When control becomes a liability rather than an asset: Comparing home and office days among part‐time teleworkers

• Published date: 01 November 2016
• Author: Michal Biron,Marc Veldhoven
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/job.2106
• Date: 01 November 2016

When control becomes a liability rather than an

asset: Comparing home and office days among

part-time teleworkers

MICHAL BIRON

1,2

*AND MARC VAN VELDHOVEN

2

1

Faculty of Management, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel

2

Department of Human Resource Studies, Tilburg University, Tilburg,the Netherlands

Summary Past research has mainly examined differences between employees working under conventional versus

teleworking arrangements or high-intensity versus low-intensity teleworking. Yet because many workers

combine days worked from the office with days worked from home (part-time telework), it may be more ap-

propriate to examine within-individual variation in office versus home days. Accordingly, we compare diary

data from 77 employees on three home days and three office days. This setup enables us to contribute to the

theoretical debate on the duality of control and accountability. Specifically, by comparing job locations (home

versus office), we identify conditions under which job control (worktime control) is more likely to act as an

asset or as a liability. Results suggest that ability to concentrate is higher and need for recovery is lower, on

home days than on office days. However, on home days, generally high level of worktime control amplifies

the association between job demands and need for recovery—whereas this association is reversed when

worktime control is generally moderate. No similar differences are observed on office days. Finally, whereas

employees experiencing high job demands are more able to concentrate during home days than during office

days, worktime control has no differential effect in this respect. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Keywords: alternative work arrangements; job demands; job control; telework

Introduction

Major developments in information technology, the introduction of inexpensive telecommunication systems, and

widespread availability of computer and internet access currently enable employees to successfully carry out inter-

dependent activities at remote locations, thus enabling firms to unbind task from place (Harrison, Johns, &

Martocchio, 2000; Khanna & New, 2008). In parallel, in response to changing workforce demographics and, in par-

ticular, an influx of working mothers into the workforce, businesses are increasingly re-evaluating their employment

policies in general and their work-home arrangements in particular (Burke & Ng, 2006; Kossek, Lewis, & Hammer,

2010). Specifically, many firms have begun to implement teleworking, also known as telecommuting, remote work,

or flexplace. Teleworking is an alternative work arrangement that allows employees, for at least some portion of

their work schedule, to use information and communication technology in order to carry out tasks in locations other

than the primary or central work spaces in which they are usually performed (the office or workstation) (Bailey &

Kurland, 2002; Baruch, 2001; Burke & Ng, 2006). The practice of telework is becoming increasingly common in

the developed world, although exact numbers of teleworkers vary across countries (Gajendran & Harrison, 2007;

HILDA, 2009; WorldatWork, 2006).

In the past two decades, a considerable body of research has focused on the impact of teleworking on work-related

outcomes (Burke & Ng, 2006). Much of this literature draws from models such as the job demand–control (JD-C)

*Correspondence to: Michal Biron, Faculty of Management, University of Haifa, Mount Carmel, Haifa, 31905, Israel. E-mail: mbiron@univ.

haifa.ac.il

Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Received 21 January 2015

Revised 23 February 2016, Accepted 26 February 2016

Journal of Organizational Behavior, J. Organiz. Behav. 37, 1317–1337 (2016)

Published online 4 April 2016 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/job.2106

Research Article

model (Karasek, 1979) and the job demands–resources (JD-R) model (Demerouti, Bakker, Nachreiner, & Schaufeli,

2001), which generally posit that even when employees are subjected to high demands, employee outcomes (satis-

faction, engagement, burnout, and motivation) are enhanced when employees possess certain resources. One such

resource is job control, defined as an employee’s autonomy or ability to make decisions and to exercise a degree

of discretion over the work to be accomplished (Hackman & Oldham, 1980; Spector, 1986). Teleworking inherently

provides control over work location or flexibility in the location of work, and this control has been found to be pos-

itively related to employee perceptions of work–family balance, for example (Hill, Hawkins, Ferris, & Weitzman,

2001). Control over work time or flexibility in the allocation of time for different work and nonwork activities

has been shown to have similar beneficial effects on employees; this aspect of control is not an inherent component

of telework but sometimes accompanies it (Härmä, 2006; Valcour, 2007). Teleworking has also been shown to yield

benefits to employers, providing potential for both cost savings (e.g., by reducing real-estate expenses) and produc-

tivity improvements (Khanna & New, 2008). In addition, studies have indicated that teleworking can be beneficial to

the environment, by reducing the amount of carbon emissions and lessening the wear and tear on roads, bridges, and

highway systems (Lee, Park, & Trimi, 2013).

At the same time, some evidence points to possible negative consequences of teleworking for employees, includ-

ing social isolation, career stagnation, and work–family conflict (Baruch & Nicholson, 1997), as well as for

employers, including lower ability of supervisors to control workers directly and lower ability of employees to

use on-site learning resources (e.g., by physically and informally turning to a supervisor or colleagues nearby for

help; Kossek, Lautsch, & Eaton, 2006). The mixed evidence regarding the nature of the impact of teleworking on

employees and employers has been put forth in four reviews in the telework literature (Bailey & Kurland, 2002;

Gajendran & Harrison, 2007; Haddon & Lewis, 1994; Pinsonneault & Boisvert, 2001).

One explanation for the inconsistent findings described earlier may be that past research has relied primarily on

two approaches to examine the impact of teleworking on various outcomes (Gajendran & Harrison, 2007). The first

approach entails comparing employees with different levels of teleworking intensity, that is, the amount of sched-

uled time that employees spend doing tasks away from a central work location. Under this approach, higher-intensity

teleworkers (employees spending the majority or all of their workdays away from a central location) are compared

with lower-intensity teleworkers (employees spending the majority of their workdays at a central location, working

remotely for only 1 or 2 days a week) (Konradt, Hertel, & Schmook, 2003; Scott & Timmerman, 1999), along

various criteria (performance and emotional health). The second approach compares individuals working under a

conventional work location arrangement (office workers) with those working under a teleworking arrangement

(teleworkers) (Hartig, Kylin, & Johansson, 2007; Mann & Holdsworth, 2003).

Both of these approaches focus on differences between individual workers in different work arrangements (differ-

ences between high-intensity and low-intensity teleworkers or between office workers and teleworkers). However,

given that the majority of teleworkers engage in part-time telework, which combines days worked in the office with

days worked from home (employees not only have an office but also work occasionally or regularly from home for 1

to 3 days a week; HILDA, 2009; Lister & Harnish, 2011; Pyöriä, 2011; Sparrow, 2000), we suggest that it makes

sense to focus not only on differences between individual workers but also on differences within workers and, more

specifically, between days worked in the office and days worked at home. Only a handful of studies have looked at

differences within workers in terms of telework outcomes. For example, Ramsower (1983) conducted interviews

and administered questionnaires among employees before and after they began a teleworking arrangement. He found

that, after joining the teleworking program, both part-time and full-time teleworkers experienced a decrease in work

group identification and job satisfaction and that this decrease was greater among full-time teleworkers. Olszewski

and Mokhtarian (1994) reported that teleworkers interacted with others significantly less than nonteleworkers but

that the extent of their interactions with others increased over time. And Duxbury, Higg ins, and Neufeld (1998)

showed that, over time, teleworkers report less work-family conflict compared with nonteleworkers. These studies,

while offering some evidence on how various outcomes differ within teleworkers (again, comparing teleworkers

with office workers or comparing teleworkers of different intensity), do not capture differences within teleworkers

on days worked from home as compared with days worked from the office.

1318 M. BIRON AND M. VAN VELDHOVEN

Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Organiz. Behav. 37, 1317–1337 (2016)

DOI: 10.1002/job