Articles
Contagious Offsite Work and the Lonely Office: The Unintended Consequences of Distributed Work
Published Online:6 Jan 2015https://doi.org/10.5465/amd.2014.0016
Abstract
Research in the area of offsite work arrangements (telework, remote work, etc.) has generally been focused on understanding how the experience of being offsite changes work attitudes and performance. What has been largely neglected is an investigation of how offsite work changes the experience of being in the onsite office. In a qualitative study of a Fortune 100 company on the forefront of allowing offsite work, we examine how the prevalence of offsite working arrangements influences perceptions of the onsite office as well as decisions regarding where one works. We find that individuals desire a co-located office environment as an opportunity for both social ties and work collaborations. In this distributed organization, however, that opportunity is largely not present. Individuals are working offsite not only for many traditionally known reasons but also because of how they imagine others are making their work location decisions. In this way, offsite work is seemingly spreading in a contagious way: individuals choose to work offsite as coworkers are choosing to work offsite, a finding we support in a follow-up quantitative study. We suggest that work in this area refocus to include contagion effects of offsite work and the potential for negative effects of working in a depopulated onsite office.
Whiteboard Video Abstract
REFERENCES
- 2001. Effects of computer surveillance on perceptions of privacy and procedural justice. Journal of Applied Psychology, 86: 797–804. Google Scholar
- 2000. Designing, implementing, and utilizing computerized performance monitoring: Enhancing organizational justice. In G. R. Ferris (Ed.), Research in personnel and human resources management, vol. 18: 187–219. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press. Google Scholar
- 2002. A review of telework research: Findings, new directions and lessons for the study of modern work. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 23: 383–400. Google Scholar
- 2008. Survey response rate levels and trends in organizational research. Human Relations, 61: 1139–1160. Google Scholar
- 2003. The human side of mergers and acquisitions: Managing collisions between people, cultures, and organizations. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Google Scholar
- 2013. Why Marissa Mayer told remote employees to work in an office … or quit. Business Insider. Retrieved from http://www.businessinsider.com/why-marissa-mayer-told-remote-employees-to-work-in-an-office--or-quit-2013-2. Accessed July 19, 2014. Google Scholar
- 1999. Channel expansion theory and the experiential nature of media richness perceptions. Academy of Management Journal, 42: 153–170.Link , Google Scholar
- 2000. Managing a virtual workplace. Academy of Management Executive, 14: 81–90.Abstract , Google Scholar
- 2002. Telecommuting, professional isolation, and employee development in public and private organizations. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 23: 511–532. Google Scholar
- 2005. Subgroup dynamics in internationally distributed teams: Ethnocentrism or cross-national learning? Research in Organizational Behavior, 26: 231–263. Google Scholar
- 2003. Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. Google Scholar
- 1991. Comparison of job satisfaction and productivity of telecommuters vs. in-house employees. Psychological Reports, 68: 1223–1234. Google Scholar
- 2007. The good, the bad, and the unknown about telecommuting: Meta-analysis of psychological mediators and individual consequences. Journal of Applied Psychology, 92: 1524–1541. Google Scholar
Global Workplace Analytics . 2013. Retrieved from http://www.globalworkplaceanalytics.com. Accessed July 15, 2014. Google Scholar- 2007. Co-workers who telework and the impact on those in the office: Understanding the implications of virtual work for co-worker satisfaction and turnover intentions. Human Relations, 60: 1641–1667. Google Scholar
- 2008. The impact of professional isolation on teleworker job performance and turnover intentions: Does time spent teleworking, interacting face-to-face, or having access to communication-enhancing technology matter? Journal of Applied Psychology, 93: 1412–1421. Google Scholar
- 2011. The telework era: Better in theory than in practice. Federal Computer Week. Retrieved from http://fcw.com/articles/2011/07/25/feat-telework-trials-and-errors.aspx. Accessed March 2, 2014. Google Scholar
- 2002. Advantages and disadvantages of telecommuting for the individual, organization and society. Work Study, 51: 74–80. Google Scholar
- 2004. The distributed workplace: Sustainable work environments. London, UK: Spon Press. Google Scholar
- 2005. Managing virtual teams: A review of current empirical research. Human Resource Management Review, 15: 69–95. Google Scholar
- 2004. The impact of team empowerment on virtual team performance: The moderating role of face-to-face interaction. Academy of Management Journal, 47: 175–192.Link , Google Scholar
- 2006. Telecommuting, control, and boundary management: Correlates of policy use and practice, job control, and work-family effectiveness. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 68: 347–367. Google Scholar
- 2000. A multilevel approach to theory and research in organizations: Contextual, temporal, and emergent processes. In K. J. Klein & S. W. J. Kozlowski (Eds.), Multilevel theory, research and methods in organizations: Foundations, extensions, and new directions: 3–90. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Google Scholar
- 2002. Understanding effects of proximity on collaboration: Implications for technologies to support remote collaborative work. In P. J. Hinds & S. Kiesler (Eds.), Distributed work: 137–164. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Google Scholar
- 1999. Telecommuting: Justice and control in the virtual organization. Organization Science, 10: 500–513. Google Scholar
- 2001. Grounded theory in management research. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. Google Scholar
- 2013. The office is dead: Long live the virtual office. shockwaveriderblog. Retrieved from http://shockwaveriderblog.wordpress.com/2013/05/04/the-office-is-dead-long-live-the-virtual-office/. Accessed July 15, 2014. Google Scholar
- 2004. Enabling knowledge creation in far-flung teams: Best practices for IT support and knowledge sharing. Journal of Knowledge Management, 8: 75–88. Google Scholar
- 1998. A review of the empirical research on telecommuting and directions for future research. In M. Igbaria & M. Tan (Eds.), The virtual workplace: 338–358. Hershey, PA: Idea Group Publishing. Google Scholar
- 1990. Qualitative evaluation and research methods 2nd ed.. Newbury Park, CA: SAGE. Google Scholar
- 2013. Best Buy ends work-from-home program. CNN. Retrieved from http://money.cnn.com/2013/03/05/technology/best-buy-work-from-home/. Accessed July 19, 2014. Google Scholar
- 2014. Patent office filters out worst telework abuses in report to its watchdog. Washington Post, August 11: A1. Google Scholar
- 2009. A new take on incubators. Entrepreneur. Retrieved from http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/201228. Accessed December 11, 2014. Google Scholar
- 1995. Psychological contracts in organizations: Understanding written and unwritten agreements. Newbury Park, CA: SAGE. Google Scholar
- 1985. Work-at-home and the quality of working life. Academy of Management Review, 10: 455–464.Link , Google Scholar
- 2013. Here’s the confidential memo Yahoo sent employees about working from home. Business Insider. Retrieved from http://www.businessinsider.com/yahoo-working-from-home-memo-2013-2. Accessed July 19, 2014. Google Scholar
- 1979. The ethnographic interview. New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Google Scholar
- 1998. Diffusion in organizations and social movements: From hybrid corn to poison pill. Annual Review of Sociology, 24: 265–290. Google Scholar
- 1990. Basics of qualitative research: Grounded theory procedures and techniques. Newbury Park, CA: SAGE. Google Scholar
- 1988. Untangling the relationship between emotion work and organizational sales: The case of convenience stores. Academy of Management Journal, 31: 461–487.Link , Google Scholar
- 2009. Well-being and organizational performance: An organizational-level test of the happy-productive worker hypothesis. Work and Stress, 23: 120–136. Google Scholar
- 2002. Discontinuities and continuities: a new way to understand virtual work. Information Technology and People, 15: 191–209. Google Scholar
- 2006. Oversurveying: Causes, consequences, and cures. In A. I. Kraut (Ed.), Getting action from organizational surveys: New concepts, methods and applications: 294–311. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Google Scholar
WorldatWork . 2013. Job flexibility makes employees more loyal. Retrieved from http://www.worldatwork.org/adimComment?id=74059. Accessed January 15, 2014. Google Scholar
