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1 – 10 of 374Andrea Ollo-López, Salomé Goñi-Legaz and Amaya Erro-Garcés
This article aims to analyze individual-, organizational- and country-level factors that determine the use of home-based telework across Europe according to the technology…
Abstract
Purpose
This article aims to analyze individual-, organizational- and country-level factors that determine the use of home-based telework across Europe according to the technology acceptance model (TAM) and the technology–organization–environment model.
Design/methodology/approach
To examine the impact of individual-, organizational- and country-level factors on telework, multilevel models are estimated to prevent problems derived from biased standard errors when micro- and macro-level data are combined.
Findings
The main findings show that, according to the usefulness side of the TAM, employees with family responsibilities, those that live away from their work and highly qualified workers use more home-based telework. Additionally, and according to the ease of use side of the TAM, empowerment in firms facilitates home-based telework. At the country level, lower power distance, individualism and femininity, better telework regulations and technology developments are also facilitators of home-based telework.
Research limitations/implications
The study is limited by the cross-sectional nature of the data. This prevents the estimation of causal effects. Additional research would benefit from the use of panel data and from a more detailed analysis of the effects of country dimensions.
Practical implications
From an applied perspective, politics related to cultural dimensions are suggested to stimulate home-based telework.
Originality/value
The research contributes to previous literature by: (1) considering a large sample to conduct an empirical analysis of the use of home-based telework across Europe, (2) including micro and macro factors, (3) providing a theoretical framework to explain home-based telework, (4) applying a rigorous definition of home-based telework and (5) focusing on employees who are able to adopt home-based telework.
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Valerie J. Morganson, Debra A. Major, Kurt L. Oborn, Jennifer M. Verive and Michelle P. Heelan
The purpose of this paper is to examine differences in work‐life balance (WLB) support, job satisfaction, and inclusion as a function of work location.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine differences in work‐life balance (WLB) support, job satisfaction, and inclusion as a function of work location.
Design/methodology/approach
Web‐based survey data were provided by 578 employees working at one of four locations (main office, client location, satellite office, and home). Multiple regression analyses were used to identify differences in WLB support, job satisfaction, and inclusion across employees working at the four locations.
Findings
Results showed that main office and home‐based workers had similar high levels of WLB support and job satisfaction. Main office workers reported higher levels of WLB support than satellite and client‐based workers. Additionally, main office workers reported the highest levels of workplace inclusion.
Research limitations/ implications
Data were originally gathered for practical purposes by the organization. The research design does not allow for manipulation or random assignment, therefore extraneous variables may have impacted the observed relationships.
Practical implications
Allowing employees flexibility in choosing their work locations is related to positive outcomes. The authors suggest several practices for the effective implementation of alternative work arrangements.
Originality/value
This paper is among the first to examine the outcomes of telework across locations. It uses a large single organization and a quasi‐experimental design, enhancing the validity of the findings.
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Dharma Raju Bathini and George Mathew Kandathil
The purpose of this paper is to explore the link between operations of organization control and workers’ response to them in case of telework, a technology-embedded new way of…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the link between operations of organization control and workers’ response to them in case of telework, a technology-embedded new way of working.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors adopted an interpretive approach to explore control and home-based teleworkers’ response in the Indian information technology industry. Interviews and non-participant observations were analysed using constructivist grounded theory.
Findings
The discourse of “telework as a privilege” served as a basis for normative control, helping managers exercise increased technocratic control. Combined with the discourse of “self-responsibility to client”, it led teleworkers to self-subjugate to long/unsocial work hours. However, the simultaneous exercise of technocratic and normative controls resulted in an inconsistency, creating space for teleworker’s resistance to technocratic control. Nonetheless, resistance to technocratic control ironically reinforced normative control.
Originality/value
The authors contribute to the recent discussion on compatibility and coherence of multiple control modes, and their relationship to resistance. The authors show how workers’ selves can be compatible with one control mode while being incompatible with other modes. The authors argue that when workers’ experience incoherence between control modes, they can appropriate the logic underlying compatible control mode(s) to resist incompatible control mode(s). Further, the authors demonstrate how resistance to incompatible control mode(s) can ironically reinforce compatible control mode(s), and thus explicate the micro-processes of control-resistance dialectic. Advancing the emergent understanding of resistance, the authors show that resistance is an exercise of strategic counter-power that seeks to exploit incoherence between control modes and inconsistencies between actions and rhetoric.
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Salomé Goñi-Legaz, Imanol Núñez and Andrea Ollo-López
This paper aims to investigate how home-based telework (HBT) affects job stress. The authors argue that an intrinsic effect of telework like work extension mediates this…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to investigate how home-based telework (HBT) affects job stress. The authors argue that an intrinsic effect of telework like work extension mediates this relationship. Work extension is reflected in two employee behaviours: working in free time and presentism.
Design/methodology/approach
The proposed model has been estimated using the Preacher and Hayes bootstrap method for multiple mediation analysis, with 1,000 repetitions. The data used come from the sixth European Working Conditions Survey.
Findings
The analysis indicates that HBT does not pose an inherent risk for job stress but causes a change in the employees' behaviour, increasing working in free time and presenteeism and thus job stress. The mediation model indicates that once these behaviours are controlled, the effect of HBT is to reduce stress.
Research limitations/implications
The authors argue that companies should focus on human resource practices to control workers' behaviours that have a detrimental effect on job stress while institutions should regulate HBT.
Originality/value
The analysis deepens the unclear relationship between HBT and job stress by introducing employees' behaviours concerning work extension into the equation.
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Sudhanshu Maheshwari, Ashneet Kaur and Arup Varma
Drawing on conservation of resource (COR) theory, the authors investigated relationships between bullying during work from home, turnover intention and meaningfulness of work…
Abstract
Purpose
Drawing on conservation of resource (COR) theory, the authors investigated relationships between bullying during work from home, turnover intention and meaningfulness of work among home-based teleworkers.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors used three-wave data from 212 home-based teleworkers to investigate the authors' hypotheses.
Findings
Findings reveal that bullying during home-based teleworking exacerbates teleworkers' emotional exhaustion and intention to quit. Further, the authors also found that the interrelationship between bullying during work from home and the intention to leave was positively moderated by the meaningfulness of work.
Originality/value
The authors' research helps understand how bullying stimulates teleworkers' turnover intention. Further, the authors find a counterintuitive impact of the meaningfulness of work on the relationship between bullying during work and turnover intention. The findings will help managers better manage home-based teleworkers.
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Hanne Vesala and Seppo Tuomivaara
The rise of knowledge work has entailed controversial characteristics for well-being at work. Increased intensification, discontinuities and interruptions at work have been…
Abstract
Purpose
The rise of knowledge work has entailed controversial characteristics for well-being at work. Increased intensification, discontinuities and interruptions at work have been reported. However, knowledge workers have the opportunity to flexibly adjust their work arrangements to support their concentration, inspiration or recuperation. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the experienced well-being of 46 knowledge workers was subject to changes during and after a retreat type telework period in rural archipelago environment.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors conducted a longitudinal survey among the participants at three points in time: one to three weeks before, during, and two to eight weeks after the period. The authors analyzed the experienced changes in psychosocial work environment and well-being at work by the measurement period by means of repeated measures variance analysis. In the next step the authors included the group variable of occupational position to the model.
Findings
The analysis showed a decrease in the following measures: experienced time pressure, interruptions, negative feelings at work, exhaustiveness of work as well as stress and an increase in work satisfaction. There were no changes in experienced job influence, clarity of work goals and work engagement. Occupational position had some effect to the changes. Private entrepreneurs and supervisors experienced more remarkable effects of improvement in work-related well-being than subordinates. However, the effects were less sustainable for the supervisors than the other two groups.
Originality/value
This paper provides insights into how work and well-being are affected by the immediate work environment and how well-being at work can be supported by retreat type telework arrangements.
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Silvia Lopes, Paulo C. Dias, Ana Sabino, Francisco Cesário and Ricardo Peixoto
The present study aims to examine the mediating role of (in)voluntariness in teleworking in explaining the relationship between employees’ fit to telework and work well-being…
Abstract
Purpose
The present study aims to examine the mediating role of (in)voluntariness in teleworking in explaining the relationship between employees’ fit to telework and work well-being (i.e. work engagement and exhaustion).
Design/methodology/approach
A cross-sectional survey design was used in this study. The sample comprised 222 individuals performing telework in Portugal. Statistical analyses employed were descriptive statistics, Pearson’s correlation, confirmatory factor and structural equation analyses, and mediation analysis using Hayes Process macro.
Findings
The findings confirmed the hypothesis that employees’ fit to telework raises the voluntariness in telework and decreases involuntariness in telework. However, contrary to expectations, no significant relationships were found between voluntariness in telework, work engagement and exhaustion. Yet, involuntariness in telework showed a significant role in decreasing work engagement and increasing workers’ exhaustion. The mediating role of involuntariness in telework was confirmed in explaining the relationship between employees’ fit to telework and exhaustion.
Practical implications
Managers in global firms can draw from the results to understand how employees’ fit to telework directly and/or indirectly contributes to work well-being and develop human resource (HR) management practices aiming to increase employees’ fit to telework.
Originality/value
Although teleworking is already studied, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, no studies have analyzed the same conceptual model employees’ fit to telework, (in)voluntariness in teleworking and work well-being.
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Takao Maruyama and Susanne Tietze
This paper aims to compare pre‐telework anxieties, expectations and motivators reported by 394 teleworkers with their corresponding actual experiences of telework.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to compare pre‐telework anxieties, expectations and motivators reported by 394 teleworkers with their corresponding actual experiences of telework.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on an organizational survey, 394 samples were generated who had been teleworking for less than 12 months at the time of the survey. By using χ2 tests, comparisons were made between pre‐telework expectations and post‐telework outcomes reported by teleworkers with different characteristics such as gender, job type, the presence of dependent children, and working hours spent at home.
Findings
The study found that prior to adopting telework sampled teleworkers tended to underestimate positive and overestimate negative experience of telework. It further demonstrated some statistically significant differences in pre‐telework expectations and post‐telework outcomes reported by different groups of teleworkers. For example, female teleworkers were more likely to report that telework made it easier to cope with caring responsibilities. Sales and marketing teleworkers were more likely to report reduced visibility and career development.
Practical implications
Implementing and maintaining successful telework schemes requires managers to take heed of the emotional aspects that accompany the use of such flexible work arrangements. Furthermore, career implications and the development of appropriate support structures for teleworkers need to be taken into account.
Originality/value
The contribution of this paper lies in the comparative approach between pre‐telework expectations and post‐telework outcomes. It compares different social and occupational groups.
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The purpose of the paper is to examine evidence in order to discover if teleworking has a pro‐poor growth impact – reducing inequality. For this reason, the paper seeks to propose…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of the paper is to examine evidence in order to discover if teleworking has a pro‐poor growth impact – reducing inequality. For this reason, the paper seeks to propose a telework taxonomy for the poor and research questions that trigger future empirical research on poor teleworkers.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper's approach is a literature review. The focused literature includes articles that analyze telework issues with a potential for the poor. Such issues are mainly workforce and organizational issues.
Findings
There is some evidence that provision of teleworking infrastructure has a dramatic effect on the income and quality of life of the rural poor. Special knowledge management tasks and types of telework can be proper for poor people. Economic and organizational aspects of telecentres for poor workers must be analyzed in depth.
Research limitations/implications
The paper provides a foundation for future research directions in the teleworking domain for the poor. For instance, the discussed implementation aspects of teleworking and the proposed telework taxonomy for the poor as well as the proposed research questions could be used to explore effective penetration of teleworking in poor countries. New conceptual frameworks for implementing telework for the poor can be generated.
Practical implications
An overview is provided of which issues/prerequisites are being considered most broadly and which might provide the most potential for policy makers/managers fighting poverty by using telework.
Originality/value
The paper contributes to the teleworking literature by analyzing how telework can be pro‐poor. It provides a useful overview of the topic. It proposes a telework taxonomy for the poor and three research questions that trigger future empirical research on poor teleworkers.
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Angel Martínez‐Sánchez, Manuela Pérez‐Pérez, María José Vela‐Jiménez and Pilar de‐Luis‐Carnicer
The purpose of this paper is to analyse the contribution of human resource (HR) commitment practices to firm performance through the adoption of workplace practices that require…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to analyse the contribution of human resource (HR) commitment practices to firm performance through the adoption of workplace practices that require the organisational climate created by HR commitment practices.
Design/methodology/approach
The approach is a survey of 156 Spanish firms and statistical test of research hypotheses through structural equation modelling.
Findings
The results indicate that the extent that employees have access to HR commitment practices and HR social benefits is positively related to the intensity of telework adoption. Firm performance is positively associated to the intensity of telework adoption, functional flexibility and internal numerical flexibility, and negatively related to external numerical flexibility. HR commitment practices impact directly and indirectly on different measures of firm performance.
Research limitations/implications
Cross‐sectional, survey‐based data that cannot infer causality. Longitudinal and qualitative designs are needed to get a better understanding of the relationships. A follow‐up study of employees perception of several variables analysed in this study (e.g. access to HR commitment practices and employee benefits) could reveal possible contradictions between what policies managers claim there exist, and what policies employees perceive to exist.
Practical implications
The adoption of HR commitment practices can facilitate the organisational change required by the adoption of telework.
Originality/value
The findings provide evidence that HR commitment practices are indirectly related to firm performance through their effects on the use of flexibility practices like telework that require organisational climates containing high levels of trust.
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