Elsevier

Information & Management

Volume 42, Issue 7, October 2005, Pages 1037-1049
Information & Management

Individual, social and situational determinants of telecommuter productivity

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.im.2004.12.001Get rights and content

Abstract

Productivity of remote workers is of critical concern to organizations and managers contemplating telecommuting arrangements. Here we suggest a general theoretical framework for understanding telecommuter productivity, and then report on a two-phased research study. In the first phase, semi-structured interviews with 32 telecommuters were conducted in one organization, and individual, social, and situational factors associated with telecommuter productivity were qualitatively explored. The second phase involved a survey of 100 telecommuters in two organizations, followed by predictive discriminant analyses to identify factors that might usefully distinguish between telecommuters exhibiting low and high levels of productivity. Results indicate that telecommuter beliefs and attitudes, and the quality of their social interactions with managers and family members, were strongly associated with productivity. Furthermore, telecommuters’ social interactions with colleagues, managers, and family members had a strong influence on their beliefs and attitudes about telecommuting.

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

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    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.

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