Electronically Distributed Work Communities

Electronically Distributed Work Communities: Implications for Research on Telework Bradford W. Hesse and Charles E. Grantham

Whereas the Industrial Revolution attracted workers away fivin home-based community settings to central locations, the current proliferation of personal computers and asynchronous telecommunications technologies is reversing this trend. By networking employees from different geographical sites together, these technologies are producing “hybrid” organiza tional structures that permit their members to work within flexible schedules and in flexible places, even to the point of working at home. The result is the electronically distributed work community: a population of nonproximal coworkers who labor together electronically. This paper presents a springboard for conducting research on telework as it is under stood within the context of that community. The paper begins with a brief history of telecommuting and describes its in fluence on the electrvnic community and organizational structures in general within the past two decades. The paper n cludes by presenting implications for research on telework in the areas of privacy regulation, emergency preparedness, self-efficacy, temporal aspects of employee behavior, communication patterns, and organizational effectiveness. During the Industrial Revolution, one of the greatest influences on work life was the attraction of workers to central sites away from local communities. During the information revolution, one of the more signifi cant influences on work life was the distribution of work over time and space (Hiltz & Turoff, 1978).

electronic networking technologies in this decade are promising to distribute work life across remote locations and in many cases back into the home. In this paper, we contend that many otherwise tra ditional organizations are at the brink of a significant n-ietarnorphosis in which they are distributing them selves. electronically, over time and space. These chang es are creating “invisible organizations” 2 in which ntn bers find themselves working not with the person in the office next door but with physically distant coworkers tied together by electronic communication networks.

Now, with the proliferation of personal com puters and electronic networking technologies, the process has come full circle. Technologies supportive of a new work style—a style some have referred to as te1eworl —are providing the mechanism to dis tribute work life away from central sites and back into local communities. Whereas work life in previ ous decades centered around the office, where em ployees would work in full view of their supervisors,

Although the diffusion of teleworking technol ogies is in its infancy (Kraut, 1987), we believe that the pressures of urban gridlock, unavailable hous ing, fuel shortages, child care difficulties, and clean air legislation are motivating their increasing accep tance. As employees begin working in these invisi ble but electronically linked organizations, either by virtue of working from home or from a distant office site, we contend that the social psychology of work life will change dramatically.

Bradford W. Hesse received his Ph.D. in psychology at the University of Utah in 1988. His research focuses on the psychological and organizational impact of information sys tems, electronic networking, and decision-support technolo gies. Currently, he is the co-director of the Center for Re search on Technology at the American lnstftutn for Research, P.O. Box 1113, Palo Alto, CA 94302 [email protected]>.

We begin our discussion of electronically dis tributed work communities by presenting a brief his tory of telework, noting the differences between tele work and simple home work, and acknowledging the organizational changes that are occurring as companies adopt telecommuting policies. We then discuss areas where organizational research is need ed for understanding the influence of telework on work life and organizational effectiveness.

Charles if. Grantham received his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Maryland in 1980. His current research cen ters on the impact of new technologies on organizational structure. Currently, he is the director of the Institute for the Study of Distributed Work at the University of San Francisco, 2130 Fulton Street, San Francisco, CA 94117-1080. ELECTRONIC NEIWOBEING, Vol.!, No.!, Fall 1991, pp. 4-27. © 1992 Meclder.

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The History of Telework

Some segment of the population has almost always been involved in work at home or work away from a central office. Home workers have been traditionally comprised of home-based entrepreneurs, siteindependent professionals, individuals with disabili ties, or parents staying home to accommodate child care. Many white-collar workers have used the home either to finish work started at the office or to earn additional income. During the energy crisis of the mid-1970s, tradi tional office commuters were confronted with the prohibitive costs of traveling by car to and from work over long distances. In response, some hightechnology organizations began allowing their em ployees to access their computers from home via re mote terminals over telephone lines. This practice was the beginning of a particular brand of home work referred to by some as “telecommuting” (coined by Nilles, Carlson, Gray, & Hanneman, 1976). The early promise of lelecommuting led some theorists to propose a vision of the future in which large numbers of employees routinely elected to re main at home full time, conducting the affairs of their work remotely from their own “electronic cot tage” (Toffler, 1980). During the 1980s, several companies experi mented with the concept of telecommuting in the form of pilot programs, informal endorsements, and formal policy changes. IBM, for example, initiated a program to supply its employees with computer hardware for use in supplementing their office work with work at home. An early evaluation of the pro gram indicated that employees who participated in the program felt generally positive toward the trend, and many expressed a desire to use the technology more than they already had? Not all programs, however, met with employee approval. Some programs were initiated to cut com pany costs by offering home workers lower pay in exchange for the “privilege” of working at home. Unions soon became involved in fighting the con cept of telecommuting and were instrumental in lim iting its practice among low-skilled clerical staff. Other social obstacles were also encountered in the widespread acceptance of telecommuting. Managers balked at not being able to see their supervisees di rectly and reported a loss of control over employees’ productivity. Teleworkers themselves complained that staying at home for extensive periods of time deprived them of desired social contact and informal communication with their colleagues (Office of

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Technology Assessment, 1985; Tomaskovic-Devey & Risman, 1988). In spite of these obstacles, telework has contin ued to evolve as a viable work alternative for at least some segment of the work force. in part, this evolu tion has been facilitated by the development of costeffective computer communications which, along with rising transportation costs, have encouraged people to substitute “electronic movement of infor mation for physical movement of themselves” (Mokhtarian, 1990). In fact, among the high-technology companies of California’s Silicon Valley, where traffic conges tion is endemic, informal approval of telecommuting is necessary to attract and retain many talented em ployees (Olson, 1987). Since a reliance on telework also reduces automobile usage and vehicular emis sions, state legislatures have been encouraging com panies, through financial incentives, to endorse tele work as a strategy for improving air quality (Raths, 1990). Finally, since office work is so susceptible to work-flow interruptions, some managers find that telecomrnuting is the best way to get some tasks completed on time and encourage their employees to stay home periodically as a way of avoiding dis ruptions associated with working in an office envi ronment (Sproull & Kiesler, 1991).

What appears to be emerging in the practice of telecommuting, then, is not a wholesale acceptance of full-time home work but an “evolution” toward more flexible organizational structures that permit telework, along with other work options, when needed to meet organizational and employee needs (Pratt, 1984, 1988). This trend is leading to what Gor don (1987) described as the emergence of “hybrid” organizations designed to support changes in life style and to meet multiple member needs. The flexi bility inherent in the structure of hybrid organiza tions allows companies to adapt to changing environmental and social demands. It was the use of flexible work strategies and telecommuting in the San Francisco Bay Area, for example, that minimized the impact of massive traf fic congestion following the collapse of the Bay Bridge and the destruction of the Oakland/Cyprus freeway overpass during the Loma Prieta earth quake of 1989. Organizations, which are traditionally driven by short-term profit motives, are discovering that the use of flexible work plans can increase pro ductivity by as much as 20 percent, decrease space costs by 30 percent, and increase retention of key em ployees (Grantham 1991b). Computer industry

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experts (Saffo, 1991, p. 49) predict that telework in particular will provide an opportunity “for entirely new kinds of companies to emerge, with distributed business structures uniquely suited to the opportu nities presented by telecommuting infrastructures.” One question to be asked is, “Who could take advantage of these distributed, telecommuting infra structures?” Telecommuting is often viewed as be ing suited only for information workers such as cler ical staff, writers, and software developers who can work in isolation from others. However, increasing ly, technology is broadening this spectrum. Japanese manufactures are now even experimenting with re motely controlled assembly-line robots that allow control engineers to be continents away and still “work in the factory.” To be sure, the nature of the task is an important determinant of who will be able to telework and who will not. Still, as technology im proves, the numbers and types of individuals who may some day take advantage of remote working opportunities should increase. This confluence of economic pressures, in crease in acceptance of telecomniuting, and im provements in technology provides a special oppor tunity to examine empirically an organizational form in development. The Electronically Distributed Organization

Organizations are changing form, driven by a varie ty of external pressures (Applegate, Cash, & Mills, 1988; Drucker, 1988; Handy, 1989). Increasing com petition, rapidly evolving technologies, increasing energy costs, and a growing public concern for envi ronmental impact are all combining to mold a new form of work organization (Vaske & Crantham, 1990). As researchers have sought to understand the influence of this change on how employees work to gether (Conrath, 1973; Daft & Lengel, 1986; Markus & Robey, 1988), they have focused on physically co located employees engaged in productive action. However, it is this physical co-location of or ganizational members that is changing. Forces are causing companies to distribute their resources as they move production capacities from expensive, high-rent locations to more cost-efficient sites. At the same time, new communication and information management technologies are evolving to facilitate the distribution of information processing abilities. Whereas the computing facilities of ten to fifteen years past resided in highly centralized environ ments, the evolution of computer technology in or-

ganizations today is creating a structure where com puting power is shared among the nodes of localarea and wide-area networks, a structure where the “network is the computer” (Verity, 1990 p. 116). This distribution of computer power is facilitat ing the distribution of work activities among people across time and space. Asynchronous communica tions technologies, such as electronic mail, computer buUetin boards, teleconferencing, voice mail, and facsimile machines, are dissolving the barriers im posed by geographic distance (Fischer, Jackson, Stueve, Gerson, Jones, & Baldassare, 1977) and tem poral separation (Hesse, Werner, & Altman, 1988; McGrath, J., 1990). Managers no longer need to worry about being continuously interrupted at the office, if they know that they can provide a comparable level of supervi sion while away using electronic mail. As a result, organizations are transforming from highly consoli dated centers into what fling and his colleagues (Kling, 1987; fling & Sacchi, 1982) called “web or ganizations.” The recent development of interest in computer-supported cooperative work (e.g., Johan sen, 1990) supports the notion that computer media tion may. be used to facilitate communication and collaborative work within the web organization. As communication within the organization be comes dependent on electronic networks, the need for physical co-location of employees is reduced even further. Originally, bringing employees togeth er into a central site was initiated as a means of facil itating communication between individuals working on similar tasks. In the networked organization, some individuals working on similar tasks may be spread out across shifts (Huff, Sproull, & Kiesler, 1989) and across geographic locations (Johansen, 1988, 1990). By natural extension, network technologies also provide the mechanism for allowing the home to become a node within the distributed organi.za tion. In this sense, the trend toward increasing spa tial and temporal separation of home, community, and work place is being reversed (Mokhtarian, 1990; i.e., the work place is the home), as is the breakdown in community organization brought about by separ ation of home and work place (Fischer, Jackson, Stueve, Gerson, Jones, & Baldassare, 1977). In some regions, community-based telework centers are being built that give teleworkers the ad vantages of working in a fully provisioned office without leaving local neighborhoods. Efforts are

Electronic Networking S Fall 1991

underway in other communities to provide citizenry with electronic access to local informational resourc es (Wittig, 1990), including online access to public li braries, schools, and universities (Pacific Bell, 1991). On the commercial side, network vendors are build ing locally billed telephone access numbers into their services; banks, grocery stores, and other businesses are offering services directly tailored to the comput er-savvy citizen; and hotel managers, recognizing the need of business travelers to telework, are mak ing telephone access for modems a routine part of their establishments’ offerings. This, then, is the electronically distributed work community: a collection of nonproximal coworkers working together on interrelated tasks through the usage of computer-mediated networks (see Figure 1). In this community, members may be working in the office next door or in an office across the country. They may be working at home, or in local communi the road” check ty centers, or they may even be ing in and taking care of business as they travel. Communications in the electronic community are dis tinctive from communications in other contexts. “on

Currently, they are text-based; they lack the so cial context and nonverbal information available in other media; they take place in real time or in delayed time, and in organizations where the “network is the computer” members of the electronic community may

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have extensive access to a wide array of organization al resources including data, documents, computing power, and a retained memory for both formal and informal communications’ The distinctiveness of this communication context is what makes the electronic community susceptible to social change and, as a con sequence, in need of further research.

Implications for Research The emergence of telework within electronic com munities, we believe, is evidence of a changing work environment that has profound social implica tions. As environmental psychologists and sociolo gists have long understood, the context in which so cial relationships are embedded defines and gives meaning to the behaviors they generate (Altman & Rogoff, 1987). When that context changes, as it does within the electronic community, it creates the am bience for entirely new structures of working social networks (Taylor & Katambwe, 1988). We, along with our colleagues, have been con ducting research to understand the implications of these new social structures as they unfold within the context of the electronic community. In an example of that research, one of the authors along with his as sociates (Hesse, Sproull, Kiesler, & Walsh, 1990) used an electronic survey to investigate whether or

Trewkç a

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Palm &

Hgure I. The electronically distributed work community

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not involvement in an electronic community would enhance or take away from the primary structures and work-related outcomes of a scientific discipline. 5 The conimunity selected for the study was a networked population of predominantly physical oceanographers. Oceanographers, by virtue of the phenomena they study, necessarily communicate with each other from remote locations around the world. Results indicated that for the oceanographers reporting heavy network usage, involvement in the electronic community was consonant with positive professional outcomes. That is, scientists who used electronic networks extensively published more, knew more members of the scientific community, and received a greater degree of professional recognition than scientists who used the network very little. However, secondary results suggested that for some scientists high usage of the network was con veying a differential advantage over their low-usage counterparts. Specifically, peripheral members of the discipline—those who were geographically isolated or new to their careers—were using communications in the electronic community to overcome obstacles in publishing and in meeting new members of the scientific community, thereby augmenting their own professional outcomes. In other research, Hesse (1989) investigated mechanisms for improving interpersonal relation ships in the electronic community by ameliorating what has been termed the “flaming” response in com puter-mediated communication. Flaming refers to the documented tendency for individuals who communi cate over a computer medium to exhibit unfettered emotional, frequently negative or hostile, behaviors. The reason most frequently given for these dis inhibited behaviors is the lack of nonverbal signals and social context cues that arises from using a re stricted communication channel (see Kiesler, Zu brow, Moses, & Geller, 1985). Applying theories bor rowed from aggression research and social cognition, Hesse demonstrated that it was possible to reintroduce social inhibitions in a simulated com puter-media ted interaction and thereby reduce ag gressive behavior by manipulating content solely within the verbal channel. From the organizational side of distributed communities, Grantham has been conducting work to assess managerial perceptions of obstades to tele commuting. In one study (Grantham, 1991a), an atti tudinal survey was administered to 88 managers, 75 percent of whom were currently supervising tele commuters. Respondents in the study were asked to

rank obstades to telecommuting. Results indicated that managers felt the primary obstacles were (in de scending order of importance): (1) incompatible work tasks, (2) the absence of management support, (3) difficulties in contacting employees at home, (4) the lack of an audit system for assuring work quali ty, and (5) mismatches with company culture. Costs, security, and the adequacy of electronic networks were not rated as primary obstacles. From these data, Grantham concluded that the principal impedi ments to telecommuting are managerial in nature and not technical or cost related. From this research along with the research of others, we believe that the potential for psychologi cal, social, and economic change in electronic com munities is significant. Furthermore, we recognize that not all of these changes will have been anticipat ed. Indeed, we concur with Goodman & Sproull (1990) that many effects in the new environment will be entirely unanticipated. In the sections that follow, we describe those phenomena we believe merit par ticular attention in future research.

Privacy Regulation

In the flexible organization, employees will have some control over the environment in which they choose to conduct their work An understanding of how and why that decision will be made will be cru cial for determining the resources available in prob lem solving arid will affect how organizational mem bers communicate with each other. We contend that one of the guiding principles for environment selec tion among information workers is the regulation and control of privacy. According to the theory of privacy regulation (Altman, 1975), an individual’s need for social con tact is not invariant over time but fluctuates because of a variety of factors. At times (for example, when needing group input on a project or when feeling particularly anxious about something), an individual will be motivated to affiliate with others and will en gage in behaviors engineered to provide social con tact. At other times (for example, when involved in a mentally engaging task or when feeling selfconscious), the individual will be motivated to seek privacy and will find ways of blocking access to the self. The process by which an individual alternative ly seeks social contact or blocks access to the self is referred to as privacy regulation. Individuals use attributes of their environment to regulate access to the self. In the office, employees

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close doors when confronting deadlines, managers ask secretaries to hold their calls while they collect their thoughts before a meeting, and office workers gather around the water cooler when they feel a need to chat about office politics. Even decisions re garding the use of memoranda, telephones, and face-to-face communications may be made based on the relative degree of social interaction afforded by each medium. Telework, when provided as a choice, is anoth er aspect of the work environment that may facilitate the privacy regulation process. As Kraut (1987, 1989) observed, telecommuters in at least one study re served work at home for performing cognitive tasks—writing, reading, and so on—and used work in the office to perform socially oriented task— interviews, meetings, and the like. In other words, when tele workers wanted privacy, either for person al reasons or for getting something done, they went home. As a financial analyst put it, “With fewer inter ruptions I’m more productive at home” (Sproull & Kiesler, 1991, p. 120). While at home, telecommuters reported communicating with their coworkers more often by electronic mail, that is, through the electron ic community, than by telephone or face to face. Telework as a privacy-regulating mechanism not may always work, however. For some individu als, working at home may be filled with more dis tractions than the office environment they left be hind. Given that privacy needs vary over time, what could be perceived as useful and morale building on one day may be perceived as isolating and ineffi cient under other circumstances. Recent scandals revealing that management in some companies have been monitoring the electron ic mail of their employees have cast doubt on the ability of some electronic communities to safeguard the privacy of their constituencies (LaPlante, 1990). Research is needed to understand the managerial implications of fulfilling needs for privacy versus so cial contact using telework.

Emergency Preparedness

Not all decisions of where to work are based on matching the environment to personal motivations. As we have already argued, the need for telework is often imposed by external forces such as child-care problems, intolerable commutes, or emergencies. One of the more timely research agendas, we be lieve, is to understand the role that the electronically distributed work community might play in coping

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with emergencies. Whether confronting snow storms in the Midwest, hurricanes in the South, or simply a failed car battery, all employees have at one time or another experienced conditions that force them to stay home. California’s Loma Prieta earth quake of 1989 provides an ideal example of how tel ework may be used to cope with unexpected workflow disruptions. On October 17, 1989, an earthquake of disas trous proportions shook the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition to causing serious financial and personal damage, the earthquake severely disrupted the Bay Area’s already overburdened ability to manage traf fic in and around the metropolitan area. In the imme diate aftermath, traffic gridlock threatened to hinder relief efforts in severely affected areas. With the clo sure of the Bay Bridge and numerous other key transportation arteries, San Francisco faced longterm dislocation of traffic to and from places of work. The Bay Area responded to the earthquake by resorting to telecommuting during the primary and subsequent stages of the disaster’s aftermath (Langberg, 1989; Levander, 1989; O’Connor, 1989; Siegel, 1990)- One spokesperson for the California Depart ment of Transportation (CALTRANS) estimated that during the first days following the earthquake, traf fic flow was reduced by as much as 50 percent, 6 as commuters either chose, or were forced, to stay home. Many organizations including Pacific Bell, Wells Fargo Bank, and Apple Computer were quick to establish formal policies permitting the use of tel ecommuting following the crisis. The attractiveness of the electronically distrib uted work community for supporting telework fol lowing an emergency of any type lies in the fact that the community persists in spite of disruptions to physical work sites or employees’ abilities to com mute. As long as telephone and electrical lines (both high priorities for repair) stay intact, the electronic work community can take over, providing many of the informational, work-related, and emergency ser vices that the physical work site cannot. For example, the networked community can post information regarding organizational policies, facility repairs, and status reports in an effective and around-the-clock fashion, owing to its asynchronous nature and broadcast capabilities. Members of the community can “check in” quickly, helping to allay community fears, to mobilize aid if needed, and to clarify expectations .of when and how to report back to work as soon as the organization has lifted itself from the crisis. Pinally, because organizational

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Stage

Quesdous asked

Hypotheses

Primary aftermath (first 24 hours)

In what condition is my place of work? How are others reacting to the disaster? What do I do now?

Great numbers of employees are either encouraged, or forced, to stay home during the first 24 hours. Telecommuting technologies during the initial period could be used primarily for information gathering and dhsvn4n.Hoa At the same time, physical barriers (i.e., overused telephone lines, power outages, etc.) pose obstacles to using the technologies. Asynchronous technologies fadlitating wide range interconnectivity will be advantageous.

Secondary aftermath (I. to 7 days)

How will I be able to do my work? Is telecommudng a viable option? What are my other options? What are other employees doing?

Searching for ways of coping with disruptions in personal and work life, many employees will experiment with telework. Those who experiment do so because they can perform suitable tasks (i.e., tasks that are not location 1 they have the appropriate dependent) supplies and equipment, they have some expectation of how to telecomiunte, and they deem the costs of physically commuting to be prohibitive.

Tertiary aftermath (2(08 weeks)

What is company policy? How do other employees view my staying at home? Am I being productive or just loafing?

Company culture and employees’ perceptions should differentiate who teleworks and who does not at this stage. Clearly articulated company policy will help to dispel ambiguities. However, disparities between policy and culture will prompt unsure teleworkers to forego the career-risk” of staying at home.

Post Disaster (more than S weeks)

Is the pressure off for teiccommuting? Did I gain anything by staying home? Did I lose anything by staying home?

Of those who experimented with telecnmmuting after the disaster, a vast majority will return to work. In fact, roadways may initially be more crowded than before. Real gina, however, should be measured in the employee’s overall acaptana of the eleonic unity as a generalized solution to other stressful events.

networks are established to support work-related

activities directly, some employees can continue their work at home when traveling is ill advised. The utility of the networked community to meet the demands of crisis management will change over the course of the emergency’s aftermath. In the beginning, the network may well serve the function of wide-scale information dissemination, much as short wave radios have helped historically in dealing with other disasters. Later, as the affected communi ty must try to resume work life in the face of pro tracted cleanup activities, many employees will turn to the electronic community as a temporary alterna tive to physical travel. Throughout the course of the rebuilding period, newly initiated members of the electronic community will continually weigh the costs of teleworking against the costs of traveling back to their offices.

Table 1. Questions and hypotheses regarding the use of telework foflowlng a civU emergency.

Eventually, as rebuilding is ultimately complet ed, many employees will return to the work place. Others, having found newly discovered security and flexibility in the electronic community, will maintain telework as an option for dealing with daily disrup tions in work flow and activity. These hypotheses and the questions asked by teleworkers during each stage of the aftermath are listed in Table I.

Self-Efficacy We contend that an employee’s satisfaction with tel ework in an electronically distributed community depends on his or her sense of efficacy in negotiating the norms and mores of the newly emergent com munity. By sense of efficacy, we refer to Bandura’s (1977) notion that individuals maintain personal

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perceptions of their own abilities to carry out actions. According to Bandura, individuals subjectively match those perceptions against their expectations for receiving rewards from the environment The na ture of that match, in turn, determines the individu— al’s emotional response: positive affect (sense of self efficacy/expected reward), anger (sense of selfefficacy/no expected reward), depression (no sense of self-efficacy/expected reward), or apathy (no sense of self-efficacy/no expected reward).

A similar tradition exists within sociology in the form of an interactional theory of emotional states (Kemper, 1978). This perspective has not been extended to a work environment. It appears that these two traditions of research (Bandura and Kernper) intersect in the area of self-perception of efficacy (Bandura) and power/status relationships (Kemper).

The notion of self-efficacy can be applied to tele work, as a job-relevant task, in predicting an employ ee’s affective reactions. From previous studies, those self-selected telecommuters who reported being hap py with telework were probably individuals who al ready felt confident in their abilities to work within the electronic community and who were expecting positive recognition from the organizational environ ment. This follows from Bandura’s theory, which states that a perceived sense of efficacy matched with expectations of reward produces positive affect.

Relying on a perspective outlined previously by one of the authors (Hesse, Werner, & Altman, 1988; see also McGrath, 1990 for a similar treatment), we expect that telework will have a specific impact on the tem poral qualities of work flow and communication. Without going into the details of that previous article, we will say here that both the psychological and ob jectifiable temporal qualities of computer-mediated communications are unlike those of any other medi um. Computers have the capacity to convey informa tion in either a synchronous (real time) or asynchro nous mode (delayed time) and in practice may allow users to combine attributes of both. This provides the immediacy of rapid message delivery while at the same time allowing time for reflection.

On the other hand, the indignation and anger felt by exploited clerical staff was probably the result of a clash between feelings of self-efficacy (“I can work at home successfully”) and a recognized lack of reward or selective punishment from manage ment (“1 am being paid less and respected less by my supervisors”). Cases not reported in the litera ture but possibly just as disruptive are instances of lowered self-esteem for individuals who recognize that they could be rewarded for telework but do not have the wherewithal (self-management skills, equipment, computer savvy) to work successfully in an electronically distributed community. Finally, the more ubiquitous case is most likely the one for which telework is simply not an issue: the employees do not know how to make telecommuting work for their job, and even if they did, it would not be supported by management. The work of Bandura and others points to a sol id linkage of perception of efficacy and control to em ployee satisfaction. The applicability of self-efficacy to using new technologies in the work place is hinted at by Hill and his colleagues (Hill, Smith, & Mann, 1987), who used the self-efficacy construct to predict acceptance of computer technologies, and Roskies, Liker, and Roitman (1988), who reported from quali tative interviews (N=60) that confidence in one’s abil ity to control new technologies differentiated those who perceived themselves to be “winners” or “los ers” in the technological change process.

Temporal Aspects of Employee Behavior

We anticipate that one effect of using asynchro nous technologies away from the office will be to de crease the variability in the scale (i.e., scope or dura tion) of communication units. Communications faceto-face or over the telephone are controlled by non verbal cues and social context information; Domi nant members of dyads and groups quickly take control of conversations and monopolize speaking time. Less dominant or minority members of the group tend to contribute less. In computer-mediated communication, social context cues are absent. As a result we expect that the relative lengths of comput er-mediated messages will become more homoge nized over time. We also expect differences in patterns of fre quency between computer-mediated and officespecific behavior. Communications in the office, we believe, are not always task-related and are often cued spontaneously through chance encounters. In the electronic community, where there are less op portunities for coworkers to “bump into each other,” we expect that patterns of communication will be more directly related to fluctuations in task de mands than to random encounters. Since task de mands fluctuate during the phases of a project and especially near deadlines (Gersick, in press), we an ticipate that the patterns of frequency for

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communications by teleworkers Will vary over phas es of a project’s life, with the frequency of communi cation higher near deadlines. A temporal aspect that poses a perennial prob lem in computer-mediated communication is the problem of sequencing. Sequencing refers to the or dering of activities within an event. Real time con versations are naturally sequenced to present a pro gression of ideas, topics, and tones. Asynchronous conversations in a computer environment, with an absence of clear turn-taking mechanisms, are persis tently plagued by an inability to control sequencing of topics and ideas. New readers of bulletin boards often make comments on issues that have already been re solved, and computer conferees find that, by the time they are ready to comment on part of a discus sion, the group’s conversation has already moved on. Research is needed to understand the impact of sequencing, as well as other temporal qualities, on task efficiency and communication clarity in the electronic community.

Communication Patterns Research in the area of computer-mediated corninu nication has a lot to offer for understanding the im pad of telecommuting technologies on communica tion patterns. At the interpersonal level, data suggest that as communication becomes restricted to a textu al channel (as when communicating via e mail) it los es important nonverbal and contextual information, frequently resulting in disinhibited behavior. In some contexts, this disinhibition may lead to more candid communication, but, in the context of a frustrating event (e.g., Hesse, 1989), it may lead to aggressive interpersonal responding (Kiesler, Zu brow, Moses, & Geller, 1985). At the organizational level, computer-mediated networks influence deci sion making by giving greater voice to minority in put (Siegel, Dubrovsky, Kiesler, & McGuire, in press) and by promoting upward communication of negative information (Sproull & Kiesler, 1986). From this research, we would expect that com pared to non-networked organizations, communica tion patterns in the electronic work community (1) should be more generally disinhibited (possibly to the extent of engendering hostile behavior), (2) should contain more negative information transmit ted upward through hierarchies, and (3) should contain a more equitable balance of majority and

minority input. On the positive side, this implies that the electronic community will have at its dispo sal a greater breadth of information from which to make business decisions. On the negative side, deci sion makers must learn how to manage this new in formation and must distinguish between that which is important and that which is unimportant. Mem bers of the community must also learn new norms for dealing with and avoiding aggressively provoc ative verbal behavior.

Oranizationa! Effectiveness The organizational effectiveness literature discusses technology as a central intervening force linking atti bides and behavior within the firm. Recent theoreti cal work (Huber, 1990) posited that the availability, and access tot advanced communication technolo gies creates increased information accessibility. This leads to changes in organizational design (structure) and ultimately to improvements in effectiveness of the firm in terms of intelligence development and decision-making capability. In addition, Burkhardt and Brass (1990), in an empirical study of technology diffusion, found that rates of adoption of new computer-mediated com munications technologies led to status and power differentials in their business-based social networks. Furthermore, we find that managerial compe tence and perceptions of control have been reported to be intervening variables between employee char acteristics and job performance (Storey, 1987). Simi larly, from pilot work performed by one of the au thors (Grantham, 1991a), we know that managers’ acceptance of telecommuting is related to percep tions of control over subordinates’ work. Applying the model of self-efficacy, managers who feel selfefficacious in their ability to manage telecotrimuters and to use the technologies themselves (even from the office rather than from home) will be more effec tive managers of teleworkers in the long run. Imagine a situation in which an employee stays home to work but is unreachable because all he or she has is a telephone that is always busy. In such a case, if the manager has no other channel for reaching the employee, a breakdown in communication would be expected to subvert the manager’s sense of control and effectiveness and would ultimately reduce both the manager’s and employee’s productivity. On the other hand, the effective use of an asyn chronous communication channel—electronic mail,

Electronic Networking — Fail 1991

13

a facsimile machine, even call waiting—would be enough to facilitate the supervisor’s sense of managerial efficacy and to avert frustration.

To illustrate some of these questions and implica tions, we have listed a research and a manager’s agenda in Tables 2 and 3 respectively.

A Research and Manager’s Agenda

Summary

We have outlined several general areas for future research. However, within these areas we feel there are specific research questions that need to be investigated. There are also corresponding implications for the management of telework program implementation.

Network technology is creating a situation in the business environment that is promoting the forma-. tion of new organizations. The old centralized, for mal bureaucracies are crumbling. In their place, small independent work groups are forming and

Table 2. A research agenda for investigating leleworic within the electronic community

• •

•

•

• • • • • • • • • • • •

Table 3. A manager’s agenda of Issues to consider when implementing telework policy

• •

•

• • •

• • • • •

•

How successful is telework as a strategy for regulating access to the self? What managerial and technological provisions facilitate the privacy regulation process, both in providing solitude ad avoiding isolation? What is needed by management to convey an adequate expectation of reward for ttri1bng telework technologies? How do employees gain a sense of self-efficacy within the electronic community? How axe user attitudes toward technology facilitated by the socialization process? What attitudinal characteristics lead to substitution behaviors of one communication technology for another? What variables mediate the atiitudedbehavior relationship relative to computer networks? How are group norms communicated in the electronic community? In what ways can Computer Supported Cooperative Work software facilitate group productivity? How may rNcinhfluited verbal behavior be avoided when communicating solely through a textual channel? What is the relationship between work processes and organizational structure? What types of new orgsninñonal forms are emerging today? How can organinlional activities be facilitated by computer systems? How can “organizational knowledge” (e.g., role relationships) be embedded in computer

systems? What kinds of process and structure implications will occur because of adoption of integrated telecommunication ad computer systems? What social effects could result from a closer elecuonic based integration of the home and work place?

The social context in which computers are used influences the acceptance and use of technology. The way in which technology is introduced in a social setting is as important as the technology. Peoples attitudes toward computers are affected by social influence processes. To understand human-computer interactions, attitudes toward technology must be examined in their entirety. The average computer user does not enist. Individual differences in computer users’ attitudes and behavior are important and should be examined empirically. To be effective computer supported cooperative software needs to consider both the affective and task oriented structure of the situation. An organiration’s goals, structure, technology and environment are mutually interdependent variables. Organizational structures should not be altered without first ex2nhining the underlying social processes that will be affected. Long term organizational goals are just as important as short run costs. flvnging technology can modify authority and power relationships within organizations. Changing technology can influence the efficiency and effectiveness of an organization’s structure.

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disbursing themselves over the landscape. On the horizon are electronically networked “hybrid” or ganizations that are flexible enough to accommodate work communities distributed across sites and unre stricted by ifme.

Vigil (1988, p. 12) has said that “the major revo lutions of technology in the twentieth century are transportation, communication, and computing. All three dramatically affect our notion of time and space or distance.”

This, we said, was the basis of the electronical ly distributed work community, an “invisible” com munity of organizational members working on shared and similar tasks through the mediation of computer-based networks. Because of the technolog ical capabilities of these networks, members of the electronic community may communicate with each other and conduct their work at any time of the day and from any location.

We believe that telework within the electroni cally distribu ted work community combines all three of these revolutions. As a mode of transporta tion, it moves information in lieu of individuals; as a mode of communication, it allows for synchronous as well as asynchronous transmissions to one person or to many; and, as a mode of computing, it allows access to community information resources even to the point of maintaining storage space for internal community conversations. To understand the elec tronically distributed work community is to under stand the combined impact of the most influential set of technological innovations in this century.

As an end result these networks allow a rever sal of the separation of work from home, a separation instigated by the Industrial Revolution. In the elec tronic community, members may work from the of fice next door, while traveling, or from home. With work-related resources distributed throughout net works, the electronic community signals a democrati zation of the American white-collar work force. What is needed now is an understanding of the way in which the work environment will change by moving workers into an electronic milieu. By and large, the integration of effective management prac tices with technology has always occurred at a rate far slower than that by which technology creeps into the work place. Old, arcane, industrially generated techniques of management are still being used to manage teleworkers when new, more socially appro priate methods are needed to guide management as a result of the information revolution. In this paper, we have offered a preliminary guide for conducting research on telework within the heretofore unfantiliar environs of the electroni cally distributed work community. Specifically, we have implicated social psychological theories, such as privacy regulation and self-efficacy, that we be lieve will be useful for understanding employee mo tivations and interpreting affective responses of elec tronic community members. We have pointed, to changes in process—organizational effectiveness, communication patterns, and temporal characteris tics of work flow—that we predicted will be altered as work moves into the electronic community. We also pointed out how electronic networks could be used to minimize the impact of personal and civil emergencies, a topic we believe could have serious importance for policymakers concerned with emer gency preparedness.

Author Notes The authors wish to express their gratitude to Sara Kiesler at Carnegie Mellon University who provided early input to the conceptual development of this paper. Requests for reprints should be sent to the first author, the American Institutes for Research, P.O. Box 1113, Palo Alto, CA 94302. Notes 1. Telework has been defined in numerous ways and, in many cases, has been used synonymously with telecommuting. Mokhtarian (1991) offers the definition we find most cogent in the present context: “work done by an individual while at a different loca tion than the person(s) directly supervising it.” 2. This notion is similar to the concept of “In visible College” described by Crane (1972), that is, an ephemeral quality associated with a community not confined to any one physical location. 3. Early evaluation of IBM’s program was con ducted by the American Institutes for Research in Palo Alto, California and is reported in Rubin, (1982). 4. A good example of this is the online “Worm Community” described by Schatz (1991). In the pro posed online community, biological scientists inter ested in studying the nematode worm C. elegans wifl be able to access “all” the knowledge of a scientific community by browsing an information space distrib uted across the many machines of the community’s

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network. Information available for browsing will in clude archival data, published literature, informal information (newsletters, conferences, and lists), un published data, and a shared library of uploaded community knowledge. 5. For additional research on scientific communi ties, see McClure, Bishop, Doty, & Rosenbaum (1991). 6. Figure based on a personal inquiry, October 30, 1989. References

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1st Annual

Electronic Networking & Publishing ‘92 CON FERENCE& EXHIBITION

In association with Lafayette College and Princeton University JvNCnet

Jan. 1446, 1992 The Ramada, Madison Square Garden, New York City Toplc.s Include: • • • •

INTERNET NREN Intellectual Property Campus-wide Information Systems

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Electronic Journals • Using Computer Networks on Campus • Teleworking • Information Networking

Mitch Kapor, Keynote Speaker for program or more Information contact Meckler Conference Management 11 Feny lane West • Westport, CT 06880 Tel: 800/635-5537 or 203/226-6967 Fax: 203/454—5840 Meckier is an Affiliate member of the International Association for Continuig Education and Training