Department

University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Dept. of Psychology

Publisher

University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

Place of Publication

Chattanooga (Tenn.)

Abstract

Despite telecommuting’s tremendous growth in the last decade, it appears some employees are hesitant to participate in remote work arrangements. Previous research has shown employees to have a negative attitude towards telecommuting when they perceive the work arrangement offers more disadvantages than advantages (Vega, Anderson, & Kaplan, 2015). In addition, Cooper & Kurland (2002) found that employees often limit the amount of time they spend away from the office working as a telecommuter because they fear becoming professionally isolated. To expand upon these findings, the current study aims to investigate whether the fear of negative work outcomes (social isolation, professional isolation, career harm, job insecurity, long work hours, and coworker resentment) influence employees’ willingness to telecommute or extent to which they participate. This study will further investigate the moderating role of telecommuting normativeness, the extent to which telecommuting is a common and accepted practice, at the department level. Using a snowball sampling method, telecommuters in the United States will self-report their perceptions of negative work outcomes as they relate to their current telecommuting situation. I predict that telecommuters’ perceptions of the negative work outcomes will negatively influence their attitude toward, and subsequent practice of, telecommuting.

Date

October 2018

Subject

Industrial and organizational psychology

Document Type

posters

Language

English

Rights

http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

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Examining the effects of negative work outcomes on telecommuting

Despite telecommuting’s tremendous growth in the last decade, it appears some employees are hesitant to participate in remote work arrangements. Previous research has shown employees to have a negative attitude towards telecommuting when they perceive the work arrangement offers more disadvantages than advantages (Vega, Anderson, & Kaplan, 2015). In addition, Cooper & Kurland (2002) found that employees often limit the amount of time they spend away from the office working as a telecommuter because they fear becoming professionally isolated. To expand upon these findings, the current study aims to investigate whether the fear of negative work outcomes (social isolation, professional isolation, career harm, job insecurity, long work hours, and coworker resentment) influence employees’ willingness to telecommute or extent to which they participate. This study will further investigate the moderating role of telecommuting normativeness, the extent to which telecommuting is a common and accepted practice, at the department level. Using a snowball sampling method, telecommuters in the United States will self-report their perceptions of negative work outcomes as they relate to their current telecommuting situation. I predict that telecommuters’ perceptions of the negative work outcomes will negatively influence their attitude toward, and subsequent practice of, telecommuting.