Work at home for computer professionals: current attitudes and future prospects

Abstract

The subject of this paper is work performed in the home with computer and communications technology, also known as telecommuting . The article reports on two studies of work at home: a quasi-experimental field study of organizational telecommuting pilot programs, and an attitude survey comparing computer professionals who work at home to employees doing similar jobs in traditional office settings. The results of the field study demonstrated that working in the home had little impact on employee performance; however, supervisors were not comfortable with remote workers and preferred their employees to be on site. In the survey, work in the home was related to lower job satisfaction, lower organizational commitment, and higher role conflict. The survey also included computer professionals who worked at home in addition to the regular work day. The author suggests that performing additional unpaid work in the home after regular work hours may be an important trend that merits further investigation. The studies demonstrate that while computer and communications technology have the potential to relax constraints on information work in terms of space and time, in today's traditional work environments, corporate culture and management style limit acceptance of telecommuting as a substitute for office work.