On the Lost Property of Telework During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Japan: From the Perspective of Sociomateriality and Organizational Citizenship Behaviour

Abstract

When telework was discussed in Japan during the COVID-19 pandemic, the context of staying home was strongly considered. As a result, the primary focus has been on carrying out one's assigned work at home. In other words, people tend to focus on the fact that they can carry out their work without being restricted by location. However, the networked aspect of telework is important. In other words, to realize telework, it is necessary to fully consider the aspect of making one's own work visible and collaborating with others. In this paper, the author clarifies the significance of the "connection" that information systems engender by examining the mechanism of inducing organizational citizenship behaviour from the perspective of “sociomateriality” proposed by Wanda Orlikowski et al. in information systems research. Furthermore, we warn against “discretionary bias,” a tendency to “free oneself from the constraints of time and place,” which appears, because telework was introduced as a measure to prevent the spread of infection. In addition, this paper examines the case of intranets in the 1990s to clarify the nature of connection through information systems and to find new insights in old cases, just as the Industrial Revolution is referenced in discussions of whether AI will take away jobs.

Applying IS-Enabled Telework during COVID-19 Lockdown Periods and Beyond: Insights from Employees in a Greek Banking Institution

“…Recent research in Japan has also reported a positive correlation between telework supported by ICT and perceived work autonomy (Yanagihara and Koga 2023). At the same time, it has been suggested that, to realize telework, it is necessary to allow for the making of one's own work visible and collaboration with others, enabled by information systems (Koga 2023). It has been noted that the main changes with regard to COVID-19 and people management have occurred in the processes of work and safety, training, work organization, recruitment and selection, induction and onboarding, and communication, with a prominent increase in the use of teleworking, while, according to human resource managers, the most evident changes in the future will be associated with the use of technology, teleworking, and work organization (Gonçalves et al 2021).…”

“…Issues revolving on the implementation of telework and the utilization of IS (information systems) and IT (information technology) means, including allowing for the co-presence of employees (Taskin et al 2023), as well as monitoring and tending to employees' technostress in telework scenarios (Fernández-Fernández et al 2023;Raišien ė et al 2023), the need to focus on the effects of utilizing technology to telework on parameters revolving around employees' well-being (Santos and Pereira 2023), and-especially more so in banks-the need to focusing on IT and IS security issues during telework (Sparks 2020), as well as the effect of country/context-specific nature of banking on telework characteristics and application scenarios (Sousa-Duarte 2022). • Work-life conflict during telework scenarios, which may lead to effects such as exhaustion, decrease in job satisfaction, and work performance (Weinert and Weitzel 2023), the effect of technology utilization in telework scenarios on employees' work-life balance (Gonçalves et al 2021;Andrade and Lousã 2021;Alassaf et al 2023), the moderating effect of IS and IT on the relationship between telework and employees' emotional and organizational response (Koga 2023) and issues of privacy (especially for banking employees) (Öcal 2021).…”