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The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of remote e‐working on the key research areas of work‐life balance, job effectiveness and well‐being. The study provides a set of generalisable themes drawn from the key research areas, including building trust, management style and the quality of work and non‐working life.

The paper is an exploratory study into the psychological factors affecting remote e‐workers using qualitative thematic analysis of eleven in‐depth interviews with e‐workers, across five organisations and three sectors. All participants worked remotely using technology independent of time and location for several years and considered themselves to be experts.

The paper provides insights into the diverse factors affecting remote e‐workers and produces ten emerging themes. Differentiating factors between e‐workers included access to technology, ability to work flexibly and individual competencies. Adverse impacts were found on well‐being, due to over‐working and a lack of time for recuperation. Trust and management style were found to be key influences on e‐worker effectiveness.

Because of the exploratory nature of the research and approach the research requires further testing for generalisability. The emerging themes could be used to develop a wide‐scale survey of e‐workers, whereby the themes would be further validated.

Practical working examples are provided by the e‐workers and those who also manage e‐workers based on the ten emerging themes.

This paper identifies a number of generalisable themes that can be used to inform the psychological factors affecting remote e‐worker effectiveness.

The Covid-19 pandemic has affected most organisations' workplaces and productivity. Organisations have had to make provision for staff to operate remotely following the implementation of lockdown regulations around the world, because the pandemic has led to restrictions on movement and the temporary closure of workplace premises. The purpose of this paper is to provide insights from remote workers' experiences in South Africa about immediate conversion from the normal workplace environment to working remotely from home. The structuration theory was adopted to understand the social structural challenges experienced by staff working from home.

Data were collected using a Web-based survey, administered when the Covid-19 pandemic resulted in movement restrictions, using the judgemental sampling technique.

The results are presented using both external and internal features that are linked to the social structures experienced by remote workers who participated in the survey. The key findings indicate that despite the positive aspects of remote working using advances in technology, there are also negative aspects and risks attached to remote working such as work overload and pressures to perform timeously. This can pose severe threats to workers' routines and lifestyle, and the lack of interaction can impinge on their health and general well-being.

The online survey was carried out with first-time remote workers who were the target for the study. Some respondents may have had an affinity for remote working because of the novelty. The sample size may not be generalised, as the collected sample is moderately small, although the purpose of the paper was to report on a small sample size, given the rapidity of the study.

The paper seeks to highlight social structures that exist in South Africa, which accentuate the resource divide for remote workers. Also, the paper aims to encourage organisations (employers) to better understand challenges that workers encountered while working from their homes during the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown restrictions.

The relevance of this paper is in its contribution to the structuration theory and remote working literature, as well as to the study of these topics in the context of South Africa.

COVID-19 has accelerated the shift to remote work. Enabling knowledge workers to do their jobs from home or elsewhere brings benefits by increasing labour participation, avoiding unproductive commuting time (thus reducing the carbon footprint), and reducing the gender gap by enabling a partner with domestic care responsibilities to work. Not all jobs are suitable for remote work, but far more remote work is feasible than has been typical to date. The post-pandemic new normal is sure to differ both from the pre-pandemic normal and from current arrangements. Hybrid arrangements where part of the week is spent at the office, and a part at home, might well become the norm. Employers, workers, trade unions, and governments will need to adapt to the new normal.

With the spread of COVID-19, governments have initiated lockdown procedures and forced organizations to switch to remote working. Employees working remotely in isolated and confined situations are experiencing great stress and uncertainty. This study aims to investigate how remote workers perform during lockdowns.

Drawing on social information processing theory, this study developed and tested hypotheses linking professional isolation, cynicism and task performance. This study was comprised of 497 remote workers in the financial industry in China.

The findings revealed that professional isolation is positively related to cynicism, and cynicism is negatively related to task performance. Cynicism mediates the relationship between professional isolation and task performance. The results indicated that psychological hardiness moderated the mediation effect of professional isolation on task performance through cynicism.

This research offers implications for managers and practitioners on reducing employees' feeling of isolation through effective communication, collaboration and support via online platforms and preventing and reducing cynicism by introducing clear organizational policy and practice to balance job demands and job resources. Meanwhile, managers can develop commitment, control and challenge components of employees' psychological hardiness to enhance job performance.

This study extends the remote working literature in a crisis situation and fills the gap in the cynicism literature by understanding the role played by cynicism for remote workers. The current study also adds to the literature by highlighting the importance of psychological hardiness for remote workers during the pandemic.

The purpose of this study is to identify potential differences in experiences and their causes from a gender-based perspective.

We use secondary data, and we conduct a thematic analysis, to identify whether and how women and men negotiate differently.

Despite remote work being considered as creating a level-playing field for both genders, women are still vulnerable to work and life demands, and pre-existing stereotypes become exacerbated. In addition, we show how technology might be used to manage physical and temporal boundaries, through integration or segmentation tactics.

There is a growing body of literature that focuses on work-life conflict among teleworkers. Yet, there is limited research that explores such conflicts from a gender perspective, specifically whether and how different genders manage boundaries between work and life differently.

A new type of digital-based worker emerged during the COVID-19. As a result, during the adjustment to this scenario, family, resources and emotions were impacted. Technological and emotional skills were crucial to give continuity and certainty to business. However, despite benefits, remote working has negative consequences, especially in well-being perception. This study proposes a model to measure the impact on the well-being perception of workers that adapted their job to remote positions during a pandemic and offers a valuable framework to understand future emerging changes in remote working and the relationship with well-being perception, especially during crisis scenarios.

The study used an online questionnaire and a structural equation methodology by partial least squares (PLS) using SmartPLS 3.3.3. Data were obtained from 567 respondents workers who adapted to their jobs during the pandemic in Mexico.

The results showed that six model dimensions: human relations (RH), emotions (E), well-being behaviors related to Covid-19 (CB), family economics (EF), routines and habits (RS) and family life (VF) were positive and significant to reflect the Index of Perception of Well-being (iWB) using a structural equation model. This indicates how the lockdown process changed people's perception of well-being and concerns. According with this, for remote working employees, two dimensions were relevant: RH and EF. This finding is relevant because during emergency lockdown, these workers needed to adapt their activities and were separated from all human interactions.

The researchers’ model of Index of Perception of Well-being (iWB) has conceptual and practical implications. From a conceptual point of view, it offers a methodology to measure the relationships between remote working and employees' well-being perception. While for practice, it offers managerial implications to better manage remote working adaptation without compromising people's well-being to create future innovation management environments (IME) for organizations.

This study contributes to develop research about changes in workers' well-being perception during digital adaptation.

This study explores the topic of remote work and the changing motivations to working from home after the COVID-19 pandemic-induced exposure to working from home. It examines the effects of that forced work from home (WFH) experience on subsequent motivations for continuing part or all of that changed mode of working. In this study, the authors examine the perspective of front-line knowledge workers regarding the motivation to WFH based on their lived experiences.

Self-determination theory (SDT) provided the theoretical basis for the study (Ryan and Deci, 2000, 2017). The authors employed semi-structured individual and group interviews (with 28 participants) and explored the following questions: How has the competence aspect of motivation to WFH changed due to the shift that occurred during the pandemic? How has the relatedness aspect of motivation to WFH changed due to the shift that occurred during the pandemic? How has the autonomy aspect of motivation to WFH changed due to the shift that transpired during the pandemic?

The findings show that there was a change from an extrinsic motivation based on external factors to one that is more intrinsic, or internal, in nature for knowledge workers who experienced the switch to working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study makes an important contribution by developing a theoretical model based on SDT (Ryan and Deci, 2000, 2017) in the context of WFH. In the first phase (Phase 1), workers experienced many transitional challenges due to the suddenness and intensiveness of the shift. However, over time workers adapted and adjusted (we refer to this as Phase 2 in our model). Ultimately, all three aspects of SDT – competence, relatedness and autonomy – increased motivation to work from home. However, we also found some factors that act as demotivators to knowledge workers for embracing remote work such as those involving career advancement and the expectation of voice. Despite these moderating factors, the overall progression toward the desire to WFH, at least on a hybrid basis, has continued after adjusting to the forced experience of telecommuting during the pandemic.

The contribution of this study is to disaggregate the short-term effects of the sudden transition, to the longer-term effects after adaption and adjustment occurred, and to connect that to a new perspective on work by employees. It does this by extending SDT to the context of motivation regarding work from home. The COVID-19 pandemic provided experience of and opportunities for telework to more employees and changed many of their expectations and motivations. By looking at front-line knowledge workers’ expectations and motivations related to home-based work, we can better understand the increased demand by workers for hybrid work schedules.

This study aims to investigate the impact of working from home and its duration on job satisfaction.

The analysis was conducted on a representative panel data set from the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey - Higher School of Economics (RLMS-HSE) for 2016–2021 using endogenous regression models. The impact of working from home on job satisfaction before and during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, and separately for men and women, was analysed.

Working from home was found to positively affect job satisfaction in the Russian labour market. From 2016 to 2021, men and women who worked from home were more satisfied with their jobs than their counterparts who did not work from home. The positive impact of working from home on job satisfaction was observed before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, remote workers (RWR) putting in more than eight hours per day reported lower job satisfaction.

Working from home can be considered as a measure to combat unemployment, increase employment and improve the utilisation (distribution) of human resources. Further research is required to analyse the impact of health issues and the need to care for young children or infirm persons on job satisfaction in remote work. A more detailed analysis is required of the factors that affect the job satisfaction of women who work remotely.

To ensure that labour productivity increases and not decreases, employers are advised to develop more detailed working arrangements and labour management for RWRs. Especially for such assigned workers, task control regulations must be developed. To increase the motivation of individuals to work remotely, overtime should be paid at a higher rate.

Unclear working time regulations lead to overwork, irregular working hours and burnout. For RWRs, this leads to lower job satisfaction and a consequent drop in productivity.

The empirical investigation is based on a representative panel of Russian data with six waves. Wide ranges of job characteristics were incorporated as determinants. The problem of causality was investigated. For models with an endogenous regressor, instrumental variables were tested and selected.

The need for the study is justified by the fact that scientists and policy makers around the world are trying to identify the potential threat of digitalisation, looking for ways to adapt to new changes and take advantage of the opportunities offered by the information society and the knowledge economy and to mitigate risks. Digitalisation also changes the labour market – using information and communication technology (ICT) in the working process opens up new opportunities. Moving from a traditional office to another environment, combining work with private life and recreation more effectively, while remote work deals with costly jobs, spaces and congestion on the city streets. The study aims to assess the development of remote work in the European Union (EU) and Latvia, assessing its effectiveness and the possibilities for long-term use by analysing its impact on the transformational directions of the economy. During the analysis, the following findings were made: identified the potential and problems of the deployment of remote work in Latvia, determined the main challenges of remote work and policies to improve the situation. The analysis employs theoretical and empirical research methods. The theoretical method of analysis and deduction provides information on its impact on the economy from the scientific literature on remote work and its diverse aspects. The comparative method is widely used to identify aspects of remote work distribution and economic development and their interaction. Practical implications of research – to make recommendations on policy directions to improve the situation, which would promote the further development of remote work.

Firms use Relative Performance Information (RPI) to improve employee performance; however, differences in employees’ remote work environments call into question whether RPI improves performance in remote work arrangements. By manipulating RPI provision across sections, the authors examine whether RPI improves performance in remote work arrangements using a field experiment in introductory accounting courses taught during the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors found that RPI improves performance in a remote work setting, as students receiving RPI achieved higher exam scores and increased their exam scores to a greater extent than students who did not receive RPI. The authors also found that lower performers improved performance more than higher performers in response to RPI, and the effect of RPI was more pronounced in those closest to meaningful thresholds. These results inform practice on the expected benefits of implementing RPI in a remote work setting.