Book reviews

• Published date: 01 January 2001
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1748-8583.2001.tb00034.x
• Date: 01 January 2001

HUMAN RESOUR CE MANAG EMENT J OURNA L, VOL 11 NO 1, 2001

M anag ing Telew ork

Kevin Danie ls, David A. Lamond and

Peter Stan den (eds)

London, Thomson Learning Business Pre s s ,

2000, 192pp, £19.99 (pbk)

While its uptake to date may not imply

the `workplace revolution’ pre d i c t e d

some time ago, studies show that

teleworking is nonetheless increasing and set

to increase further given wide availability of

the internet and electronic mail (and

p e rhaps, as seen recently in the UK at least,

shortages of petrol). Edited by thre e

academic consultants who have conducted

re s e a rch in the area, this new book serves as

a warning of sorts against the bandwagon

e ffect that such a revolution would signify:

like other management practices,

implementing a telework pro g r a m m e

re q u i res informed consideration of its

behavioural and psychological implications,

and a systematic approach to its

management. The book endeavours to

supply the knowledge and tools that

o rganisations need to answer questions such

as: Will teleworking work here? Who is

suited to telework and why? How might

these individuals be selected and their

learning facilitated, as well as how might

this learning transfer to the org a n i s a t i o n ?

How might their jobs be designed to ensure

w o r k - related health and manage `spillover’

into home life?

In its aim to provide the ® r s t

c o m p rehensive explanation of the human

factors’ in teleworking, the book has a dual

focus: ® rst, how the behavioural perspective

assists in understanding telework, its impact

on individuals and organisations; and

s e c o n d l y, the implications of teleworking for

HR systems and their design. While other

recent studies offer a more analytical

t reatment of the teleworking phenomenon

f rom a sociological perspective, this

collection indeed appears to ® ll a gap in the

market. It gathers in one place discussion of

p rominent re s e a rch studies on the topic. A n d

although this literature remains small, the

authors are nonetheless able to use it to

develop diagnostic frameworks for those

c h a rged with constructing and

implementing telework schemes.

D e ® ning telework is the ® rst issue that

the book tackles. Readers may be forg i v e n ,

for example, for wondering whether the

term encompasses workers in call centers,

another growing labour force segment at

p resent. While stating that telework is a

multifaceted phenomenon, the authors

identify its two central components as

working from non-traditional locations, and

using information and computer technology.

But clearly not all teleworking is the same

and one of the book’s valuable contributions

is to provide a classi® cation of teleworkers

along ® ve dimensions including IT usage

(extent of use), knowledge intensity (may be

high or low), intra and extra-org a n i s a t i o n a l

contact, and location. Understanding

telework and how it can be managed by both

the organisation and the individual is not

fully possible without making these sorts of

distinctions. This is followed by a pro p o s e d

framework for examining telework in any

particular organisation. The framework also

forms a convenient `map’ of the book’s

subsequent chapters, each written by

d i ff e rent contributors.

Thus the ® rst set of chapters looks at the

importance of context in evaluating an

o rganisation’s suitability for teleworking,

including the impact of org a n i s a t i o n a l

s t ru c t u re, culture and socialization, plus

national context. These are solid if brief

pieces of analysis that do not assume a high

d e g ree of theoretical knowledge on the part

of the re a d e r.

Book re v i e w s

89