Teleworking: Frameworks for Organizational Research

Abstract

Teleworking is a work practice that entails remote working for at least some of the time. Common arrangements include work done at home or in the field, by teleworkers in a range of occupations. As such, telework is one of the most radical departures from standard working conditions in the suite of flexible work practices now gaining widespread acceptance. In this paper, we develop an explanatory model of organizational adoption of teleworking. We do this as a means of integrating the current literature on the incidence of teleworking and to provide a theoretical grounding and framework for understanding differentials in the growth of teleworking in different organizations, industries and countries. We begin by developing an appropriate framework for conceptualizing teleworking. We propose a multivariate approach that is able to differentiate the various forms of teleworking. We then use this framework to develop a model and a series of propositions concerning the adoption of different forms of teleworking. Neo-institutional theory, as well as recent empirical evidence on teleworking informs this model

‘Fit’ for telework’? Cross-cultural variance and task-control explanations in organizations’ formal telework practices

“…According to Daniels et al (2001), middle managers will object to teleworking as this might reduce their role, status and power. A high proportion of managers may, therefore, be taken to signal the power of managers in the organization, and maybe an organization's lack of fit and, therefore, interest in teleworking.…”

“…Teleworking organizations may implement HRM policies and practices fostering organizational values to create a strong collective organizational culture of shared understanding (Daniels et al, 2001;Sparrow, 2000), such as a code of ethics, mission statements, or other organizational policies signaling the organization's norms and values that are supposed to guide teleworkers' behavior. Therefore:…”

“…Longitudinal research could better capture trends and causality. For example, an alternative explanation for the relatively small effects of our two key variables (national cultural values and task control mechanisms) may be that their effects are 'masked or displaced by a number of other institutional processes' (Daniels et al, 2001(Daniels et al, , p. 1166, such as mimetic pressures (cf., Peters & Heusinkveld, 2010). Enhanced global competiveness and expanding global operations across geographical borders and time zones have not only enabled, but also pressured telework use (Peters et al, 2009).…”

“…Although teleworking often happens informally (Peters & Van der Batenburg, 2015;Peters & Van der Lippe, 2007), that motivate workers to carry out organizational tasks effectively and efficiently in line with organizational goals and to safeguard productivity. However, to the best our knowledge, research into the actual level of formal telework practices used in organizations, taking into account both macro (national cultural values) and meso factors (structural task control mechanisms) explanations, has been advocated (Daniels et al, 2001), but not yet been conducted. In this multilevel theoretical and empirical study, using the organization as the unit of analysis, we aim to contribute to the scholarly and societal debates on 'HRM and the smart and dark sides of teleworking as a technology based work practice' by employing an organizational fit perspective (Beer et al, 1984;Boselie, 2010;Paauwe, Guest, & Wright, 2013) to explain the level of formal telework practices used in organizations based in a large number of national settings by looking into its relationship with 'telework management'.…”

“…More specifically, employing multinomial logistic regression analysis of multilevel data, including 1577 organizations within 18 nations, we analyze whether both building on strong national values ('individualism' and 'collectivism') (Ralston et al, 2011;Schwartz, 1992Schwartz, , 1994Schwartz, , 1999Schwartz, , 2006 and employing (alternative) direct or indirect task control mechanisms (Hales, 1993) can explain the level of telework practices in organizations (cf., Daniels et al, 2001). Providing insight into the external and internal conditions for telework may help stakeholders across the globe to gain from the smart sides of telework and to avoid the dark sides.…”