Does telework status affect the behavior and perception of supervisors? Examining task behavior and perception in the telework context

Abstract

Research in telework has mostly focused on studying teleworkers themselves or comparing the phenomenological experience of nonteleworkers and teleworkers. Thus, supervisors in the telework context have been a relatively neglected area of study. The current study compares the task behaviors of nonteleworking and teleworking supervisors and investigates the factors that affect supervisors’ perceived organizational impact of telework. The findings indicate that teleworking supervisors tend to spend less time doing work that can be accomplished only at the office. For teleworking supervisors, management support for telework, work assignment fairness, teleworker supervision experience and teleworker supervision proficiency all positively affected the perceived organizational impact of telework. In the case of nonteleworking supervisors, only work assignment fairness and teleworker supervision proficiency positively affected the perceived organizational impact of telework.