Individual, social and situational determinants of telecommuter productivity
Introduction
Telecommuting – working outside the conventional workplace [38] – has become a standard work arrangement for 15% of all corporate employees in the United States and Canada [51], [58], and approximately 9% in European Union nations [19]. In recent years, a sizeable body of research has emerged regarding the individual, organizational, and societal drivers and outcomes of telecommuting, yet relatively little research to date has explored telecommuter productivity, arguably among the most critical factors of concern to organizations that are considering “sending their employees home.” Thus, the research question addressed here is: What factors influence telecommuter productivity? An answer to this question could help managers identify suitable candidates, as well as those who may be particularly unsuited to remote work arrangements. We proposed seven main hypotheses, drawn from various theories of social psychology, as well as available empirical research on telecommuting.
Section snippets
Telecommuter productivity: a literature review
Research on telecommuting may be broadly organized according to three levels of analysis: societal (e.g., traffic congestion, shift to offshore labor, teledemocracy, opportunities for the disabled) [28], [39], [63], organizational (e.g., cost savings, employee morale, staffing, communication, control) [10], [13], [52], [61], and individual (e.g., flexibility, satisfaction, work–family balance, productivity) [7], [9]. We focused on individual-level telecommuter productivity and its associated
Determinants of telecommuter productivity
Agarwal's [1] integrative research framework provided a broad synthesis of the core constructs of individual IT acceptance research; she also noted that individual first order effects on user satisfaction and productivity, though not shown explicitly, were implied. Her model was adapted to create the exploratory one shown in Fig. 1, by substituting individual productivity for individual acceptance as the final dependent variable in order to allow explicit examination of first order productivity
Phase one: the qualitative study
Semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted with home-based telecommuters in one organization to surface and delve into important issues [47]. This study was conducted in the Canadian division of a large multinational corporation that had implemented a national telecommuting program six months previously. Telephone interviews were requested from 41 employees and 32 in-depth interviews (78%) were completed. Of the respondents, 75% were male and 25% were female; 80% were married and 20%
Phase one: results
Beliefs and attitudes were strongly associated with telecommuter productivity (χ2 = 18.1, p < 0.001) (see Table 2). Among 13 telecommuters reporting low productivity, 12 (92%) also reported negative/hesitant attitudes towards telecommuting, whereas 16 out of 19 (84%) reporting high productivity telecommuters also reported positive attitudes.
Those in the low-productivity group felt that telecommuting left them worse off than before (relative advantage), created work difficulties (complexity), and
Phase two: the quantitative study
The paper-and-pencil survey was conducted on employees in two Canadian organizations. The survey consisted of items that quantitatively assessed perceived productivity as well as potential determinants of productivity identified during the interview phase (see Table 6). Items were measured using five-point Likert scales. A total of 141 surveys were distributed and 100 useable surveys were returned, for a response rate of 71%. Of the respondents, 64% were male and 36% were female; 83% were
Phase two: results
The overall PDA result for telecommuter productivity was significant (χ2 = 68.6, p < 0.001) (Table 7). Three variables were useful in discriminating between low- and high-productivity telecommuters: beliefs and attitudes (r = 0.94, F = 93.5, p < 0.001), manager interaction (r = −0.44, F = 20.7, p < 0.001), and family interaction (r = 0.22, F = 5.3, p < 0.05) (because discriminating variables can be correlated with each other, structure correlations are commonly considered superior to standardized coefficients in
Discussion and conclusion
Taken together, results from the qualitative and quantitative studies suggested that the most important determinants of telecommuter productivity were beliefs and attitudes about telecommuting and social interactions with manager and family members. In turn, the most important determinants of telecommuter beliefs and attitudes – the most critical determinant of telecommuter productivity – were social interactions with colleagues, manager, and family members. Using these discriminant functions,
Derrick J. Neufeld is an assistant professor of information systems at the Richard Ivey School of Business, The University of Western Ontario. He received his PhD from The University of Western Ontario. His work is focused on IT-facilitated distributed work arrangements, and particularly on consequences for employees (telecommuting), managers (remote leadership) and teams (virtual teamwork). He has published in the Journal of Engineering and Technology Management, The DATA BASE for Advances in
References (63)
The theory of planned behavior
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes
(1991)Workers’ propensity to telecommute: an empirical study
Information & Management
(1999)Attitudes toward telecommuting: implications for work-at-home programs
Information & Management
(1984)- et al.
An empirical evaluation of the impacts of telecommuting on intra-organizational communication
Journal of Engineering & Technology Management
(1999) - et al.
Modeling the desire to telecommuting: the importance of attitudinal factors in behavioral models
Transportation Research
(1997) - et al.
The computer attitude scale
Computers in Human Behavior
(1986) - et al.
Employees’ opportunities, preferences, and practices in telecommuting adoption
Information & Management
(2004) - et al.
Factors associated with attitudes towards telecommuting
Information & Management
(1990) Individual acceptance of information technologies
From intentions to actions: a theory of planned behavior
Understanding Attitudes and Predicting Social Behavior
Organizational linkages: understanding the productivity paradox
Administrative Science Quarterly
Social Learning Theory
Loosely-coupled settings: a strategy for computer-aided work decentralization
Research in Organizational Behavior
Sociological Paradigms and Organizational Analysis
Technology requirements and work group communications for telecommuters
Information Systems Research
Productivity in Organizations
Managing a virtual workplace
The Academy of Management Executive
Two cheers for the virtual office
Sloan Management Review
User acceptance of computer technology: a comparison of two theoretical models
Management Science
Attitudes of managers and employees to telecommuting
Infor
After-hours telecommuting and work–family conflict: a comparative analysis
Information Systems Research
Belief, Attitude, Intention and Behavior: An Introduction to Theory and Research
Social construction of communication technology
Academy of Management Journal
Early diagnosis of MIS implementation failure: promising results and unanswered questions
Management Science
Self-efficacy: a theoretical analysis of its determinants and malleability
Academy of Management Review
Multivariate Data Analysis
Organizational Linkages: Understanding the Productivity Paradox
Developing successful organizational telecommuting arrangements: worker perceptions and managerial prescriptions
SAM Advanced Management Journal
Work and family in the virtual office: perceived influences of mobile telework
Family Relations
Cited by (0)
Derrick J. Neufeld is an assistant professor of information systems at the Richard Ivey School of Business, The University of Western Ontario. He received his PhD from The University of Western Ontario. His work is focused on IT-facilitated distributed work arrangements, and particularly on consequences for employees (telecommuting), managers (remote leadership) and teams (virtual teamwork). He has published in the Journal of Engineering and Technology Management, The DATA BASE for Advances in Information Systems, and The Leadership Quarterly.
Yulin Fang is a doctoral candidate at the Richard Ivey School of Business, The University of Western Ontario. His research is focused on knowledge management, IT-mediated teamwork and the virtual organization. His doctoral thesis research is examining the processes by which individuals acquire knowledge through virtual teamwork. His research has appeared in The DATA BASE for Advances in Information Systems and the International Conference on Information Systems.