Top Research Papers on Remote Working

The impact of COVID-19 on the way that we work arguably represents the most drastic and rapid shift to the global workforce that we have seen since World War II. This paper investigates the long term impacts of this remote work experiment and what we can anticipate in the future, based on the direct impact that COVID has had on hiring, sentiments around remote work, and plans moving forward. The analysis uses two waves of survey data: one fielded prior to the pandemic in November 2019, and the other fielded during the pandemic in April 2020. The surveys polled a combined 1,500 hiring managers ...

Study of work-from-home practices of neurodivergent professionals who have Autism Spectrum Disorder, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, learning disabilities, and psychosocial disabilities reveals that while working from home, neurod divergent professionals create accessible physical and digital workspaces, negotiate accessible communication practices, and reconcile tensions between productivity and wellbeing.

Purpose This paper aims to consider enforced working from home in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and how it may differ from working from home through choice. In particular, the authors discuss how lockdown may be affecting work-family arrangements. Design/methodology/approach This is a thought piece. Findings The paper briefly examines the extant research on remote working. It is argued that as many of the (beneficial) outcomes found for both employees and employers are associated with feelings of greater autonomy and gratitude on the part of employees for being able to exercise choice over...

In the context of weak institutional support for parenting, telecommuting may offer mothers a mechanism for maintaining work hours and reducing gender gaps in childcare, while exacerbating inequalities in housework and disruptions to paid work.

Findings highlight how both work and personal digital platforms induce technostress during the enforced remote work period, which in turn increases psychological strains such as technology exhaustion and decreases subjective wellbeing.

It is found that virtual work characteristics linked to worker's performance and well‐being via the experienced challenges, and self‐discipline was a significant moderator of several of these relationships.

Abstract This paper investigates the impact of job control and work‐related loneliness on employee work behaviors and well‐being during the massive and abrupt move to remote work amid the COVID‐19 pandemic. We draw on job‐demands control and social baseline theory to link employee perceived job control and work‐related loneliness to emotional exhaustion and work‐life balance and posit direct and indirect effects on employee minor counterproductive work behaviors, depression, and insomnia. Using a two‐wave data collection with a sample of U.S. working adults to test our predictions, we find tha...

Companies around the world have extended their remote-working policies, implemented due to COVID, through 2021 and beyond, and are starting to consider a broader shift towards remote (or hybrid) workforce models as a means for reducing overhead costs while supporting employee productivity and wellbeing.

Using a large dataset of workers’ technology use from before and after the COVID-19 pandemic, Yang et al. find that firm-wide remote work caused the collaboration networks of information workers to become more static and siloed and communication to shift to more asynchronous media.

We analyze the supply-side disruptions associated with Covid-19 across firms and workers.To do so, we exploit differences in the ability of workers across industries to work remotely using data from the American Time Use Survey (ATUS).We find that sectors in which a higher fraction of the workforce is not able to work remotely experienced significantly greater declines in employment, significantly more reductions in expected revenue growth, worse stock market performance, and higher expected likelihood of default.In terms of individual employment outcomes, lower-paid workers, especially female...

Abstract We analyze the supply-side disruptions associated with COVID-19. We find that sectors in which a higher fraction of the workforce is not able to work remotely experienced greater declines in employment and expected revenue growth, worse stock market performance, and higher likelihood of default. The stock market overweights low-exposure industries. Thus, our findings cast light on the disconnect between stock market indices and aggregate outcomes. We combine these ex ante heterogeneous industry exposures with daily financial market data to create a stock return portfolio that tracks n...

Abstract Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has seen a shift in remote work from being a discretionary flexible work policy to a mandatory requirement for several workplaces. This ‘forced flexibility’ has meant that organisations and their employees have had to adapt swiftly to new requirements and arrangements for how work is done. Working remotely, often at home in ‘virtual workspaces’, has become commonplace for many employees across Australia and globally. Drawing on findings from two qualitative phases of research in an Australian resources company, we use conservation of resources theor...

We report the results of a nationally-representative sample of the US population during the COVID-19 pandemic.The survey ran in two waves from April 1-5, 2020 and May 2-8, 2020.Of those employed pre-COVID-19, we find that about half are now working from home, including 35.2% who report they were commuting and recently switched to working from home.In addition, 10.1% report being laid-off or furloughed since the start of COVID-19.There is a strong negative relationship between the fraction in a state still commuting to work and the fraction working from home.We find that the share of people swi...

Regression results based on a sector‐level gravity model show that the negative trade effects induced by COVID‐19 shocks varied widely across sectors, and participation in global value chains increased traders’ vulnerability to shocks suffered by trading partners, but it also reduced their vulnerability to domestic shocks.

Due to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, many employees have been strongly encouraged or mandated to work from home. The present study sought to understand the attitudes and experiences of the general public toward remote work by analyzing Twitter data from March 30 to July 5 of 2020. We web scraped over 1 million tweets using keywords such as "telework," "work from home," "remote work," and so forth, and analyzed the content using natural language processing (NLP) techniques. Sentiment analysis results show generally positive attitudes expressed by remote work-related tweets, ...

This paper reviews scientific literature and draws on the author’s ethnographic fieldwork to create an updated classification of contemporary digital Nomadism that acknowledges the broad spectrum of individuals, groups, communities, identities, and imaginaries labelled with the term digital nomad.

The COVID-19 pandemic has established remote work as the new normal. However, the factors that influence the effectiveness of remote work are unexplored. Moreover, the relationships between remote work and job performance and emotional exhaustion are under-investigated. This study addresses these gaps by investigating the factors that influence the effectiveness and outcomes of remote work. The technology-organisation-environment (TOE) framework and the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) are used as a theoretical lens to examine the internal and external factors that affect remote work and work...

A massive shift towards remote work practices has presented many organizations and employees with acute challenges associated with multi-locational work. This shift underscores the need to reconsider isolation as one of the focal challenges of organizations in an era of increasingly dispersed and mediated work practices. This study relies on a three-wave survey among Finnish workers to investigate how remote work practices and the use of information and communication technology (ICT) have impacted perceptions of isolation during the global health pandemic, and whether these relationships have ...

The relationship between remote e-working and employee flow experiences is explored by introducing two key stressors; technostress and loneliness by collecting data from a survey of 202 employees from the financial services sector in Turkey.

The Self-Determination Theory is discussed within the context of this paper and it has been found that the theory could provide an explanation of the efficient and rapid adaptation of the technology be employees.

Facing one of the most challenging pandemics for organizational modus operandi (COVID-19), organizations are struggling for operational and strategic support. The adoption of remote work (RW) is increasing. For economic reasons, competitive advantage, or even as a pandemic response (business continuity plan), RW is a domain worth further investigation. However, the literature lacks insight regarding RW adoption. A design science research methodology was adopted, including a systematic literature review to elicit RW advantages, disadvantages, challenges and driving forces, as well as their rela...

Purpose Through the lens of Conservation of Resources (COR) theory, this study explores how remote working inhibits employee engagement. The authors offer a fresh perspective on the most salient work- and nonwork-related risk factors that make remote working particularly challenging in the context of Covid-19. Design/methodology/approach The authors use data from semi-structured interviews with 32 employees working from home during the Covid-19 lockdown. Based on the interpretivist philosophical approach, the authors offer new insights into how employees can optimize work- and nonwork-related ...

The article presents the results of research on the digitization of services provided by the design industry in the context of the implementation of sustainable development goals, especially environmental sustainability. First, a literature review has been done. These research goals were established in the publication: investigating the impact of remote work on the implementation of sustainable development goals (in particular, environmental), examining the essence of better perception of remote work and digitization of the design process by employees of the design and construction industry, a...

In both samples, the DW global score were related significantly and positively with the more self-determined types of work-motivation (intrinsic and identified); and significantly and negatively with the amotivation.

A systematic analysis of peer-reviewed published empirical findings demonstrates the need to broaden the existing firm-centric focus of the GVC literature to encompass workers and their HRM, particularly as there are increasing numbers of workers operating outside firms using digital technology.

Purpose The authors examine the impact of the sudden shift to remote working, triggered by the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) crisis, on management control (MC) practices in professional service firms (PSFs). In addition, employee responses to these changes are explored. Design/methodology/approach The authors carried out a field study of MC changes in PSFs in Italy, the first country in Europe that was severely impacted by COVID-19. Interviews with PSF employees form the primary data source. Pattern matching was used to identify similarities and differences and investigate how employees ...

Emerging from distinct perspectives, decent work and meaningful work are fundamental aspects of contemporary work with profound implications for individuals, organizations, and society. Decent work reflects basic workplace conditions to which all employees are entitled, whereas meaningful work is aspirational, reflecting significance at work. Following a conceptual and empirical review of scholarship on decent work and meaningful work, we draw from psychology of working theory to connect the two constructs. We argue that need satisfaction serves as the primary connector, and societal context, ...

Purpose In light of the increasing popularity of telecommuting, this study investigates how telecommuters' organizational commitment may be linked to psychological and physical isolation. Psychological isolation refers to feelings of emotional unfulfillment when one lacks meaningful connections, support, and interactions with others, while physical isolation refers to physical separation from others. Design/methodology/approach An online survey was used to collect data from 446 employees who telecommute one or more days per week. Findings The results of this study indicate that telecommuters' ...

In this ongoing project, we examine the short-term consequences of COVID-19 on employment and wages in the United States. Guided by a pre-analysis plan, we document the impact of COVID-19 at the national-level using a simple difference and test whether states with relatively more confirmed cases/deaths were more affected. Our findings suggest that COVID-19 increased the unemployment rate, decreased hours of work and labor force participation and had no significant impacts on wages. The negative impacts on labor market outcomes are larger for men, younger workers, Hispanics and less-educated wo...

We examine how the shift to remote work altered responsibilities for domestic labor among partnered couples and single parents. The study draws on data from a nationally representative survey of 2,200 US adults, including 478 partnered parents and 151 single parents, in April 2020. The closing of schools and child care centers significantly increased demands on working parents in the United States, and in many circumstances reinforced an unequal domestic division of labor.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak, there has been a wealth of studies and reports published on the impacts of remote working (or work-from-home) due to pandemic lockdown measures. The primary aim of this article is to synthesise this work and conduct an exploratory scoping review of both scholarly and grey literature on the impacts of the pandemic on people, productivity, and the planet, with a focus on remote working (or work-from-home) and the post-pandemic workplace. Further, in light of the wide range of terms such as work-from-home, remote working, hybrid working, teleworking, telecomm...

This systematic review brings together the collection of recent scholarly outputs on the disruptive impact of digital transformation on the work and offers critical reflections about the factors that will define the work of the future, in terms of skills, creativity and opportunities for autonomous workers.

Does removing the constraints of time and place of work increase the utility of workers and firms? We design a randomized experiment on a sample of workers in a large Italian company: workers are randomly divided into a treated group that engages in flexible space and time job (which we call "smart-working") one day per week for 9 months and a control group that continues to work traditionally. By comparing the treated and control workers, we find causal evidence that the flexibility of smart-working increases the productivity of workers and improves their well-being and work-life balance. We ...

Does removing constraints on the time and place of work benefit the utility of workers and firms? We design a randomized experiment of a sample of workers in a large Italian company; workers are randomly divided into a treated group that engages in flexible place and time of work (which we call “smart working”) one day per week for nine months and a control group that continues to work traditionally. By comparing the treated and control groups, we find causal evidence that the flexibility of smart working increases the productivity of workers. We estimate a decrease of one day of leave on aver...

Drawing on a virtual ethnography, we explore how the increase in remote working has created unequal domestic rearrangements of parenting duties with respect to gender relations during the COVID-19 lockdown in Italy. We also discuss the resources that mothers have mobilized to create a network of social support in the organization of care.

Gig workers commonly face challenges that differ in nature or intensity from those experienced by traditional organizational workers. To better understand and support gig workers, we sought to develop a measure that reliably and validly assesses these challenges. We first define gig work and specify its core characteristics. We then provide an integrated conceptual framework for a measure of six challenges commonly faced by gig workers—viability, organizational, identity, relational, emotional, and career-path uncertainty. We then present five studies: item generation in Study 1; item reductio...

It is recommended that research addresses more functional, occupational concerns and includes the experiences of stakeholders in research development, moving away from diagnosis and deficit towards multi-disciplinary collaboration within a biopsychosocial model.

With markets concentrating predominantly in and around large cities, gig platforms across the globe seem to depend as much on the cheap labor of migrants and minorities as on investment capital and permissive governments. Accordingly, we argue that there is an urgent need to center migrant experiences and the role of migrant labor in gig economy research, in order to generate a better understanding of how gig work offers certain opportunities and challenges to migrants with a variety of backgrounds and skill levels. To fill this research gap, this article examines why migrant workers in Berlin...

How might work engagement help predict emotional exhaustion? Incorporating the notion that work engagement and emotional exhaustion represent two ends of a continuum, we drew on the conservation of resources (COR) theory—which examines them as two distinct constructs—to conduct a multicontext, two-study investigation in the U.S. and China. We proposed that work engagement would increase emotional exhaustion for individuals who rated lower in the conscientiousness personality trait. Furthermore, we found a three-way interaction, whereby work engagement increased emotional exhaustion for less co...

Summary Academic research on passion is much more complex than the extant literature or popular press portray. Although research on work‐related passion has progressed rapidly over the last decade, much remains unknown. We are now just beginning to recognize the different theoretical underpinnings and empirical operationalizations that work passion research has adopted, and the confusion this has generated hampers our understanding of the construct and its relationship to workplace outcomes. Accordingly, we use a meta‐analytic examination to study the work‐related outcomes of three dominant li...