Employee isolation and telecommuter organizational commitment
| Published date | 12 February 2020 |
| Pages | 609-625 |
| Date | 12 February 2020 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/ER-06-2019-0246 |
| Author | Wendy Wang,Leslie Albert,Qin Sun |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour,Industrial/labour relations,Employment law |
Employee isolation and
telecommuter organizational
commitment
Wendy Wang
Department of Information Management Technology and Computer Science,
Trident University International, Cypress, California, USA
Leslie Albert
School of Information Systems and Technology, San Jose State University, San Jose,
California, USA, and
Qin Sun
Department of Marketing, David Nazarian College of Business and Economics,
California State University, Northridge, California, USA
Abstract
Purpose –In light of the increasing popularity of telecommuting, this study investigates how telecommuters’
organizational commitment may be linked to psychological and physical isolation. Psychological isolation
refers to feelings of emotional unfulfillment when one lacks meaningful connections, support, and interactions
with others, while physical isolation refers to physical separation from others.
Design/methodology/approach –An online survey was used to collect data from 446 employees who
telecommute one or more days per week.
Findings –The results of this study indicate that telecommuters’affective commitment is negatively
associated with psychological isolation, whereas their continuance commitment is positively correlated with
both psychological and physical isolation. These findings imply that telecommuters may remain with their
employers due to perceived benefits, a desire to conserve resources such as time and emotional energy, or
weakened marketability, rather than emotional connections to their colleagues or organizations.
Practical implications –Organizations wishing to retain and maximize the contributions of telecommuters
should pursue measures that address collocated employees’negative assumptions toward telecommuters,
preserve the benefits of remote work, and cultivate telecommuters’emotional connections (affective
commitment) and felt obligation (normative commitment) to their organizations.
Originality/value –Through the creative integration of the need-to-belong and relational cohesion theories,
this study contributes to the telecommuting and organizational commitment literature by investigating the
dynamics between both psychological and physical isolation and telecommuters’organizational commitment.
Keywords Organizational commitment, Telecommuting, Employee isolation, Employee well-being
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
With the increasingly open access to information technologies, mobile devices, and
ubiquitous Internet connectivity, employees can work from any location, including client
sites, homes, cafes, and airports. Although work conducted outside of employer-provided
spaces has been known by many names (e.g., telecommuting, telework, virtual work, remote
work, and distributed work arrangements), this study adopts the term “telecommuting”
coined by Nilles (1994) and defines it as working anywhere other than the organization’s
primary office(s) for at least some portion of an employee’s working hours. As the office is
rapidly expanding beyond the cubicle, telecommuting, whether full or part-time, is becoming
the new norm. According to a recent study on the future of the workplace, many of the 1,000
hiring managers surveyed believed up to 38 percent of their full-time staff would be hired or
transitioned to working remotely within the next decade (Upwork, 2019). The latest statistics
provided by GlobalWorkplaceAnalytics.com (2018) shows 4.3 million employees (3.2 percent
Telecommuters’
organizational
commitment
609
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/0142-5455.htm
Received 11 June 2019
Revised 18 November 2019
18 December 2019
Accepted 18 December 2019
Employee Relations: The
International Journal
Vol. 42 No. 3, 2020
pp. 609-625
© Emerald Publishing Limited
0142-5455
DOI 10.1108/ER-06-2019-0246
of the workforce) work at least half their hours from home. Since 2005, the number of
telecommuters has grown by 140 percent, nearly 10 times faster than the rest of the
workforce. It is expected that about 70 percent of workers will work remotely at least five
days a month by 2025 (Molla, 2019).
Despite its growth, telecommuting is often viewed as a double-edged sword. On the one
hand, it offers employees many potential benefits over traditional work arrangements: better
work–life balance, schedule flexibility, job satisfaction, autonomy, and reduced travel time
(Fay and Kline, 2012;Golden, 2006;Golden and Veiga, 2005;Grant et al., 2013;Leonari et al.,
2010;Morganson et al., 2010). On the other hand, telecommuting may be associated with
negative effects such as psychological and physical isolation. Psychological isolation is a
feeling that one is disconnected from others, lacking desired social and influential network
connections, and “that the need for support, understanding, and other social and emotional
aspects of interaction are not fulfilled”(Diekema, 1992;Golden et al., 2008, p. 1412). Numerous
studies suggest that psychological isolation can be highly detrimental for employees, leading
to undesirable outcomes such as job dissatisfaction, high turnover rates, and even poor health
(Bartel et al., 2012;Gainey et al., 1999;Golden and Veiga, 2005;McCloskey and Igbaria, 2003).
Physical isolation refers to telecommuters’physical separation from their colleagues (Bartel
et al., 2012). Physically isolated employees tend to believe they are less respected in their
organizations and possess fewer career advantages than their collocated peers. These
employees may also need to actively manage their organizational image to dispel on-site
colleagues’and managers’suspicions that they are “loafing”when not physically in the office
by making themselves available around-the-clock via information communication
technologies (ICTs) (Hamilton, 2002;Leonari et al., 2010). This perpetual availability
undermines telecommuters’schedule flexibility and work–life balance. Thus, physically
isolated telecommuters tend to feel frustrated and untrusted, prone to loneliness, and have
poorer organizational identification and an inability to maintain meaningful relationships
with coworkers (Cooper and Kurland, 2002;Golden and Veiga, 2005;Fay and Kline, 2012;
McCloskey and Igbaria, 2003).
Given the many potential issues associated with psychological and physical isolation, it is
imperative to understand how they influence employees and their organizations. However,
few studies have examined psychological and physical isolation together or considered how
they interact with employees’telecommuting experiences. In particular, the relationships
between physical and psychological isolation and telecommuting employees’commitment to
their organizations are not well understood (Buss, 1991;Gainey et al., 1999;Golden et al., 2008;
Ozcelik and Barsade, 2011).
Organizational commitment is tied to many desirable outcomes, for example, employee job
performance, motivation, involvement, and organizational citizenship behaviors (Jacobs,
2008;Jønsson and Jeppesen, 2012;Khan et al., 2010;Lu et al., 2016;Luchak and Gellatly, 2007;
Meyer et al., 2002;Meyer and Allen, 1991;Nazir et al., 2016;Saks, 2006;Schoemmel and
Jønsson, 2014). While there are various conceptualizations of organizational commitment,
this study adopts Meyer and Allen’s (1991) definition, which includes three dimensions:
affective, normative, and continuance (Kanter, 1968;Meyer et al., 2002). Affective
commitment refers to an employee’s emotional connection, identification, and involvement
with the organization and has been shown to be associated with a desire to remain with and
contribute to the greater whole (Golden, 2006;Jønsson and Jeppesen, 2012;Nazir et al., 2016;
Ohana and Meyer, 2016;Wang et al., 2010). Normative commitment reflects an employee’s
loyalty and felt obligation to remain with the organization out of a sense of responsibility,
shared norms, or reciprocity for organizational investments in the individual and may be
emotional or instrumental (Jacobs, 2008;Johnson and Chang, 2006;Jønsson and Jeppesen,
2012;Meyer and Allen, 1991;Nazir et al., 2016). Continuance commitment is purely
instrumental, driven by economic exchanges, and represents an employee’s desire to remain
ER
42,3
610
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