Impact of Home-based Teleworking During Pandemic on Telecommuters’ Organizational Commitment: Interaction of Gender and Family Status

Abstract

Organizations arrange telecommuting work conditions for their employees during unprecedented times but do not want to see employees with lower commitment levels. The present study finds how home-based teleworking during the COVID-19 pandemic influenced telecommuters’ organizational commitment. Using quantitative research techniques, the study approached 412 telecommuters working in the Indian IT sector to collect the responses to the survey questionnaire statements. A purposive sampling method was applied to select the sample. The structural equation model technique was used to test the hypothesized model. Results from the study indicate that home-based teleworking as a current working condition of the telecommuter showed a significant adverse effect on affective commitment. Organizational commitment may result in employee psychological connection with an organization, feeling obligated to stay with an organization, and perceived benefits from the organization, but when an organizational work environment shifted from a physical location to work from home, these commitments resulted in different ways. In contrast, it positively impacted telecommuters’ normative and continuance commitment. Further, the telecommuter’s gender moderates the relationship between telecommuting working conditions and normative and continuance commitment but not affective commitment. However, the telecommuter’s family status moderates the relationship between teleworking working conditions and affective and continuance commitment but not normative commitment. It is recommended that organizations that are interested in having more employee commitment during unprecedented times should induce a rich communication technology to enrich the emotional connection (affective commitment), make feel responsibility and responsible (normative commitment), and nurture the policies and structures to see employee perceive more benefits for career and professional development.