Beyond telecommuting: Development and test of the concept of remote work
Abstract
The phenomenon of working for an organization at a distant location has been studied under several titles: telecommuting, homework, telework, and remote work. Although an interest of researchers at least since Jack Nilles coined the term telecommuting in the 1970's (Nilles, Carlson, Gray and Hanneman, 1976), the concept is in its infancy. There has been little theoretical explication of the concept domain or its relationship to organizational behavior/human resource management outcomes. This project remedies that situation. The thesis is organized into two parts. Part One, Chapter One, draws on extant empirical and anecdotal literature to develop the concept domain of remote work. Part One, Chapters Two through Five (a) review the literature's findings on remote work's effects on several important outcomes; including job design, performance, motivation, attendance, turnover, and job choice, and (b) use the newly developed concept to theoretically specify expected effects of remote work on the listed outcomes. Part Two describes an experiment conducted to provide a causally interpretable test of both the newly developed remote work concept and its effects on one of the outcome variables from Part One, job choice. The study of job choice was conducted utilizing a policy capturing design. Four remote work variables, plus pay as a metric against which to compare the effects of remote work, were manipulated at two levels each, for a 32 (2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2) scenario design. One hundred sixty-four job seekers rated the attractiveness of each of the 32 (plus four repeated for reliability checks) job scenarios. MANOVA analyses plus tests of means supported the hypotheses relating the remote work variables and pay to job attractiveness.
Degree
Ph.D.
Advisors
Berger, Purdue University.
Subject Area
Management|Occupational psychology
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