic factors, we find (1) after the stay-at-home order ended, WFH rate got higher; (2) small businesses in states with higher WFH rate are more likely to have higher increases in operating revenue, better cash flow and lower chances of temporary closure. Our robust empirics confirm our theories and hypotheses and demonstrate WFH as a potential force that expedited the “creative destruction” into a new efficient work paradigm.
... One may argue that the individuals' personal initiative to benefit their organization may override the impact exercised by perceived organization politics on the supervisory assessment of the subordinates' career growth prospects. The subordinates' personal initiative will likely signal to the supervisor that the subordinate concerned has the individual willingness to contribute to organizational growth and the ability to surpass the organizational and supervisory expectations about job performance (Golden and Eddleston, 2020). Besides, such personal initiative conveys the other-benefiting benevolent will of the subordinates, although the benevolent will may still be political (Ferris et al., 2019). ...
Purpose
This study addresses a central research question: Does employees' personal initiative, with a benevolent political will, lead to career growth prospects in a work environment replete with perceived organizational politics? Drawing upon self-determination, signalling, and social cognitive theories, the authors examine how perceptions of organizational politics operate to limit the influence of benevolent political will – induced personal initiative on career growth prospects.
Design/methodology/approach
This research adopts a quantitative research design. This multi-wave, multi-sample and multi-source investigation includes 730 subordinate-supervisor dyads from India's information technology, education and manufacturing companies. The sample comprises 236 full-time faculty members from higher educational institutions and 496 mid-level managers from technical and service departments of information technology and manufacturing companies.
Findings
The results indicate that benevolent political will is significantly related to career growth prospects. In addition, perceptions of organizational politics shows a crossover interaction effect. The findings reveal that the indirect relationship between benevolent political will and career growth prospects changed significantly from those with a low perception of organizational politics to significantly negative among those perceiving organizational politics as high.
Practical implications
This study provides several implications for practice regarding personal initiative, benevolent political will and perceptions of organizational politics.
Originality/value
The significant contributions of this study are to provide new insights into the relationship between benevolent political will and career growth prospects and to unravel the paradoxical nature of the personal initiative phenomenon.
... Now, employees who were considered heavily disadvantaged under lockdown restrictions were thought to experience some of the greatest benefits from the flexibility afforded though continued home and hybrid working. While recognised work-life balance benefits from working remotely are not new (eg, Kossek et al., 2006), what may have changed is the proportion of employees experience these benefits without attracting the stigma attached to remote working when it less common (Golden and Eddleston, 2020) or are simply prepared to accept such a trade-off. ...
This project, led jointly by the Policy Institute at King's and the King's Business School, is the first phase of a major programme of work to convene a group of large London-based employers and policy stakeholders to understand how the pandemic has impacted the way Londoners work, what the future of work in the city will look like, and how these changes have affected employers, employees, and London as a whole. This will be achieved through a place-based, evidence-driven, and co-productive approach, which will develop and identify lessons for London in particular, and UK and international cities in general.
... But, the lack of contact may lead to social problems from isolation (Golden et al., 2008;Tsiligirides, 1993;Venkatesh & Speier, 2000). Another disadvantage is stunted teleworker salary growth (Golden & Eddleston, 2020), as well as pervasive employer control (Sewell & Taskin, 2015). ...
The aim of this article is to better understand the role of telework in resilience during the pandemic. The authors analyze the results from five online surveys from March 2020 to February 2021. The corpus results from the compilation of different sources: written reports on March 2020, a narrative survey on April 2020, a quantitative survey on May 2020, a second narrative survey on December 2020, and finally, three focus groups on February 2021. Thus, the transcription of 1,299 managers is studied following the textual data analysis methods. The findings indicate that the role of telework differs according to whether the resilience is individual or collective. It also changes over time and differs according to the process of resilience which the authors propose to divide into three phases: preventive resilience (before the disaster), reactive resilience (during the disaster), and curative resilience (after the disaster). The authors use the results of the resilience study to discuss implications for the development of telework as a digital tool and practice.
... Many negatives are linked to social isolation and communication (Maier et al., 2022) or failure to fulfill work tasks, or these problems can lead to a loss of motivation (Ngamkroeckjoti et al., 2022). So it is still true that voluntary and desired work from home is an advantage, but long-term duration can disrupt social ties and the possibility of promotion, or professional success (Golden and Eddleston, 2020). It is noteworthy, that findings on the advantages and disadvantages in the literature vary and are inconclusive. ...
The identification of differences in managers' approach to motivation, ways
of motivation of employees and their application in selected family and nonfamily businesses is the issue that we address in this paper. The main goal of
the contribution is to bring a proposal for improving the motivation of
employees in these two companies, considering their nature. We will fill its
essence with partial objectives, which include the analysis of the current state
of motivation in both types of companies, the identification of differences in
the approach of managers and their mutual comparison, and last but not least,
the proposal of a solution. The methods used include: questionnaire survey,
analysis, synthesis and comparison. The benefit of the contribution is the
proposal of solutions that can improve motivation in family and non-family
businesses and the proposal of the optimal selection of the motivation variant
using multicriteria analysis.
... Researchers have also examined the signaling practices of firms in various contexts such as reputation management, interpersonal communications, brand signaling, product recommendations (Chen et al., 2019), online health communities, and service failure communication . A wide range of signals can be present in communication that can potentially affect a message's interpretation among recipients (Connelly et al., 2011;Gkikas et al., 2022;Golden & Eddleston, 2020). A recent study has shown that the presence of a combination of signals (response strategy and linguistic cues) can positively influence the users' reactions (Li et al., 2022). ...
The enormous presence of users over social media platforms (SMPs) has been harnessed by B2B marketers and researchers across the innovation process. However, limited research has examined the marketing of firms’ industrial innovation practices over SMPs. Through the lens of signaling theory, we identified the presence of organizational, product, process, marketing, and social innovation operations in their SM posts. These posts were further analyzed using multimodal analytical techniques to identify their embedded textual and visual features. The results indicate that using SMPs for announcing industrial innovation practices is essential. It also shows the prevalence of users’ interest in the information relevant to organizational innovation practices of B2B firms. Our study provides a guidebook for social media managers that leads them from “what” to “how” while designing social media posts for effective user engagement.
... Bakker and van Woerkom (2017) emphasize that, beyond the relevance of the organizational context, personal resources are another source that determines flow's emergence. In general, telework is a complex work arrangement (Allen et al., 2013) that is useful for certain individuals and certain contexts Gajendran & Harrison, 2007;Golden & Eddleston, 2020;Golden & Gajendran, 2019). Given these recognitions, and the lack of studies at the within-person flow-performance level, we examined conscientiousness as a moderator of the flow-performance link. ...
Prior research suggests that telework often is associated with higher job performance. However, this research primarily has treated days teleworking as interchangeable with one another. Given the recent surge in telework, it is important to ask how much performance varies among days spent working at home and what psychological and contextual factors explain such within-person variability. This information can assist organizations deciding how to best implement policies and support workers at home. Here, we suggest that intrusions and social isolation are obstacles to achieving flow while teleworking, such that higher daily levels of each will hinder flow on those days. In turn, this lack of flow should be associated with worsened daily performance while teleworking. To investigate these ideas, we asked 97 teleworkers to respond to a series of daily measures for up to four days (296 data points). Results showed that performance varied significantly among teleworking days, with both daily intrusions and daily isolation negatively predicting flow, which further mediated the relationship between intrusions and reduced task performance. Isolation did not significantly mediate this relationship. Moreover, conscientious individuals were especially able to leverage higher flow for performance. We discuss implications of these results.
... That absence reduces networking, knowledge-sharing, and informal mentoring (Allen, Golden, and Shockley 2015;Beauregard, Basile, and Canónico 2019); and supervisors and co-workers may suspect that teleworkers are less dedicated to their careers (Allen, Golden, and Shockley 2015;Athanasiadou and Theriou 2021). Golden and Eddleston (2020) found grounds for their worries: salaries rose faster for those who came into the office than for those who teleworked frequently (see also Allen, Golden, and Shockley 2015). The meta-analysis found little evidence that teleworkers have stronger worries about career prospects, however; the net effect was essentially zero (Gajendran and Harrison 2007). ...
Evidence has been somewhat mixed on how telework affects job satisfaction, career advancement, and relationships with supervisors. Larger samples and better measures of telework and control variables, however, suggest that frequent telework increased satisfaction with jobs, advancement opportunities, fair treatment, supervisors, and co-workers in both the 2012–2015 and the 2020 Federal Employee Viewpoint Surveys. A quasi-experimental analysis shows that switching to frequent telework during the pandemic decreased turnover intentions. Employees now understand the benefits of teleworking. Supervisors must learn to communicate and monitor performance online in this new reality or face increased resistance and turnover.
... Approaches regarding work undertaken outside the traditional office space are referred to as teleworking [16,[37][38][39], remote work [18,39,40], work from home [41,42], or online work [43]. Teleworking has been studied in terms of family life through the lens of managerial theories and psychology. ...
The COVID-19 pandemic imposed a large-scale adoption of teleworking in various fields, accepted by many employers as the ideal solution to protect their employees against the risk of contracting SARS-CoV-2. Working from home generated substantial savings for organisations and also contributed to alleviating employee stress. In addition to the potential positive effects, telework during COVID-19 favoured counterproductive behaviour, job insecurity, and intention to retire because of the negative outcomes generated by the growing conflict between personal life and working from home and professional and social isolation. The purpose of this research is to define and analyse a conceptual model capable of highlighting the way in which telework, job insecurity, and work–life conflict led to professional isolation and turnover intention, and finally, to the counterproductive behaviour of employees during the COVID-19 pandemic. This research was implemented using employees in Romania, an emerging European economy severely affected by the recent pandemic. The results have been analysed with the help of structural equations in SmartPLS, thus reflecting a significant influence of teleworking on work–life conflict, professional isolation, intentions, and insecurity during the pandemic. The insecurity of employees trained in teleworking contributes significantly to enhancing work–life conflict and professional isolation.
... The future of this new mode of work seeks to establish itself in our society, even if its long-term benefits are not entirely convincing (Wang et al., 2021). For example, the conveniences of teleworking at home, the social isolation of coworkers, and the lack of physical presence of supervisors could compromise work performance (Golden & Eddleston, 2020;Wolf et al., 2009). Similarly, a lack of social interaction demotivates the employer, and fixed schedules without being able to enjoy the freedom to be at home can lead to a monotonous workday. ...
... Telecommuting was one of the prime prerequisites when people tend to adopt a 'new normal' situation due to a pandemic. Telecommuters may foster work-life balance and job satisfaction as well as can affect the employees' career success [45]. Nayak and Pandit [46] stated that telecommuting could influence employee productivity levels. ...
... Prior studies also connected teleworking to intensified work (e.g. Avgoustaki & Bessa, 2019;Bathini & Kandathil, 2019;Kelliher & Anderson, 2010), increased work exhaustion (Golden, 2012), and decreased career opportunities, such as lower salary growth (Golden & Eddleston, 2020) and promotion rates (Bloom et al., 2015). The negative impact of telework extends beyond teleworkers, with literature showing that the practice has negative spill-overs on individuals who have reported higher intentions to quit and reduced job satisfaction when their co-workers or managers telecommute (Golden, 2007;Golden & Fromen, 2011). ...
Researchers and practitioners are becoming increasingly concerned with the consequences of modern work arrangements for our understanding of work. This article, alongside the four papers which are included in the special issue, explores the implications of new ways of working for employees. We conceptualise new ways of working as an ongoing transformative process, characterised by unprecedented spread, speed and depth of transformation, and highlight four major changes in work which impact employees’ experiences. We critically evaluate the implications of each change for employees’ attitudes, performance and wellbeing, and suggest areas where more research is needed to deepen our knowledge about how modern work arrangements affect employees.
... Negative career repercussions have been associated with remote work. For example, Golden and Eddleston (2020) found extent of telecommuting was associated with reduced salary growth and number of promotions across 6 years. ...
Our review highlights key contributions to the work‐family literature, including research published in Personnel Psychology. We review foundational key constructs (e.g., work‐family conflict), theories (e.g., boundary management), and methodology and measurement issues (e.g., episodic versus levels approaches) at the intersection of work and family. We then review select topics that move from the more micro (e.g., individual emotions and health) to the more macro (e.g., cross‐cultural) in scope. In addition, taking stock of the work‐family field's trajectory, we mapped future research directions that have been posed by researchers over the past two decades in previous narrative reviews and examine the extent that they have been heeded within the Personnel Psychology work‐family literature. We use insights from the past and from contemporary research, as well as from societal trends, to provide a set of “next generation” future research directions. Finally, we provide practical implications from the research to date. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved
... Mnohé negatíva sa začínajú prejavovať s dlhodobým vykonávaním práce z domu a sú výsostne spojené so sociálnou izoláciou (Wang a kol., 2020) a komunikáciou (Maier a kol., 2022), či neplnením pracovných úloh, prípadne môžu tieto problémy viesť k strate motivácie zamestnancov (Ngamkroeckjoti a kol., 2022). Stále teda platí, že dobrovoľná a želaná práca z domu je výhodou, benefitom, no dlhodobé trvanie môže narušiť sociálne väzby, možnosť rozvoja a povýšenia, prípadne profesionálneho úspechu (Golden, Eddleston, 2020). Mnohé zistenia od autorov o výhodách a nevýhodách "pandemickej práce z domu" sa v literatúre líšia a nie sú jednoznačne rozčlenené z dôvodu prelínania sa pre zamestnancov a zamestnávateľov. ...
At the beginning of the pandemic an involuntary implementation of work from home practices was considered a short-term solution. The continuous pandemic has resulted in a work from home phenomenon. It is assumed that work from home can create substantial savings. The question is, therefore, whether work from home can reduce labour cost and be a cost saving tool for more efficient business. This paper analyzes the link between work from home and labour cost in 29 European countries. Analyzed data from Eurostat for the period 2019-2021 suggest a strong link between work from home and labour cost regardless of the frequency of use (sometimes or usually). We can observe an increasing dependence of these two variables, which will be apparently reflected as a trend in the nearest future. Growing inputs in the form of an increase in the price of electricity and gas forces us to reconsider the strict functioning of the on site work.
... Previous studies show that job satisfaction among employees working at the office may be affected by the frequency of their colleagues teleworking (170,171). As found in this thesis, stress related to indistinct organization and conflicts was associated with the academics having a high telework frequency (Paper I). ...
Background: Telework reshapes the conventional work practice by providing the flexibility to perform work at new places and times. Telework can increase individual autonomy to control and organize work, but can also place higher demands on the ability to separate work-nonwork in time and space, physically and mentally. Leaders’ abilities to manifest trusting relationship with staff, and support them seems important during telework. Academic staff are frequent teleworkers, but little is known about how it may impact on their well-being. The overall aim of this thesis was to investigate how academic teaching and research staff practice telework and how telework affects their well-being at work. Another aim was to investigate the experiences of academic managers leading teleworkers in academia.
Methods: Study I was a cross-sectional survey and examined the association between the amount and frequency of telework and perceived health aspects. Study II was conducted with assessments of psychophysiological activity, pos- tures and movements, and with daily self-ratings on stress, fatigue, and recu- peration, to compare exposures during telework and work at the conventional workplace. Study III and study IV had qualitative study design and were based on semi-structured interviews using an inductive phenomenographic approach. Results: Academics who teleworked several times per week or more reported more work-related stress related to indistinct organization and conflicts, and individual demands and commitment, compared to academics who teleworked less. The psychophysiological activity indicated more relaxation before and after workhours during teleworking days. Academics had overall sedentary be- haviors regardless of work location, alternated more between sitting and stand- ing during working hours during telework than at the ordinary workplace. The academics’ experiences of telework were related to work tasks, coping strate- gies, workgroup relationships, and policies/regulations, which were mostly in- terrelated. Collectively, the process of change of managers’ conditions and ex- periences of leading teleworkers before, during and after the pandemic were related to digital and social interaction, work performance, the work environ- ment in, and regulations of, telework.
Conclusions: The use of different research designs and methods showed that telework in academia could impact biological, psychological, social and pro- fessional aspects of academics’ well-being. The perspective of academic man- agers showed that the organizational context could impact on the conditions for providing academics with support in telework. We argue future studies to adopt different research designs and methods when studying well-being in tel- ework, and especially consider the professional and organizational context in telework.
... Many negatives are linked to social isolation (Wang et al., 2020) and communication (Maier et al., 2022) or failure to fulfill work tasks, or these problems can lead to a loss of motivation (Ngamkroeckjoti et al., 2022). So it is still true that voluntary and desired work from home is an advantage, but long-term duration can disrupt social ties and the possibility of promotion, or professional success (Golden and Eddleston, 2020). It is noteworthy, that findings on the advantages and disadvantages in the literature vary and are inconclusive. ...
At the beginning of the pandemic an involuntary implementation of work from home practices was considered a short-term solution. The continuous pandemic has resulted in a work from home phenomenon. It is assumed that work from home can create substantial savings. The question is, therefore, whether work from home can reduce labour cost and be a cost saving tool for more efficient business. This paper analyzes the link between work from home and labour cost in 29 European countries. Analyzed data from Eurostat for the period 2019-2021 suggest a strong link between work from home and labour cost regardless of the frequency of use (sometimes or usually). We can observe an increasing dependence of these two variables, which will be apparently reflected as a trend in the nearest future. Growing inputs in the form of an increase in the price of electricity and gas forces us to reconsider the strict functioning of the on site work.
... Career success can be both objective and subjective. Objective career success (OCS) is tangible professional achievements related to variables or indicators such as salary, job position, promotions [20,21], occupational prestige [22], political will [23], labor mobility [24], hierarchy, gender, age and working hours [25]. In contrast, subjective career success (SCS) refers to the individual's judgment regarding their career, professional satisfaction, self-perceived evaluation of professional well-being [26,27], professional orientation [28] and vocation and work commitment [29]. ...
Alumni tracking studies at the local, regional and global levels provide quality and efficiency measurement parameters in higher education institutions and project improvements in the quality of professionals. However, there is a gap between alumni tracking and the measurement of career success, influencing the academic offer of careers relevant to labor demands. This article aims to propose a model for predicting career success through the analysis, extraction and evolutionary optimization of objective and subjective variables to determine the role of alumni tracking in a higher education institution. The methodology establishes (i) an analysis of information on the alumni program and career success, (ii) prediction models of career success using genetic algorithms, (iii) validation of prediction models and (iv) the relationship between alumni tracking and career success. The results show models for predicting career success using a genetic algorithm with high certainty percentages, where the objective variables’ weight significantly influences the predictive model. However, subjective variables show importance depending on individual characteristics and their value schemes or goals of graduates. As a recommendation, universities could include a monitoring system for their graduates, which is crucial in adapting to the curriculum, especially in strategic technical and human ethical issues.
... However, based on several widely adopted telework conceptualizations and it key dimensions in existing telework literature, Allen et al. (2015) propose a more inclusive definition, which is increasingly considered in the literature(e.g. Darouei & Pluut, 2021;Golden & Eddleston, 2020;Okubo et al., 2021). They define clearly telework as 'a work practice that involves members of an organization substituting a portion of their typical work hours (ranging from a few hours per week to nearly full-time) to work away from a central workplace-typically principally from home-using technology to interact with others as needed to conduct work tasks' . ...
Advances in information and communications technology have contributed to the spread of telework, which has been underway since the early 2000s. During the COVID-19 pandemic, telework became more than just an alternative to the traditional office: it became a strategic means of survival for many companies. Given its importance, in the last two decades, the scientific community has shown increased interest in the factors that affect successful telework. However, knowledge on this subject remains fragmented and disparate. This study aims to synthesise the literature on successful telework and consolidate its success factors into a framework that provides conceptual and holistic knowledge on the topic. Our findings demonstrate that telework is affected by factors categorised into five groups: technological materials, non-technological materials, teleworkers, teleworker work environment and teleworker family environment. A number of these factors has causal links, while some have become irrelevant and given way to new factors over time. Some have been confirmed to have an overall positive effect on telework. In addition to proposing a theoretical perspective and future research avenues, this study presents some HRM implications to help managers and policymakers make telework more effective.
... People have worked from home for centuries. 6 Before the COVID-19 pandemic, WFH was often undertaken on a voluntary basis with work arrangements negotiated by employers and employees, 7 and much of the extant literature before 2020 reflects this, with a focus on outcomes such as family functioning, 8 perceived objective career success, 9 satisfaction with teleworking, 10 and productivity. 11 Allen et al 12 provided an overview of research findings relating to the implications of voluntary/requested telecommuting for both work and nonwork outcomes, but little is known about individual employee outcomes associated with recommended or mandated WFH. ...
Objective:
To investigate whether work-family conflict (WFC) and/or family-work conflict (FWC) mediated the relationship between workplace characteristics and general health and job satisfaction in a sample of workers working from home (WFH) in a recommended/mandatory context due to COVID-19 measures.
Methods:
Data were collected via online questionnaire as part of the Employees Working from Home study. Analyses in this paper utilised data collected at two time points six months apart, including 965 complete responses from the first questionnaire and 451 complete responses from the second questionnaire.
Results:
Relationships between predictor and outcome variables were in the directions expected, and both WFC and FWC mediated these relationships.
Conclusions:
Work-life interaction partly explains the relationship between work characteristics and general health and job satisfaction health in a population undertaking involuntary WFH.
... En Perú, la llegada de la COVID-19 ha obligado a muchas instituciones a adoptar el teletrabajo para continuar con sus actividades (17) y el hecho ha sido considerado como un medio para sobrevivir o una oportunidad para prosperar (24) . Para los trabajadores, esta nueva modalidad ha representado o el fomento del equilibrio entre el trabajo y la familia (25) o una sobrecarga laboral (14,26) . ...
Introduction:
To design and validate a scale of perception of teleworking in Peruvian primary schoolteachers.
Method:
This was a cross-sectional study of 400 primary schoolteachers (61.5% women) between 21 and 61 years of age, from six cities in Peru. Eight items were proposed, corresponding to indicators of training, safety, and flexibility of schedules, derived from the scientific literature. The scale was validated by seven experts who evaluated the relevance, representativeness and clarity of the items. Subsequently, we applied exploratory f (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), using the FACTOR Analysis program and SPSS AMOS version 21.
Results:
The Aiken V indicators were statistically significant for the eight items. Before running the AFE, we calculated the KMO coefficient (0.93) and Bartlett's test (1832.9; gl = 28; p = 0.00). A single factor explained 62.27% of the total variance of the scale and its factor loadings ranged from 0.65 to 0.84. The CFA corroborated the internal structure of the scale (?2 = 58.24, df = 20, p < 0.01; RMR = 0.03; TLI = 0.97; CFI = 0.97; and RMSEA = 0.06) and the reliability was acceptable (? = 0.93; 95% CI = 0.89 - 0.92).
Conclusions:
The scale demonstrates evidence of content-based validity, internal structure and reliability.
This article deals with selected ambivalences of leadership communication in the digital age. These ambivalences arise from the highly dynamic and complex nature of information in the digital age as well as from the challenges of leading virtual or hybrid teams. To communicate authentically and successfully leaders need to combine rapid-decision making under uncertainty with a long-term vision that provides stable and lasting solutions. Moreover, they need to be able to collaborate with their team and focus on a consensus-oriented communication approach while still occupying a higher hierarchical position that requires them to provide orientation and goals. With regard to leadership in virtual or hybrid teams, leaders need to use digital technology appropriately to stay in control of work progress and results while at the same time establishing a culture of trust and autonomy without losing their connection to the company’s culture and values. In this context it is likewise important to balance distance and closeness, that is, to be attentive to the well-being and individual needs of the employees without violating their privacy. Finally, leadership communication needs both rational and emotional components to combine task-oriented and people-oriented leadership.
This study documents the changes in work from home (WFH) practices since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic using panel data from original firm surveys in Japan. Particular attention has been given to the productivity dynamics of WFH. The results indicate the following: First, compared to when the first state of emergency was declared in Spring 2020, at the end of 2021, the ratio of firms utilizing WFH and the intensity of WFH decreased substantially. Second, according to the firms’ evaluations, the mean productivity of WFH improved by more than 10 percentage points, although it was still approximately 20% lower than that of conventional workplaces. The selection effect arising from the exit from this practice among firms with low WFH productivity, and the improvement in productivity among WFH-continuing firms contributed almost equally to the average productivity growth. Third, the majority of firms are planning to discontinue WFH practices and revert to the conventional work style after the end of COVID-19, and the gap between firms’ plans and the desire of remote workers is widening.
JEL Classification: D24, J24, J81, M12, M54
The choice of a workplace, in the public or private sector, is not accidental. The paper presents a study on the public—private intersectoral gap in job satisfaction (JS). Given the observed wage premium in the private sector, it can be assumed that there are non-monetary forms of compensation for the wage loss in the public sector. They are expected to manifest themselves in job safety during periods of recession, which might affect the intersectoral gap in job satisfaction. Evaluation on panel data with fixed individual effects allows solving the problem of self-selection into a certain sector. A study based on RLMS-HSE data shows that in the period 2002—2021 the intersectoral gap in job satisfaction, as well as its elements — satisfaction with the labour contract, salary and promotion, — was generally insignificant. This does not rule out self-selection into a particular sector but explains the low level of transitions between the sectors. A significant intersectoral gap in job satisfaction is revealed for less competitive groups in the labor market during crises. This is the evidence of negative self-selection. During the COVID-19 pandemic, women, young workers (17—34 years old), and at other times, workers over 55 years old employed in the public sector rated JS significantly higher. Negative self-selection into the public sector is more likely to be attributed to specific socio-demographic groups than to the entire sector. Wage, as well as its degree in comparison to the average one in the profession in the local labor market, affects the JS of public employees to a lesser extent. This suggests that public workers are less sensitive to monetary rewards and value job safety, self-realization opportunities and a sense of usefulness of work for society more.
One aspect of telework that has been underresearched is the effect of telework on interpersonal collaboration. Relatively little is known about how employees collaborate when they telework. Drawing on boundary theory and goal setting theory, we examined the impact of telework participation on three types of interpersonal collaboration (horizontal, vertical, and inter-work unit) and then tested the role of organizational goal clarity as a potential moderator in strengthening or weakening these relationships. The results of a series of fixed effects regression models show that telework participation rates are negatively associated with all three types of interpersonal collaboration. We also found that organizational goal clarity mitigates such negative relationships. Our findings contribute to the growing literature on telework and interpersonal collaboration, focusing on the crucial role of organizational goal clarity.
El presente artículo se basa en la obtención de resultados de la evaluación realizada a la Licenciatura en Derecho de la Facultad de Derecho y Criminología de
la Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León (UANL) durante el año 2019. Esta evaluación fue realizada por académicos expertos en derecho, con conocimiento en
los estándares internacionales de la calidad de esta disciplina, provenientes de
Canadá, Estados Unidos, España y México. Se aplicó el modelo de evaluación
GRANA que se basa en un sistema decimal de evaluación denominado “modelo
SIEVAS”, compuesto por 10 dimensiones, 100 subdimensiones y 1000 indicadores de calidad cualitativa de segunda y tercera generación. El proceso consta de
10 momentos que inician con la evaluación interna y concluyen con los resultados
obtenidos de la evaluación externa. El 95% del proceso fue realizado a distancia
con el apoyo de la plataforma informática SIEVAS y el 5% fue realizado en una
visita presencial a la UANL.
Distribution électronique Cairn.info pour ESKA. Distribution électronique Cairn.info pour ESKA. La reproduction ou représentation de cet article, notamment par photocopie, n'est autorisée que dans les limites des conditions générales d'utilisation du site ou, le cas échéant, des conditions générales de la licence souscrite par votre établissement. Toute autre reproduction ou représentation, en tout ou partie, sous quelque forme et de quelque manière que ce soit, est interdite sauf accord préalable et écrit de l'éditeur, en dehors des cas prévus par la législation en vigueur en France. Il est précisé que son stockage dans une base de données est également interdit.
Employees experienced both advantages and disadvantages while working from home during the COVID‐19 pandemic. Researchers have examined these impacts on women and those with caring responsibilities; however, little research has examined the impacts on other groups of employees, such as those with a disability or employed on a casual basis. In this article, we focus on the public sector and examine who gained and who lost while working from home, based on a 2020 survey of over 5000 Australian public servants. We have constructed loss and gain indices to measure three elements of a change model, which enables an evaluation of the impacts on various groups of employees. The elements of change management examined are operational areas, performance management, and beliefs and values. To analyse the factors affecting gains and losses, as summarised in the indices, we applied a statistical model estimated using linear regression methods. Our findings reveal that, on average, survey participants experienced a net gain. Families and employees with a disability gained; however, women gained less than men in the first two categories and gained more than men on the beliefs and values category. These findings highlight areas on which public service organisations need to focus as we enter a COVID‐normal era.
Points for practitioners
The benefits and drawbacks of working from home differ according to employee demographics.
Overall, lower level employees and those employed on a casual basis gained less than higher level employees and those employed full time.
Women gained less than men in relation to how work was operationalised and performed.
These differential impacts highlight areas on which public sector organisations need to focus in a COVID‐normal era.
Objective and subjective criteria are essential measures of organizational success. However, prior studies ignored these criteria when assessing employees’ career success. This study aims to examine the impact of HRM practices and employee behavior on career success for employees in the Greater Amman Municipality. This study adopted a survey for data collection, as 375 questionnaires were distributed to employees working at Greater Amman Municipality in Jordan. Four weeks were given to respondents to complete the survey. After the allotted time had passed, 246 questionnaires had been gathered, with a response rate of 65.6%. Of these, 246 questionnaires were deemed suitable for further analysis. Convenience sampling has been used as a key technique for collecting data. For data analysis, SPSS (version 25) and SmartPLS (version 3.3.9) statistical software were used. The findings indicated that objective and subjective criteria significantly affect career success. The results also showed that HRM practices and employee behavior significantly and positively influenced career success. Furthermore, employee behavior mediated the relationship between HRM practices and career success. Since each facet reflects a significant and distinctive component of career success, academics and researchers should focus on both the objective and subjective dimensions of career success.
Working outside of the employer’s physical space using information and communication technology can be labeled as telework. With the Covid-19 pandemic, telework assumed an unprecedented relevance with substantial impact for the future. Therefore, the development of assessment scales that allow a better comprehension of telework is essential. In this study, the factor structure, reliability, and validity of the Impact of Telework on Career Scale (ITCS) were assessed tested on 533 workers, and confirmatory analyses were performed on 532 remote workers. Results suggested good psychometric properties and a two-factor structure, Work-Related Well-Being, and Psychological Well-Being. Furthermore, this Portuguese sample considered that telework has little impact on the connection with colleagues, employers, and the probability of being promoted, but it can promote work-related satisfaction and performance, as well as reduce work-family conflict. Implications for scale usage are discussed
Once automatic vehicles (AV) are available, working from self-driving cars (WFC) will be an option. It allows firms to socialize office land costs to road infrastructure used by AV's mobile offices. Employees, in turn, can switch wasted commuting time into working and substitute office hours. We model employers' offers and employees' discrete choice of WFC contracts and decisions on WFC hours, considering heterogeneous preferences for WFC. We further perform Monte Carlo studies for the U.S. and Germany to quantify these decisions, assess consequences on distances traveled and traffic-related externali-ties, and evaluate whether transport pricing can reduce the latter. Our findings suggest that WFC is a likely feature of tomorrow's world, but it comes at the cost of induced traffic and traffic-related externalities. Eventually, we see that standard transport-policy instruments on car use, traveling, and parking affect the number of mobile employees, i.e., those with WFC contracts, but do not lower distances traveled per mobile employee. Given these tentative findings, a policy to lower traffic and emissions shall primarily focus on avoiding WFC contracts. Once WFC contracts exist, standard policy instruments to reduce travel may need to be revised.
Die Verbreitung der Arbeit von zuhause hat als Infektions- und Arbeitsschutzmaßnahme während der SARS-CoV-2-Pandemie einen sprunghaften Anstieg erlebt. Der Beitrag grenzt verschiedene Arbeitsformen der Arbeit von zuhause ab und sichtet die aktuelle Literatur. Auf Basis der Daten der repräsentativen Betriebsbefragung „Betriebe in der Covid-19-Krise“ mit etwa 2.000 deutschen Unternehmen werden die Verbreitung der Arbeit von zuhause im Verlauf der Pandemie, Einsatz als Infektionsschutzmaßnahme, die Bewertung der Arbeit von zuhause und der Blick auf die Zeit nach der Pandemie skizziert. Es wird deutlich, dass die Arbeit von zuhause insbesondere in großen Betrieben auch nach der Pandemie eine wichtige Rolle spielen wird. Abschließend werden die Herausforderungen einer „multilokalen“ bzw. „hybriden Arbeitswelt“ für Betriebe und Beschäftigte umrissen.
Revisión de literatura multidisciplinaria sobre teletrabajo, identificando consecuencias positivas y negativas de la incorporación del teletrabajo en las organizaciones. El teletrabajo presenta retos y oportunidades en relación al equilibrio de la vida laboral y personal y del propio bienestar, siendo por lo tanto un desafío para la gestión de las organizaciones y los líderes.
Previous researches have emphasized the value of leader narcissism on employees’ career success, whereas we still know little about how and when this relationship will materialize. By integrating dramaturgical theory and leader narcissism literatures, we propose a theoretical model to explain the mechanism and boundary of leader narcissism in promoting employees’ objective career success (e.g., salary increases and promotions). To test our hypotheses, we carried out a multi-wave research design and collected data from 299 employees in Chinese manufacturing firms. The results of multiple regression analysis showed that leader narcissism motivates employees’ ingratiation, which in turn facilitates employees’ objective career success, especially when those employees are high in careerist orientation. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.
The professional success of graduates is closely linked to the value of university performance, perhaps much more so than other indicators. This study analyses the predictive and explanatory capacity of a model on the career success of university alumni in a developing country (Ecuador), which serves as empirical evidence on the subject; we examine the moderating effect of gender on the relationships between constructs in the model. We use a Hierarchical Component Model (HCM) of Partial Least Squares Structural Equations (PLS-SEM) and a permutation-based multigroup analysis for moderation. The used database comprises 444 records from a self-administered survey of graduates of the State Technical University of Quevedo (UTEQ)—Ecuador. On the findings, the model proposed has good explanatory and predictive power for career success. Objective success has a lower incidence of professional success (22% of the variance explained) than subjective success (78% of the variance explained). In none of the latent variable correlations in the model were gender differences between men and women found to be statistically significant. Finally, we also cover the study’s theoretical and practical implications.
Although management research on work-life flexibility policies has occurred for over 40 years, it is underdeveloped with inconsistent results. We argue that this is due to theorizing that—but not measuring whether—policy use increases boundary control; a fragmented literature examining a range of policies (either individually or bundled) without comprehensive integration; and an under-examination of policy implementation effectiveness. Drawing on boundary theory, we inductively review 338 studies to organize the work–life flexibility policy literature around a boundary control and implementation framework. Our framework derives a taxonomy of types of boundary control, identifies implementation stages, considers the importance of policy bundling, and incorporates multi-level (individual, group, organizational, societal) and multi-domain (family, work) dynamics. Our review shows that the current literature often assesses the availability of single policies and individual outcomes; but under-assesses boundary control, extent of use, bundling, implementation, and multi-level outcomes. Our results provide a springboard for future research and practice by offering new insights for understanding work–life flexibility policies, encouraging scholars to: (1) recognize the crucial role of different types of employee boundary control (spatial, size, temporal, permeability, continuity) as an inherent element of policy experiences that must be measured rather than merely assumed; (2) examine how work–life flexibility policy implementation involves four implementation stages—availability, access experiences (including enablers and barriers), use, and outcomes—with multiple stakeholders (e.g., individual employees, supervisors, coworkers, family) and contextual factors (i.e., societal forces); and (3) innovate ways to examine emergent policy issues such as equality, home implementation, and hybrid forms.
COVID-19 has redefined flexible working arrangements. Work from home (WFH) has emerged as a reality, and most of the organizations in Saudi Arabia also adopted WFH, allowing employees to work from home or other locations. This research explores WFH and its impact on the wellbeing and the work family reconciliation of female workers in Saudi Arabia. This is a case study based on the unstructured in-depth interview of 13 women workers employed in the public and private sector in Saudi Arabia in the last two years. The study concluded that work from home has improved the overall wellbeing of the women workers because of the flexibility and freedom this type of work arrangement is offering. The women workers had better work-life balance (WLB) despite having higher level of stress and working longer hours.
All companies strive for sustainable growth and performance, a complex task in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) environment, with evolving legislation transforming the roles and responsibilities of leaders, while being closely watched by investors. Besides the ongoing effect of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the 2020 multidimensional crisis challenged the worldwide status quo in many respects, accelerating the rhythm of change for business models and questioning the leadership competences, motivation, and practices, due to new ways of working, interaction, and collaboration, and different ways the teams are now led and are expecting to be led. The career success is a dynamic concept that evolved over the past decades, being studied through numerous lenses, such as its predictors and antecedents, personal anchors (values and beliefs) and personality traits, own preparation for the professional road (education and learning), drivers, demographics, life choices, and the career capital. This analysis follows the topic of career success over the last six decades, showing the citation evolution of papers on the subject, and identifying the most related articles, as well as the most related journals. The findings are based on a quantitative analysis of Scopus indexed documents, with a qualitative highlight on the most related articles and the most cited articles of the most influential authors.
Imposed home teleworking has experienced an exceptional boom during the Covid‐19 pandemic that hit the world in early 2020. The way telework is perceived and judged by others, with a risk of creating a divide between those who do and those who do less, and those who work and those who work less, can weaken social cohesion. In the face of the organizational and psychosocial mechanisms at work, the strategies deployed by teleworkers are likely to lead them to close themselves off in a negative spiral that is harmful to their physical and mental health. Another well‐known advantage of teleworking concerns flexibility, autonomy, control over working time and organization of activities. Several studies suggest that gender modulates the effects of telework on the organization of activities and their delimitation. Alizadeh thus looked at the activities carried out by teleworkers, and more precisely during their break periods.
[Sarah Bourdeau and Ariane Ollier-Malaterre contributed equally to this article and share first authorship.] Many employees hesitate to use work-life policies (e.g., flexible work arrangements, leaves, on-site services) for fear of career consequences. However, findings on the actual career consequences of such use are mixed. We de-bundle work-life policies, which we view as control mechanisms that may operate in an enabling way, giving employees some latitude over when, where and how much they work, or in an enclosing way, promoting longer hours on work premises. Drawing on signaling and attributional theories, we construe the nature of the policies used as a work devotion signal; specifically, we argue that supervisors attribute lower work devotion to employees who use more enabling policies than to employees who use more enclosing policies. However, this relationship is moderated by the employee’s work ethic prior to the use, by the supervisor’s expectations of the employee, and by the family-supportiveness of organizational norms. In turn, the work devotion attributions made by the supervisor lead to positive and negative career consequences for work-life policies users, depending on organizational norms. Our model opens up new research avenues on work-life policies’ implementation gap by differentiating between the policies and by teasing out the roles played by policies, organizational norms, supervisors, and employees.
Despite telecommuting’s growing popularity, its implication for telecommuter job performance is a matter of on-going public debate. Moreover, empirical evidence that could address this issue is scarce and conflicting. This study therefore not only examines whether telecommuting impacts job performance, but also investigates characteristics of the telecommuter’s work that might help or hinder their ability to perform their job. Integrating work design research with theorizing about telecommuting, our theoretical framework proposes that two knowledge characteristics, namely job complexity and problem solving, and two social characteristics, specifically interdependence and social support, moderate the extent of telecommuting–job performance relationship. We test our framework using matched data from telecommuters and their supervisors (N = 273) in an organization with a voluntary telecommuting program. Findings indicate that for telecommuters who held complex jobs, for those in jobs involving low levels of interdependence and for those in jobs with low levels of social support, the extent of telecommuting had a positive association with job performance. Across all moderators considered, the extent of telecommuting’s association with job performance ranged from benign to positive; findings did not support negative associations between the extent of telecommuting and job performance regardless of the level of each moderator examined. These results suggest the need to investigate the extent of telecommuting as well as the nature of the telecommuter’s job when studying work outcomes such as job performance, and that more research is needed.
This article sets out to investigate how flexitime and teleworking can help women maintain their careers after childbirth. Despite the increased number of women in the labour market in the UK, many significantly reduce their working hours or leave the labour market altogether after childbirth. Based on border and boundary management theories, we expect flexitime and teleworking can help mothers stay employed and maintain their working hours. We explore the UK case, where the right to request flexible working has been expanded quickly as a way to address work–life balance issues. The dataset used is Understanding Society (2009–2014), a large household panel survey with data on flexible work. We find some suggestive evidence that flexible working can help women stay in employment after the birth of their first child. More evidence is found that mothers using flexitime and with access to teleworking are less likely to reduce their working hours after childbirth. This contributes to our understanding of flexible working not only as a tool for work–life balance, but also as a tool to enhance and maintain individuals’ work capacities in periods of increased family demands. This has major implications for supporting mothers’ careers and enhancing gender equality in the labour market.
Purpose
We developed and tested an integrative model centering on the significance of trust as a basis for managers’ decisions about allowing versus prohibiting their employees to telework. We examined the importance of trust in relation to several other factors managers may consider in making telework decisions including coordination and communication, equity, and a desire to accommodate employees.
Design/Methodology/Approach
Study 1 was a policy capturing investigation of 71 respondents intended to document the relative importance and interactions among trust and these other theoretically based factors. Study 2 was a test of the full theoretical model based on the responses of 85 managers who reported on these considerations for the 191 employees about whom they make telework decisions.
Findings
Results from the two studies were largely consistent. Managers’ assessments of employees’ conscientiousness and trustworthiness were paramount in predicting telework allowance, with the other theoretically based considerations generally failing to attenuate the importance of those personal assessments.
Implications
Organizations wishing to increase the use of telework (e.g., by implementing manager telework training) must directly address managers’ mistrust as a factor underlying this resistance. Job-related and technological changes may not dampen the effects of mistrust.
Originality
To our knowledge, this is the most comprehensive and theoretically grounded assessment of the various considerations factoring into managers’ telework decisions.
We define work-life flexibility as employment scheduling practices that are designed to give employees greater control over when, where, how much or how continuously work is done. Research has under-examined how work-life flexibility is stratified across occupations. We review how occupational status and flexibility experiences vary and shape work-life inequality, which we identify as a form of job inequality. We investigate the range of definitions, measurement approaches and theorizing regarding work-life flexibility. We find that employees across occupational groups experience different work-life flexibility outcomes from different flexibility types. Providing employee control over scheduling variation (flextime) may benefit lower-level workers the most, yet many are unable to access this flexibility form. Part-time work permitting control over work volume/workload hurts lower-level employees the most (due to involuntary income and benefits loss). Yet these same part-time practices enhance recruitment and retention for upper-level jobs, but harm promotion and pay. Work continuity control (leaves) benefits upper and middle-level employees, but is largely unavailable to lower-level workers. Flexibility to control work location is rarely available for lower-level jobs; but benefits middle and upper-level employees, provided that are able to control separation from work when desired and self-regulate complexity. We offer implications for research and practice.
Purpose
In line with conservation of resources theory and signaling theory, the purpose of this paper is to conceptualize and test a multiple mediation model in which telecommuting affects engagement via perceived supervisor goal support and goal progress.
Design/methodology/approach
A three-phase longitudinal study carried out over ten months was used to test the hypotheses.
Findings
Individuals who worked in organizations that offer telecommuting were more engaged than those who worked in organizations that did not offer telecommuting. Furthermore, telecommuting availability was not only directly but also indirectly related to engagement via perceived supervisor goal support and goal progress. Engagement in general decreased over time. However, individuals who attained their personal work goals were able to maintain high levels of engagement.
Research limitations/implications
Giving employees the option to telecommute could increase employee engagement. This study is correlational in nature and relied on self-report data.
Originality/value
This is the first study examining the effects of telecommuting on engagement over a period of ten months. It is also the first study to use perceived supervisor goal support and goal progress as explanatory variables to the teleworking and engagement relationship.
While flexibility in the location of work hours has shown positive organizational effects on productivity and retention, less
is known about the earnings effects of telecommuting. We analyze weekly hours spent working from home using the 1989–2008
panels of the National Longitudinal Study of Youth. We describe the demographic and occupational characteristics of the employees
engaged in telecommuting, then track their earnings growth with fixed-effects models, focusing on gender and parental status.
Results show substantial variation in the earnings effects of telecommuting based on the point in the hours distribution worked
from home. Working from home rather than the office produces equal earnings growth in the first 40 hours worked, but “taking
work home” or overtime telecommuting yields significantly smaller increases than overtime worked on-site. Yet, most observed
telecommuting occurs precisely during this low-yield overtime portion of the hours distribution. Few gender or parental status
differences emerged in these processes. These trends reflect potentially widespread negative consequences of the growing capacity
of workers to perform their work from any location. Rather than enhancing true flexibility in when and where employees work,
the capacity to work from home mostly extends the workday and encroaches into what was formerly home and family time.
This article identifies three types of traps that can emerge when implementing workplace flexibility-altered work-life dynamics, reduced fairness perceptions, and weakened organizational culture-and provides core lessons for managers seeking a balanced flexibility approach. First managers must become flex savvy to understand the variation that exists in flexibility practices to align implementation with the workforce and organizational context. Second, implementing flexibility must not be treated as an accommodation but as a broader systemic organizational change empowering individuals and teams. The article provides a Work-smartcase to highlight how to avoid traps and implement balanced workplace flexibility across multiple stakeholder interests.
Research on the work-family interface began in the 1960s and has grown exponentially ever since. This vast amount of research, however, has had relatively little impact on workplace practice, and work-family conflict is at an all-time high. We review the work-family research to date and propose that a shift of attention is required, away from the individual experience of work and family and toward understanding how identity and status are defined at work. Several factors enshrine cherished identities around current workplace norms. The work devotion schema demands that those who are truly committed to their work will make it the central or sole focus of their lives, without family demands to distract them. Importantly, the work devotion schema underwrites valued class and gender identities: Work devotion is a key way of enacting elite class status and functions as the measure of a man-the longer the work hours and higher the demand for his attention, the better. Advocating change in the way work is done and life is lived meets resistance because it places these cherished identities at risk. Resistance to these identity threats keeps current workplace norms in place. This is why even the business case-which shows that current practices are not economically efficient-fails to persuade organizations to enact change. What is needed now is sustained attention to the implicit psychological infrastructure that cements the mismatch between today's workplace and today's workforce. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Psychology Volume 67 is January 03, 2016. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/catalog/pubdates.aspx for revised estimates.
Telecommuting has become an increasingly popular work mode that has generated significant interest from scholars and practitioners alike. With recent advances in technology that enable mobile connections at ever-affordable rates, working away from the office as a telecommuter has become increasingly available to many workers around the world. Since the term telecommuting was first coined in the 1970s, scholars and practitioners have debated the merits of working away from the office, as it represents a fundamental shift in how organizations have historically done business. Complicating efforts to truly understand the implications of telecommuting have been the widely varying definitions and conceptualizations of telecommuting and the diverse fields in which research has taken place.
Our objective in this article is to review existing research on telecommuting in an effort to better understand what we as a scientific community know about telecommuting and its implications. In so doing, we aim to bring to the surface some of the intricacies associated with telecommuting research so that we may shed insights into the debate regarding telecommuting’s benefits and drawbacks. We attempt to sift through the divergent and at times conflicting literature to develop an overall sense of the status of our scientific findings, in an effort to identify not only what we know and what we think we know about telecommuting, but also what we must yet learn to fully understand this increasingly important work mode.
After a brief review of the history of telecommuting and its prevalence, we begin by discussing the definitional challenges inherent within existing literature and offer a comprehensive definition of telecommuting rooted in existing research. Our review starts by highlighting the need to interpret existing findings with an understanding of how the extent of telecommuting practiced by participants in a study is likely to alter conclusions that may be drawn. We then review telecommuting’s implications for employees’ work-family issues, attitudes, and work outcomes, including job satisfaction, organizational commitment and identification, stress, performance, wages, withdrawal behaviors, and firm-level metrics. Our article continues by discussing research findings concerning salient contextual issues that might influence or alter the impact of telecommuting, including the nature of the work performed while telecommuting, interpersonal processes such as knowledge sharing and innovation, and additional considerations that include motives for telecommuting such as family responsibilities. We also cover organizational culture and support that may shape the telecommuting experience, after which we discuss the community and societal effects of telecommuting, including its effects on traffic and emissions, business continuity, and work opportunities, as well as the potential impact on societal ties. Selected examples of telecommuting legislation and policies are also provided in an effort to inform readers regarding the status of the national debate and its legislative implications. Our synthesis concludes by offering recommendations for telecommuting research and practice that aim to improve the quality of data on telecommuting as well as identify areas of research in need of development.
Workers who request flexibility are routinely stigmatized. The authors experimentally tested and confirmed the hypothesis that individuals believe others view flexworkers less positively than they do. This suggests flexibility bias stems, in part, from pluralistic ignorance. The authors also found that flexplace requesters were stigmatized significantly more than flextime requesters. Given this finding, they recommend research distinguish between different types of flexwork. In a second study, they assessed whether exposure to information suggesting organizational leaders engage in flexible work reduced bias. They found that when the majority of high-status employees work flexibly, bias against flextime (but not flexplace) workers was attenuated. © The Author(s) 2014 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav.
Both scholarly literature and popular accounts suggest that modern organizational practices have moved toward encouraging employees to “integrate” or blur the boundary between their personal and professional domains, for example, through self-disclosure at work, company-sponsored social activities or providing onsite child care. Concurrently, an ideology underlying U.S. professional norms discourages integration practices such as referencing non-work roles during workplace interactions, expressing emotions in the workplace, and/or displaying non-work-related items in workspaces. In this review, we posit that these two norms firmly coexist because they differentially serve two objectives corresponding to the parallel bodies of research we examine: one addressing boundary management as a tool for handling role responsibilities, and the other considering boundary management as a tool for shaping workplace identity and relationships. Specifically, we posit that segmenting personal and professional domains facilitates the management of role responsibilities, whereas integration is more beneficial for managing workplace identity and relationships. Further, both objectives serve the “ideal worker” imperative of work primacy. We identify key contingencies that help us to further understand existing research findings, and prompt future research directions informing theories for understanding the attractiveness and efficacy of different personal-professional boundary management strategies for both organizations and individuals.
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Signaling theory is useful for describing behavior when two parties (individuals or organizations) have access to different information. Typically, one party, the sender, must choose whether and how to communicate (or signal) that information, and the other party, the receiver, must choose how to interpret the signal. Accordingly, signaling theory holds a prominent position in a variety of management literatures, including strategic management, entrepreneurship, and human resource management. While the use of signaling theory has gained momentum in recent years, its central tenets have become blurred as it has been applied to organizational concerns. The authors, therefore, provide a concise synthesis of the theory and its key concepts, review its use in the management literature, and put forward directions for future research that will encourage scholars to use signaling theory in new ways and to develop more complex formulations and nuanced variations of the theory.
Although many employers have adopted policies to support the integration of work with personal and family life, expected positive gains due to enhanced workplace inclusion are not always realized. One reason for this gap is that practitioners and researchers often overlook how variation in how policies are implemented and used by different employee stakeholder groups fosters a culture of inclusiveness. We discuss four ways in which work-life policies are implemented differently across and within organizations that can affect the degree to which policies are seen as promoting inclusion or exclusion. They are: the level of supervisor support for use, universality of availability, negotiability, and quality of communication. These implementation attributes affect whether an adopted policy is seen as leading to fulfilling work- life needs and signaling the organization's support for individual differences in work identities and life circumstances, thus affecting levels of inclusiveness. Implications for HR practitioners are discussed.
As downsizing continues to be part of corporate life, this study seeks to determine the long-term impact of career interruptions on income and career satisfaction. Longitudinal data were collected from men and women MBAs who were surveyed three times over a 13-year period. Traditionally, the model of a successful managerial career involved a steady climb up a corporate ladder, and interruptions resulted in penalties. As employment gaps have become fairly commonfor managers, the negative career stigma may be diminishing. However, the findings from the study suggest that the penalties persist. MBAswith career interruptions earned less than those continuously employed, even 25 years after the interruption. Career interruptions were detrimental to career satisfaction only for men. The findings have implications for managers and organizations.
We examine how passive ‘face time’ (i.e. the amount of time one is passively observed, without interaction) affects how one is perceived at work. Findings from a qualitative study of professional office workers suggest that passive face time exists in two forms: 1) being seen at work during normal business hours — or expected face time, and 2) being seen at work outside of normal business hours — or extracurricular face time. These two forms of passive face time appear to lead observers to make trait inferences (i.e. they lead observers to perceive employees as either ‘dependable’ or ‘committed’, depending on the form of passive face time). Findings from an experimental study confirm our qualitative findings and suggest that trait inferences are made spontaneously (i.e. without intent or knowledge of doing so).We discuss the implications of our findings for theories of person perception and the practice of performance appraisal.
Purpose
– Telework is an alternative work relationship with demonstrated positive benefits for individuals and society, yet it has not been implemented with enthusiasm by most organizations. This could be due to the lacking, consolidated evidence for management regarding whether or not telework is a good thing for the firm. The purpose of this paper is to integrate multidisciplinary literature that reports effects of telework on organizational outcomes with the aim of providing a clearer answer to the question: is telework effective for organizations?
Design/methodology/approach
– Meta‐analytical methods were used, beginning with an interdisciplinary search for effect sizes in eight databases. Limited to scholarly journals and dissertations, results included 991 articles scanned for inclusion criteria. The independent variable is telework, measured as a dichotomous variable. Dependent variables are outcomes of interest to organizations: productivity, retention, turnover intention, commitment, and performance. In total, 22 studies were double coded and meta‐analyzed using Hunter and Schmidt's approach, followed by five exploratory moderator analyses: level of analysis, level of the employee, response rate, proportion of females, and country of the study. Significant results are discussed.
Findings
– Review and meta analysis of 32 correlations from empirical studies find that there is a small but positive relationship between telework and organizational outcomes. Telework is perceived to increase productivity, secure retention, strengthen organizational commitment, and to improve performance within the organization. In other words, it is indeed beneficial for organizations. All five hypotheses are supported. H1 (productivity), rc=0.23 (k=5, n=620), (95% CI=0.13−0.33). H2 (retention), r=0.10 (k=6, n=1652), (95% CI=0.04−0.16). H3 (commitment), r=0.11 (k=8, n=3144), (95% CI=0.03−0.18); moderator analysis shows sample age is significant (F(1,4)=4.715, p<0.05, R2=0.80). H4 (performance), r=0.16 (k=10, n=2522). H5 (organizational outcomes), r=0.17 (k=19, n=5502), (95% CI=0.1−0.20).
Originality/value
– To the authors' knowledge, this is the first meta‐analysis of telework research at the organizational level, providing a unique contribution to the field in filling the gap between research on effects to the individual and society. Additional contributions resulted from the moderator analyses: first, in finding that the relationship between telework and performance is moderated by whether or not the sample was one individual per firm, or many individuals from one; and second, in finding that the relationship between telework and organizational commitment is moderated by age. Thus, the paper provides unique contributions with both scholarly and practical implications.
The present research builds theory regarding how use of flexible work practices (FWPs) affects employees' career success. We integrate theory on signaling and attributions and propose that managers interpret employees' use of FWPs as a signal of high or low organizational commitment, depending on whether managers make productivity or personal life attributions, respectively, for employees' FWP use. Managers' perceptions of employees' commitment, in turn, shape employees' career success. Field- and laboratory-based studies provide strong support for the hypothesis that FWP use results in career premiums when managers make productivity attributions and some support for the hypothesis that FWP use results in career penalties when managers make personal life attributions.
It has been 50 years since the publication of Goffman’s influential work Stigma: Notes on
the Management of Spoiled Identity. This special issue celebrates Goffman’s contribution
with 14 articles reflecting the current state of the art in stigma research. In this article, we
provide a theoretical overview of the stigma concept and offer a useful taxonomy of four
types of stigma (public stigma, self-stigma, stigma by association, and structural stigma).
We utilize this taxonomy to organize an overview of the articles included in this special
issue. Finally, we outline new developments and challenges in stigma research for the
coming decades.
Virtual offices are a growing trend in today's work environment and are expected to influence marketing roles dramatically, especially selling. These conditions may lead to perceptions of isolation, both socially and organizationally. Workplace isolation is a twodimensional construct that represents individuals' perceptions of isolation from others at work and includes perceived isolation from both colleagues and from the company's support network. This article reports the results of a four-sample study to develop and validate a selfreport scale for measuring the two facets of workplace isolation. The scale's usefulness for future research and management applications are discussed. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Although continuing to capture the attention of scholars, the study of “work–family backlash” remains plagued by a lack of conceptual clarity. As a result, there is growing evidence to suggest that there is a dark side to work–life balance (WLB) policies, but these findings remain scattered and unorganized. We provide a synthesis of this literature, defining work–family backlash as a phenomenon characterized by negative attitudes, negative emotions, and negative behaviors—either individual or collective—associated with WLB policies [i.e., on-site provisions, leave policies, and flexible work arrangements (FWAs)] within organizations. We conceptualize and define four primary mechanisms involving multiple levels of analysis through which the phenomenon operates. More micro levels of analysis within organizations are characterized by (1) an inequity mechanism, (2) a stigma mechanism, and (3) a spillover mechanism. Although less developed in the literature to date, more macro levels of analysis—including the organization and societal levels—are characterized by (4) a strategic mechanism. We explain these four primary mechanisms—including the theories and literatures on which they are grounded—and develop an original conceptual model to catalyze future research.
In this chapter, we examine work → nonwork conflict, its causes, and its consequences. We also address in detail two alternative work arrangements (i.e., telecommuting and flextime) that can reduce the incidence of work → nonwork conflict. Our coverage of telecommuting and flextime makes apparent that these arrangements are not quick fixes. Rather, there are several contingency factors (e.g., supervisor support) that need to be considered by an employer given they influence the likely success of these nontraditional work arrangements. If implemented effectively (e.g., participation is voluntary, employees have a voice in program design), telecommuting and flextime can help an employee balance the sometimes competing demands of their work and nonwork lives. Facilitating such a balance not only has tangible benefits for employers (e.g., lower turnover), it is the ethical thing for employers to do.
Both theory and evidence suggest a productivity effect, a hedonic effect, and a risk premium associated with working at home; an analysis of a sample drawn from the May 2001 Current Population Survey finds positive wage differentials overall for men and women, with significant differentials emerging for selected reasons and industries.
We use a sample of working adults (N = 638) to explore the effects of past objective career success (mobility, promotions, and salary change) on current subjective success (human capital assessments by one's managers, core self evaluations, satisfaction with one's career) by gender, across an economic cycle (2004–2011), controlling for career stage. Results support a strong influence of past promotions, and less so for salary changes, on subjective career success. These effects were stronger for men and during the economic contraction, with managers being affected in their assessments based on the employees' past promotions. In contrast, past job mobility did not relate to subjective career success for either gender in periods of economic expansion or contraction. Evidence for an interactive perspective of career success whereby past objective success affects current subjective success is presented, as well as potential implications of the findings.
Women face an earnings penalty associated with motherhood but researchers have paid scant attention to how fatherhood might influence men's long-term earnings. Using multiple waves of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and employing ordinary least squares regression and fixed effects models we investigate what happens to men who modify their employment for family reasons. Previous research shows that men work longer hours and earn more after becoming fathers, but if men are unemployed or reduce work hours for family reasons, they could experience a “flexibility stigma” depressing earnings and limiting future career opportunities. We find strong support for the flexibility stigma hypothesis. Controlling for the effects of age, race, education, intelligence, occupation, job tenure, work hours, health limitations, marital status, and number of children, we find that men who ever quit work or are unemployed for family reasons earn significantly less than others in the future. Theoretical reasons for observed findings are discussed.
Despite their widespread adoption, concerns remain that virtual work arrangements can harm employee job performance and citizenship behavior. Does telecommuting really hamper these critical dimensions of employee effectiveness? To answer this question, we develop a theoretical framework linking telecommuting to task and contextual performance via a dual set of mechanisms – reflecting proposed effects of i-deals and job resources. Further, we propose that the meaning of and outcomes from these paths depend on the social context surrounding telecommuting. We test the framework with field data from 323 employees and 143 matched supervisors across a variety of organizations. As predicted, we find that telecommuting is positively associated with task and contextual performance, directly and indirectly via perceived autonomy. These beneficial effects are contingent upon two aspects of the social context: leader-member exchange and signals of its normative appropriateness amongst coworkers and one's supervisor.This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
Analysis of the Current Population Survey indicates positive wage differentials overall for women on flextime in 1989 and for both men and women in 1997; significant differentials emerge for selected motivations, industries, and occupations.
This paper investigates the effects of telework and flexible work schedules on the performance of teams in new product development projects. Organizations increasingly introduce workplace flexibility practices that provide flexibility with regard to where or when the employee works. The findings of NPD teams in five cases, situated in two telecommunication firms, show that telework has a positive effect on NPD performance through enabling knowledge sharing, cross-functional cooperation and inter-organizational involvement. This improves the speed and quality of product development, provided that face-to-face contact is not completely replaced by virtual contact. A basic level of face-to face contact is necessary to offset the negative effects of telework on the quality of the shared knowledge, which are larger when the knowledge is sticky. Flexible work schedules and unexpectedly hot-desking were found to increase telework usage. This implies for managers that workplace flexibility needs enablers and cannot do without a sufficient level of face-to-face contact.
This research investigates the relationship between virtual employees' degree of physical isolation and their perceived respect in the organization. Respect is an identity-based status perception that reflects the extent to which one is included and valued as a member of the organization. We hypothesize that the degree of physical isolation is negatively associated with virtual employees' perceived respect and that this relationship explains the lower organizational identification among more physically isolated virtual employees. In two field studies using survey methods, we find that perceived respect is negatively associated with the degree of physical isolation, and respect mediates the relationship between physical isolation and organizational identification. These effects hold for shorter- and longer-tenured employees alike. Our research contributes to the virtual work literature by drawing attention to physical isolation and the important but neglected role of status perceptions in shaping virtual employees' organizational identification. We also contribute to the literature on perceived respect by demonstrating how respect is affected by the physical context of work.
Purpose
The current study investigates the impact of time and strain-based work-to-family conflict (WFC) and family-to-work conflict (FWC) on exhaustion, by considering the moderating effect of telework conducted during traditional and non-traditional work hours.
Design/Methodology/Approach
Data were obtained from professionals in a large computer company using survey methodology (N = 316).
Findings
Results from this study suggest that time and strain-based WFC and FWC were associated with more exhaustion, and that exhaustion associated with high WFC was worse for individuals with more extensive telework during traditional and non-traditional work hours.
Implications
This study provides managers with findings to more carefully design telework programs, showing evidence that the adverse impact of WFC/FWC on exhaustion may depend on the type of telework and level of conflict experienced. This suggests that managers may need to be more aware of the full range of characteristics which encapsulate the teleworker’s work practices before making decisions about how telework is implemented.
Originality/Value
By differentiating the timing of telework and its role on the WFC/FWC—exhaustion relationship, this study delves deeper into the contingent nature of telework and suggests that the extent of telework conducted during traditional and nontraditional work hours may play an influential role. In addition, these considerations are investigated in light of the bi-directional time-based and strain-based nature of WFC and FWC, helping to unravel some of telework’s complexities.
The current study examines the relationship between external job mobility and salary for employees in different career stages. Based on career stage and career timetable theories, we predict that external job mobility would generate the greatest salary benefits for early-career employees whereas external job mobility would generate fewer salary benefits for employees in mid- and late career stages. Data collected from multiple industries in Hong Kong and the United States consistently show that, as expected, highly mobile early-career employees earn significantly greater salaries than their less mobile peers do. The positive effects of external job mobility on salary were stronger for early-career workers than for mid-and late-career workers.
Little empirical study has been devoted to the impact of employer-sponsored work-family policies on women’s wages. These policies include flexible scheduling, telecommuting, reduced hours of work, and child care assistance. Although these work innovations may make family caregiving easier, many women fear that lower wage growth and blocked mobility will result from the use of these policies. This project followed a midwestern cohort of employed women for 7 years after childbirth, using detailed information about coverage and use of family responsive policies across all jobs held during that period. Results show consistent negative effects of policy use on wage growth after controlling for many productivity-related characteristics, though the effects vary in size depending on the specific policy used, workers’ job mobility, and the respondent’s managerial or professional status.
Promotions and demotions are important events in most people's work lives. This study analyzes the career mobility of a cohort of employees in a large corporation over a 13-year period using official personnel records. Derived from the status-attainment, Markov, and organization-career literatures, two conflicting models of mobility are described: an ahistorical (path independence) model and a historical (tournament) model. The empirical analysis supports the tournament model, finding that mobility in the earliest period of one's career has an unequivocal relationship with many of the most important parameters of one's later career: career ceilings, career floors, and probabilities of promotion and demotion in each successive period. Some speculations are presented about Bowles and Gintis's correspondence principle, about functional and dysfunctional consequences of this selection system, and about the implications of organizational opportunity structures on employees' career behaviors.
Despite the fact that many organizations have implemented family-friendly programs to meet the needs of today's diverse workforce, employees have been reluctant to use them. Drawing on the theories of planned behavior, help-seeking, and distributive justice, we propose a framework that focuses initially on the more proximal factors that influence an employee's likelihood of participating in such programs. We then examine the role of organization-based situational characteristics in shaping both personal and normative assessments and describe the implications of our framework for researchers and practitioners.
Job satisfaction and productivity were compared for 34 in-house employees and 34 telecommuters performing data-entry and coding. Job satisfaction was measured on the Minnesota Job Satisfaction Questionnaire and a five-item work arrangement subscale. Group productivity was measured by data-entry transactions per hour. No between-group differences were found on over-all job satisfaction and subscale scores; however, seven individual items relating to concerns about work-at-home differentiated the groups. Significantly different between-group ranks of importance on 12 of the 25 questionnaire items were found. Despite important limitations in our experimental design, the results suggest that telecommuting tends to increase satisfaction with specific work arrangements and that telecommuters are likely to be more productive than in-house workers on structured, repetitive tasks.
An abstract is not available.