Telecommuting's Past and Future: A Literature Review and Research Agenda <s> Background <s> The paper reviews the contemporary literature on the experience of teleworking. Particular attention is paid to the socializing aspects of work and its comparative absence when working from home; economic considerations, both for homeworkers and for the firms; work satisfaction and motivation; supervision; roles and gender issues in homeworking; the organization of time and space; and, lastly, questions of self-discipline. The evidence reviewed is based on various teleworking trials conducted mainly during the 1980s; this information is supplemented by original research conducted by the authors which investigated the pros and cons raised by British Telecom operators who were due to take part in a teleworking trial. These operators anticipated many of the issues faced by those who actually had teleworking experience. <s> BIB001 </s> Telecommuting's Past and Future: A Literature Review and Research Agenda <s> Background <s> Nordic countries have traditionally been the forerunners in both usage of telecommunication and restructuring of working life. Both elements are strongly involved in telework so there might be a lesson to be learnt from Nordic telework projects. In this article four Finnish telework initiatives are studied. The reasons for starting them are sought and their results are evaluated. Further factors making the daily telework easier or more difficult are explicated. Conclusions are drawn from the cases, and their characteristics are compared with those of other European telework initiatives. <s> BIB002 </s> Telecommuting's Past and Future: A Literature Review and Research Agenda <s> Background <s> Today many organizations, including AT&T and IBM, are pioneering the alternative workplace--the combination of nontraditional work practices, settings, and locations that is beginning to supplement traditional offices. This is not a fad. Although estimates vary widely, it is safe to say that some 30 million to 40 million people in the United States are now either telecommuters or home-based workers. What motivates managers to examine how people spend their time at the office and where else they might do their work? Among the potential benefits for companies are reduced costs, increased productivity, and an edge in vying for and keeping talented employees. They can also capture government incentives and avoid costly sanctions. But at the same time, alternative workplace programs are not for everyone. Indeed, such programs can be difficult to adopt, even for those organizations that seem to be most suited to them. Ingrained behaviors and practical hurdles are hard to overcome. And the challenges of managing both the cultural changes and systems improvements required by an alternative workplace initiative are substantial. How should senior managers think about alternative workplace programs? What are the criteria for determining whether the alternative workplace is right for a given organization? What are the most common pitfalls in implementing alternative workplace programs? The author provides the answers to these questions in his examination of this new frontier of where and how people work. <s> BIB003 </s> Telecommuting's Past and Future: A Literature Review and Research Agenda <s> Background <s> Abstract This study represents a preliminary step towards developing an understanding of how telework arrangements affect intra-organizational communication. The following general research questions are addressed: (1) Do telework arrangements change the way in which teleworkers communicate with their superiors, their subordinates, their colleagues and their clients?; and (2) Do telework arrangements change the way in which managers communicate with subordinates who telework? The study, which was conducted at two Canadian federal government departments, was designed to collect information from four groups: (1) teleworkers ( n =36 at Time 2); (2) managers of teleworkers ( n =28 at Time 2); (3) co-workers of teleworkers ( n =27 at Time 2); and (4) a control group ( n =25 at Time 2). Three data collection techniques were used in this study: paper and pencil questionnaires, telephone interviews, and focus group interviews. Data were collected at three points in time: (1) two weeks prior to the start of the telework pilot; (2) three months after the telework pilot had begun; and (3) six months after the start of the telework pilot. Analysis of the data suggests that, with a few important exceptions, part-time telework arrangements have little impact on intra-organizational communication. <s> BIB004 </s> Telecommuting's Past and Future: A Literature Review and Research Agenda <s> Background <s> Summary Telework has inspired research in disciplines ranging from transportation and urban planning to ethics, law, sociology, and organizational studies. In our review of this literature, we seek answers to three questions: who participates in telework, why they do, and what happens when they do? Who teleworks remains elusive, but research suggests that male professionals and female clerical workers predominate. Notably, work-related factors like managers’ willingness are most predictive of which employees will telework. Employees’ motivations for teleworking are also unclear, as commonly perceived reasons such as commute reduction and family obligations do not appear instrumental. On the firms’ side, managers’ reluctance, forged by concerns about cost and control and bolstered by little perceived need, inhibits the creation of telework programmes. As for outcomes, little clear evidence exists that telework increases job satisfaction and productivity, as it is often asserted to do. We suggest three steps for future research may provide richer insights: consider group and organizational level impacts to understand who telework affects, reconsider why people telework, and emphasize theory-building and links to existing organizational theories. We conclude with lessons learned from the telework literature that may be relevant to research on new work forms and workplaces. Copyright # 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. <s> BIB005
Telecommuting, virtual office and telework are a few of the terms used to describe the same phenomenon. The terms telecommuting and virtual office first appeared in articles in  and  . The interest has grown significantly in more recent years as can be seen in Table I . In the USA, companies have been motivated by the mandate from Congress in the 1990 Amendment to the Clean Air Act. The eleven states in the US with the worst air quality were targeted specifically. Organizations in those eleven states with more than 100 employees are required to reduce the number of employees commuting each day by 20 percent. Telecommuting is one means to achieve this reduction along with vanpools, mass transit incentives, four-day workweeks, and other variations. BPMJ 12, 4 Outside the US, studies of telecommuting in Britain   , Finland BIB002 , Canada BIB004 and Singapore Lim, 1998, 1999) are indicative of the worldwide interest in this topic. Although companies in those regions are not affected by US regulations, a variety of factors provide the motivation for implementing telecommuting programs in these countries. Since, the inception of telecommuting, a huge number of articles have been written exploring many of the promises of telecommuting as well as many additional issues that have become directly associated with telecommuting. Few published papers have attempted to thoroughly review the telecommuting literature. Many of the articles concentrate solely on the individuals who telework. BIB001 offers an annotated review of European work. reviewed 32 empirical research articles, and  consider the negative and positive impact on Teleworkers. BIB005 review the research to find answers for questions like who Telework and why individuals telework and what happen when they do. In our review, we decided to look at many facets of the telecommuting phenomenon like the workers, their managers, the organization as well as the technological and environmental issues. This paper will explore the literature to identify the substantive work, examine the state of this phenomenon as of to date, Telework Virtual office Telecommuting Telework Virtual office Telecommuting   1979  0  0  0  0  0  1  1980  0  0  0  0  0  1  1981  0  0  0  0  1  4  1982  0  0  1  0  0  3  1983  0  0  1  0  0  6  1984  0  0  1  0  0  11  1985  0  0  0  2  0  21  1986  0  0  0  2  0  11  1987  0  0  0  0  0  12  1988  1  0  7  1  0  7  1989  0  0  8  1  0  20  1990  0  0  5  4  0  26  1991  0  0  10  3  2  34  1992  0  1  14  3  1  53  1993  0  2  41  0  11  95  1994  6  10  173  3  38  188  1995  14  26  165  14  35  285  1996  4  30  110  6  43  216  1997  6  33  116  13  36  293  1998  10  20  107  13  39  307  1999  12  15  83  16  34  209  2000  12  5  101  29  13  142  2001  10  6  76  39  14  151  2002  2  1  28  11  5  36  Totals  77  149  1047  160  272  2132 Note: a As of July 11, 2002 Scope of study and research methodology To identify the journal articles that describe, analyze or test the concept of telecommuting, we used the three keywords, virtual office, telecommuting, and telework. We restricted our research to the ABI Inform and EBSCO Host -Business Source Elite databases. We are aware that the selection of these databases may be a source of bias since they do not include the European based journal. However, we included European journals from Emerald database in our search. The result was overwhelming, in the ABI INFORM database alone, we found 2,132 articles using the keyword telecommuting, 272 articles using the keyword virtual office and 160 using the keyword telework. However, there was a great overlap between the databases. Table I shows the distribution by the year of publication and database. The number of articles jumped to a high level in year 1994 and the growth continue in the subsequent years. The reader may notice that the word "telecommuting" is more widely used than the word "virtual office" or "telework". To select higher quality articles and reduce the total quantity of articles we decided to limit our review to refereed journals because of the rigorous review process that these articles go through before publication. This decision cut the number of articles tremendously; for example, in the database "Business Source Elite" and under the keyword telecommuting the number went from 2,132 to 210. Then we decided to handpick some articles from the non-peer reviewed list that added valuable information or important insight to the research  BIB003 . These articles were chosen based on the journal reputation (e.g. Harvard Business Review), the relevance and the importance of the article's content.. Next, we reviewed the retrieved articles and excluded the articles that are not related to the management discipline. Then, we looked at the references of the articles that passed the review process to see if we missed any related articles and we applied the above screening process to them. The articles reviewed are classified by their orientation into description, conceptual, empirical, and case study. In an attempt to relate the issues covered to various management disciplines (Figure 1 ), we classified articles also by the main issues emphasized.