The moderating role of organizational culture on the relationship between workers' attitudes towards telework and happiness

Abstract

PurposeThe COVID-19 pandemic forced organizations to adopt telework, many of the organizations without any prior preparation, influencing not only daily organizational routines but also workers' happiness. Happiness is important for organizations because happy and fulfilled workers are a key to achieving organizational success. Organizational culture is a critical factor to implement telework, because that may influence the workers' attitudes toward this model of work and workers' happiness. This study aimed to test the moderating role of organizational culture (clan, adhocracy, market and hierarchical) in the relationship between attitudes toward teleworking and happiness.Design/methodology/approachTo meet the objectives, the authors collected data from 265 teleworkers.FindingsThe results revealed that only market culture moderated the relationship between attitudes toward teleworking and happiness, such that this relationship became stronger in the presence of a goal-oriented culture. No other dimension of organizational culture significantly moderated the relationship between telework and happiness.Practical implicationsThese results prove to be fundamental for a better understanding of organizational and individual factors when organizations want to implement telework as a work arrangement.Originality/valueConsidering the mainstream literature in telework, to the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study to date to integrate the moderating role of organizational culture in the relationship between telework and happiness.

The effect of telework on emotional exhaustion and task performance via work overload: the moderating role of self-leadership

“…Third, regarding flexibility, some factors that may explain the results are: (1) the reduction in daily commuting and exposure to traffic and public transport stress; (2) increased control over work enables more opportunities for leisure or to spend time on hobbies, which may contribute to better recovery from daily work (Sonnentag, 2018), higher happiness (Junça-Silva and Coelho, 2022) and consequently, to stress reduction; (3) greater autonomy allows the individual to manage work and non-work appointments, in the best way, providing a greater telework/life balance; (4) fewer distractions during work, enabling more concentration on the tasks at hand; and (5) greater autonomy in managing the work schedule gives opportunity to decide when to work, for instance, in periods of higher efficiency (e.g. Grant et al.…”

“…It presents a set of advantages for both individuals and organizations (Leung and Zhang, 2017); for instance, it seems to decrease stress and improve performance (e.g. Jaiswal et al, 2022;Junça-Silva and Coelho, 2022;Kissi et al, 2019). These advantages have been attributed to increased flexibility and autonomy, lower work-family conflict, fewer interruptions and improved concentration, among others (e.g.…”

Procrastination is not only a “thief of time”, but also a thief of happiness: it buffers the beneficial effects of telework on well-being via daily micro-events of IT workers

“…However, it was in the mid-1970s, during the oil crisis, that it became truly important. Nilles, its pioneer, highlighted the importance of this model of work, after having concluded that, if the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) were used, it would be possible to reduce the costs in terms of fuel, travel from work to home, home-employment and reduce the air pollution (Junça-Silva and Coelho, 2022). In 1973, Nilles implemented remote functions at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), to respond to the problems of physical distance between members of the same team (Bailey and Kurland, 2002).…”

The role of financial status, attitudes, behaviours and knowledge for overall well-being in Portugal: the mediating role of financial well-being

“…Organization for economic cooperation and development (OECD) evaluated the Portuguese’s well-being and concluded that, in terms of income and wealth, Portugal was below the OECD average, that is, “there is a considerable gap between the richest and poorest – the top 20% of the population earn nearly six times as much as the bottom 20%” (OCDE – Better Life Index – Portugal, 2022). Moreover, the Portuguese appear to have lower levels of well-being and happiness when compared with other European countries, such as Finland or Denmark which are at the top of the happiest countries in the world (Junça-Silva and Coelho, 2022; OECD, 2021). For instance, Portuguese adults reported, on average, a 5.4 punctuation to rate their well-being, which was above the medium on a scale from 0 to 10 and is still one of the lowest scores in the OECD, where the average was 6.5.…”