Prelims

Half Title Page

Work from Home

Title Page

Work from Home: Multi-level Perspectives on the New Normal

EDITED BY

PAYAL KUMAR

Indian School of Hospitality, India

ANIRUDH AGRAWAL

Jindal Global University, India

and

PAWAN BUDHWAR

Aston University, UK

United Kingdom – North America – Japan – India – Malaysia – China

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Emerald Publishing Limited

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First edition 2022

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Contents

List of Tables and Figures

About the Editors

Anirudh Agrawal is an Associate Professor at Jindal Global University, Delhi, India. As a scholar, he has published on topics related to impact investing, social entrepreneurship, CSR, Industry 4.0, and organisational theory. He has taught at FLAME University, Copenhagen Business School, and Bennett University. As a practitioner, he has a rich experience of incubating, mentoring, and investing start-ups and early-stage organisations. He is also a recipient of multiple fellowships and scholarships in science, engineering, and management. He teaches entrepreneurship, strategy, and design thinking.

Pawan Budhwar is the 50th Anniversary Professor of International HRM and Head of Aston Business School, Birmingham, UK. He is the Co-Editor-in-Chief of Human Resource Management Journal. His research interests are in the field of strategic and international HRM and emerging markets with a specific focus on India. He has published over 140 articles in leading journals and has also written and/or co-edited 25 books. He is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (UK), British Academy of Management, the Academy of Social Sciences (UK), and the Indian Academy of Management.

Payal Kumar is Dean of Research and Management Studies, Indian School of Hospitality, India. She is a prolific author with several papers published in peer-reviewed journals and also 12 books with international publishers. She is the series editor of the five-volume Palgrave Studies in Leadership and Followership. She is an advisory member of several peer-reviewed journals and is Senior Reviewer, Journal of Organizational Behavior, Wiley. She is on the executive committees of various divisions of the Academy of Management. She is the inaugural recipient of the Andre Delbecq and Lee Robbins MSR (Academy of Management) Scholarship. In an earlier avatar, she worked for SAGE Publications Pvt Ltd as Vice President Editorial and Production.

About the Contributors

Anirudh Agrawal is an Associate Professor at Jindal Global University, Delhi, India. As a scholar, he has published on topics related to impact investing, social entrepreneurship, CSR, Industry 4.0, and organisational theory. He has taught at FLAME University, Copenhagen Business School, and Bennett University. As a practitioner, he has a rich experience of incubating, mentoring and investing start-ups and early-stage organisations. He is also a recipient of multiple fellowships and scholarships in science, engineering, and management. He teaches Entrepreneurship, Strategy, and Design Thinking.

Pawan Budhwar is the 50th Anniversary Professor of International HRM and Head of Aston Business School, Birmingham, UK. He is the Co-Editor-in-Chief of Human Resource Management Journal. His research interests are in the field of strategic and international HRM and emerging markets with a specific focus on India. He has published over 140 articles in leading journals and has also written and/or co-edited 25 books. He is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (UK), British Academy of Management, the Academy of Social Sciences (UK), and the Indian Academy of Management.

Seterra D. Burleson, is a doctoral student in the Industrial-Organizational Psychology programme at Old Dominion University. She is currently working as a research assistant in the Career Development Lab under Dr Debra A. Major and has contributed to several grant-funded projects concerning the career development and persistence of women and other underrepresented groups in male-dominated career paths, such as those in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. In her recent publications and conference presentations, she has explored topics of professional identity development, professional development activities, servant leadership, prosocial identity, anticipated and experienced work–family conflict, implications of remote work, newcomer experiences, incivility, self-efficacy, and occupational and major embeddedness. She conducts research to inform organisational initiatives to improve employee engagement, belongingness, and well-being in a way that supports organisational goals and values. She is a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer who served in Perú prior to entering her graduate studies.

Ada T. Cenkci is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science, Criminal Justice, and Organizational Leadership at Northern Kentucky University. She holds a PhD in Management and Organisation, an MBA degree, and a bachelor’s degree in Industrial Engineering. She has taught courses on Leadership, Diversity, and Culture at undergraduate and graduate levels. She is enthusiastic about using the latest technology tools to enhance student learning. Thus, she completed the Master of Education in Educational Technology programme at Wright State University. Her main research areas of interest are inclusive leadership and workplace loneliness. She has published in international journals on leadership and presented at various conferences. Her publications have appeared in the following peer-reviewed journals: Journal of Business Ethics, Management Research Review Journal, Journal of Educational Psychology, and Journal of Leadership Education. With her co-author A. B. Otken, she received the Best Paper Award at the 2015 Midwest Academy of Management Annual Meeting. She is also the recipient of the 2019 College of Arts and Science Outstanding Junior Faculty Award at NKU. Outside of her professional interests, she enjoys improv comedy and exploring the Northern Kentucky area. She is always excited to meet new people and discover different cultures.

Neha Chatwani is an Organisational Psychologist who also holds a Doctorate in Business Administration from Grenoble Ecole de Management. She is the founder of the workplace atelier, an innovative space that offers services in agile change management bricolage, leadership development, and career design.

A Certified Change Facilitator, with extensive international corporate experience in Human Resource Management and Organisational Development, she serves a wide variety of sectors including the United Nations, NGOs, and large for-profits as well as social start-ups, focussing on strategic issues in team cohesion and leadership. Her motto for work is to ‘think, feel, take action to add meaning and value’.

She is also an independent case study-based researcher and adjunct Professor at Danube University. More about her work can be found on her website http://www.theworkplaceatelier.com

Holly Chiu obtained her PhD from Rutgers Business School and is an Associate Professor in the Department of Business Management at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York. Her research interests include influence tactics, innovation implementation, and knowledge sharing. Her works can be found in journals such as British Journal of Management, Journal of Knowledge Management, and Group & Organization Management.

Kerri Cissna is currently a Teacher-Scholar Postdoctoral Fellow at Wake Forest University in the Program for Leadership and Character and the Center for Entrepreneurship. She co-teaches ‘Leading the Philanthropic Enterprise’ for Pepperdine University’s Social Entrepreneurship and Change programme and teaches human resource management at Cal State, Long Beach. Her research is in Global Leadership and Change, focussing on the intersection of inclusive leadership and workplace spirituality. She has recently co-edited three books on Women in Leadership: Work–Family Integration, published by Cambridge Scholars, and is a member of the Work–Life Integration Project. She is a certified trainer in mastering emotional connection with Level Five Executive and is currently working with the EmC research team to assess the EmC model for creating emotional connections in the workplace.

Matthew D. Deeg is an Assistant Professor of Management in the College of Business Administration at Abilene Christian University, following the conclusion of his doctoral work in organisational behaviour and human resource management at the University of Kansas School of Business. His research revolves around the core goal of helping people thrive and positively impact others. Crucial in this area is his dissertation research examining intra- and interpersonal factors driving supportive behaviours within relationships. Additionally, he explores the role of behaviours and preferences in fostering meaningful work; some of this work has been published in the Oxford Handbook of Meaningful Work. He has presented his work at annual meetings of the Academy of Management, the World Congress of the International Positive Psychology Association, and the Midwest Academy of Management. Outside of work, he enjoys cooking, listening to classical music, and playing with his two cats.

Kristen D. Eggler is a doctoral student in the Industrial-Organizational Psychology programme at Old Dominion University. She graduated from Gustavus Adolphus College with a degree in Psychological Science where she conducted research on motivation, positive affect, and creativity. She currently works in the Career Development Lab under Dr Debra Major to research the experiences of underrepresented groups in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Her primary research interests include diversity and inclusion, with the goal of helping organisations dismantle systemic oppression in and outside of the workplace.

Christina Fuchs is a Research Associate and member of the Human Resource Management (HRM) Group at the University of Salzburg, Department for Social Sciences and Economics. Her main research interests are digital HRM with a focus on human–technology interaction in the context of work and organisations, mobile work, and digital recruiting. She received her Master’s degree in Psychology and her Diploma in International Business and Economics from the University of Innsbruck, Austria, after spending a year at the Hong Kong University. Subsequently, she worked as Human Resource Manager for an internationally operating media corporation until she joined the University of Salzburg in 2020.

Carmine Gibaldi is a Full Professor of Management, Organizational Behavior and Entrepreneurship at St John’s University. He recently became part of the faculty at the Bologna Business School (Global MBA programme) as a Visiting Professor, where he teaches a course in People Management and serves as an Adjunct Professor at Harvard University. He has served as Co-Chair of Strategic Planning at St John’s University, and an Organisational Consultant, Executive Coach, and is a Fulbright Scholar. He has over 30 years of experience in the education and corporate consulting sectors.

He has published in the areas of Human Resource Management, Career Planning and Development, and Strategic Planning, among others. His present research and writing are in the areas of ‘Workplaces Shifting from Onsight to Virtual Work’ (an accepted chapter in an Academy of Management soon to be released publication), ‘Fear/s Connected to COVID 19 and Returning to the Workplace’, and ‘Intrapreneurship and Working Virtually’. His most recent book, published in 2019, is titled Organizational Behavior in a Global Context. He has written and delivered over 50 professional papers at international conferences.

He has many personal interests, including serving on two non-profit boards. He presently serves as the Board Chair of the Sansone Foundation, in Brooklyn, New York and as a board member of Greenwich House in New York City. He is on the Alumni Board of Columbia University, and President of the Teachers College – Columbia University Alumni Association.

William Hampton-Sosa is an Associate Professor in the Department of Business Management, Murray Koppelman School of Business, Brooklyn College, City University of New York, where he has been a faculty member since 2011. He received his MBA from the Zicklin School of Business, Baruch College, in 2005 and his PhD in information systems from the City University of New York in 2011. His research interests include information technology adoption and innovation, access economy business models, online consumer behaviour, remote work and virtual teams, business analytics, and business education. His research has been published in Computers and Human Behavior, Information & Management, International Journal of Electronic Commerce, and Journal of Theoretical and Applied Electronic Commerce Research.

Andrew Fitzgerald Henck is a PhD candidate in Leadership Studies and Doctoral Teaching Fellow in the Joan B. Kroc School of Peace Studies at the University of San Diego. His dissertation research examines conceptualisations of organisational culture and sensemaking across the UK aid sector. As a Visiting Researcher in the School of Global Affairs at King’s College London, he is contributing to the Humanitarian Frontiers Initiative as the global aid system evolves and responds to new organisational challenges. His research interests have been inspired by professional assignments in Cambodia and Papua New Guinea as an HR and leadership development practitioner. He has presented research and delivered talks at the Centre for Humanitarian Leadership, the European School of Management & Technology, and The New York Times. As part of his work in organisational consulting and leadership coaching, he particularly enjoys working with social sector teams as a Certified LEGO® Serious Play® Facilitator.

Payal Kumar is Dean of Research and Management Studies, Indian School of Hospitality, India. She is a prolific author with several papers published in peer-reviewed journals and also 12 books with international publishers. She is the series editor of the five-volume Palgrave Studies in Leadership and Followership. She is an advisory member of several peer-reviewed journals and is Senior Reviewer, Journal of Organizational Behavior, Wiley. She is on the executive committees of various divisions of the Academy of Management. She is the inaugural recipient of the Andre Delbecq and Lee Robbins MSR (Academy of Management) Scholarship. In an earlier avatar, she worked for SAGE Publications Pvt Ltd as Vice President Editorial and Production.

Tomas Lopez-Pumarejo, Professor of Green Business, Global Business and Strategic Management at the Murray Koppelman School of Business, Brooklyn College, City University of New York, holds doctorates from the University of Minnesota and the University of Valencia, Spain, and Master’s degrees from Cornell University and the University of Puerto Rico. He is known internationally for his work on the television industry. His latest research focusses on mobility, and sustainable development and, most recently, on hemp textile in luxury brands.

Debra A. Major, Professor and Eminent Scholar at Old Dominion University (ODU), earned her PhD in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from Michigan State University. Her research broadly focusses on how people successfully enact their careers and overcome barriers to career success. Her current research focusses on work–family conflict and coping and the barriers encountered by women and ethnic minorities pursuing educational and career pathways in science, technology, education, and mathematics (STEM). Her work has received continuous funding from the National Science Foundation for over 15 years, and she has led numerous multidisciplinary and multi-institutional research teams. Editorial board service includes Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Organizational Behavior, Journal of Management, Journal of Business and Psychology, Career Development Quarterly, and Journal for Occupational Health Psychology. She was appointed ODU’s inaugural Provost’s Fellow for Faculty Diversity and Inclusion and has served as Associate Dean for the College of Sciences. She leads ODU’s strategic initiative in broadening participation in STEM-H. She is Fellow of the American Psychological Association, the Association for Psychological Science, and the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology.

Lene Martin teaches Blockchain Business Applications and Analytics at the Pepperdine Graziadio Business School and is the Founder and Director of the Blockchain at Pepperdine programme at Pepperdine University, providing blockchain and emerging technology conferences, curriculum, certificates, consulting, and collaboratories for academia meets industry research and development. She is also the Founder and CEO of a Malibu consulting company, an entrepreneur and investor of tech start-ups, an advisor and director of several boards, a published author and international speaker, and a leader in innovative solutions for blockchain technologies, cybersecurity communications, and organisational development at premier companies such as Lockheed Martin Corp., Amgen Inc., and The Crypto Company. She holds MA degrees in Mass Communications and Women’s Studies, an EdD in Organisational Leadership, a PhD candidacy in Global Leadership and Change at the Pepperdine Graduate School of Education and Psychology, and is the recipient of a Pepperdine University Waves of Innovation grant award. She, an advocate of women leaders and social innovation, recently authored a chapter in the book Women in Leadership: Work–Family Integration published by Cambridge Scholars and is a member of the Work–Life Integration Project where she also leads its Speaker Series. As a Norwegian-American, her research agenda focusses on Nordic leadership models of economic growth and social prosperity, specifically the convergence of emerging technology strategies and corporate social responsibility standards.

Doreen Matthes is a faculty member in the E. J. Ourso College of Business Rucks Department of Management at Louisiana State University, where she pursues her passion of teaching human resource management courses. She received her PhD in Business Administration at Kent State University. Her research interests stem from her previous work experiences as an HR professional in Germany and the United States and involve workers’ behaviours related to work–life balance programmes as well as non-standard work arrangements, including work arrangement choices, worker characteristics, career-related outcomes, and recruitment for such arrangements. She has presented her research at annual meetings of the Academy of Management and the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology. In her free time, she enjoys travelling and hiking, weightlifting, and food.

Ryan T. W. McCreedy is a Scholar-Practitioner of Leadership and Organisational Development in Alexandria, Virginia. As a graduate of George Mason University’s Volgenau School of Engineering, his career began with managing complex civil engineering projects throughout the mid-Atlantic. He went on to earn his Master’s degree from Harvard Extension School, studying Management with a focus on organisational behaviour. He is now a doctoral candidate at William James College, concentrating on the intersection of neuroscience and organisational psychology in the PsyD of Leadership Psychology programme. He actively conducts research on organisational behaviour while serving as a teaching assistant to multiple graduate courses at Harvard Extension School. His interests in business and leadership are further exemplified by previously founding a start-up, involvement with the Leadership Fairfax Emerging Leaders Institute, and lecturing to George Mason undergraduates and William & Mary MBA students. He is currently an Internal Organizational Development and Strategy Consultant at T3 Design Corporation while running his own consultancy, McCreedy Group. When he is not diving into scholastic and professional pursuits, he enjoys fine dining and travelling the world with his fiancé, Hannah.

Devalina Nag is a PhD candidate in Management with a focus in organisational behaviour and human resources at the University of Memphis – Fogelman College of Business and Economics. Prior to beginning her Doctoral programme, she earned an MBA from the University of Houston-Downtown in 2017. Her research focusses on the manifestation and implications of contemporary social disadvantage, specifically for women and racial minorities, as it emerges in organisational contexts. Her research aims to pose fair and equitable solutions to mitigate these challenges and truly leverage the benefits of diverse workplaces. Specifically, her research seeks to (1) illuminate manifestations of social disadvantage with a special focus on female employees of colour, (2) shed light on timely issues at work that are unique to women, and (3) offer practical guidance to organisations on improving their human resource management practices in order to achieve fair and effective diversity management. Her works are in various stages of review at leading academic journals for publication and have been showcased at numerous national- and international-level conferences. Her dissertation demonstrates how targets and bystanders of sexual harassment vigilantly look for cues, such as women in leadership roles and the number of women that they have on their team before reporting an incident.

Sumita Raghuram is the Alan and Lori endowed professor in Human Resource Management at San Jose State University, USA. She has studied remote work/work from home since 1995. She has published over 17 articles on this topic in journals such as Organization Science, Journal of Organizational Behavior, Journal of Management, Human Resource Management Journal, Human Relations, and Information Systems Research. In these articles, she examines through empirical data the role of remote work in determining organisational identification, work–non-work conflict, knowledge sharing, identity change, and adjustment to remote work. In a recent article in the Academy of Management Annals, she provides a research agenda merging the areas of virtual teams, information systems, and remote work.

Astrid Reichel is a Full Professor for Human Resource Management (HRM) and the Head of the HRM group at the University of Salzburg, Austria. Previously, she held an Associate Professor position at WU, Vienna University of Business and Economics. Her main research interests are contextual HRM with a focus on digitalisation and on regulative context, digital HRM, professionalisation of HRM, equality, diversity, and inclusion. Her research has been published in journals such as Human Resource Management Journal, Human Resource Management, Journal of Management Information Systems, and Decision Support Systems.

Shalaka Sharad Shah is an Assistant Professor for Psychology at FLAME University, Pune. She was engaged in business excellence research through her work as a Postdoctoral Fellow in Business Leadership Education and Competency Development and has earned a Doctorate in Work–Life Balance and Career Success from Ludwig Maximilians University, Munich, Germany. Her PhD focussed on the positive aspects of the work–life interface theoretically known as work–family enrichment. She has two Master’s degrees: Counselling Psychology and Psychology of Excellence in Business and Education. She acquired practical skills on HR training and change management during her Master’s degree in Germany. Her primary research areas are work–life balance and assessing human potential through competency mapping. She is involved in social work with esteemed Pune-based social organisations working on gender equality, women empowerment, elderly care, and ageing. Her secondary research area involves migration and related psychological aspects of migrants.

Elizabeth Spradley is an Associate Professor of Communication at Stephen F. Austin State University, where she also serves as the Programme’s Coordinator. Her scholarship typically employs qualitative and rhetorical methodology and focusses on topics like crisis communication, health narratives, instructional communication, maternity, and work/life and work from home. Publications include articles in the Journal of Community Informatics, Motherhood Initiative, Leadership Accountability and Ethics, and the International Research Journal of Health Education as well as numerous book chapters focussing narrative medicine, pandemic communication, and health-care humour. She resides in Nacogdoches, Texas, in the United States with her co-author and spouse and their four children.

R. Tyler Spradley is a Professor of Communication at Stephen F. Austin State University and a Faculty Associate at Arizona State University in the Hugh Downs School of Communication. Distinguished honours include induction into the Texas A&M Chapter of the Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi, two-time recipient of the Jim Towns Endowed Mentoring Professorship, and honorary faculty memberships in the Stephen F. Austin State University chapters of Lambda Pi Eta and Omicron Delta Kappa.

He currently serves as Coordinator of the Interdisciplinary Leadership Minor as well as the Leadership and the Risk and Crisis Communication Certificates. He researches organisational communication, specifically high-reliability organisations, risk and crisis communication, sociomateriality, and mentoring. His research can be found in publications such as The International Encyclopedia of Organizational Communication, Sage Research Methods Cases, Journal of Leadership, Accountability and Ethics, Journal of Human Services, and the International Research Journal of Public Health.

Margaret J. Weber is a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Global Engagement (IGE) and oversees the initiative on Religion, Gender and Identity Formation within the Center for Women, Faith and Leadership. Before joining IGE, she served as Dean and Professor, Graduate School of Education and Psychology, at Pepperdine University (and leadership positions at Oklahoma State University). She developed global programmes, including the Global Leadership Internship in the Social Entrepreneurship and Change master’s programme where students work and learn in developing countries and supported the development of Aliento, the Latino(a) Center for Mental Health therapy in Spanish-speaking countries. She led student groups on educational/immersion trips to several countries in the global south. She has recently co-edited three books on Women in Leadership: Work–Family Integration, published by Cambridge Scholars, and is a founding member of the Work–Life Integration Project. As the Founder of Influencing Voices, she continues her advocacy for women around the world.

Amanda S. Wickramasinghe is a speaker and educator in the fields of global competencies, global mindset, women’s leadership, organisational development, and instructional design. She is both the Director of Education for ERA Brokers, overseeing education initiatives, learning management system content development, and an Adjunct Professor at Brandman University and National University. In addition to these and earlier leadership roles, she serves on multiple international outreach committees, creating global strategic partnerships. She has travelled extensively internationally, interviewing global leaders for her contributions to literature about foreign policy and global leadership. She is a board member for the International Center for Global Leadership and an active member for the International Leadership Association, for which she has chaired research panels and moderated keynote speaker events. She serves as an advocate for international affairs and is a founding member of the International Women’s Innovative Network. She earned her EdD and PhD at Pepperdine University and has recently authored a chapter in the book, Women in Leadership: Work–Family Integration, published by Cambridge Scholars, and is a member of the Work–Life Integration Project. Additionally, she is a Leader for the Orange County Waves Chapter (for Pepperdine) and was recognised as an Inaugural 40 under 40 Honoree at Pepperdine University.

Foreword

I am writing this foreword seated at the not-so-comfortable improvised workstation that I have been periodically readjusting atop my dining table, in the living roomof my South Dublin suburban apartment. In spite of the typical scepticism Irish have about the arrival of this illusive season, summer has come to our shores and, therefore, windows are flung wide open allowing all the noises ofthe apartment complex to stream in: children playing and screaming, car engines raving, motorbikes passing, boxes offloading, neighbours talking, etc. and, of course, the olfactory sense kicks in as well, when cigarette smoke wafts from the apartment below to my living room.

This work from home (WFH) scenario, in its myriad variations, has been a common experience for so many of us for over a year now. To be sure, I am one of more fortunate ones: I have a reasonable internet connection, I live in a safe neighbourhood, which is fairly quiet, I live on my own, and my apartment is comfortable enough to work in.

As we are slowly – and, given the emergence of new viral variants- quiet uncertainly – trying to move from that ‘new normal’ into some kind of older/newer normal, it is useful to look back and take stock of what this pandemic-ridden, lockdown-rich year has taught us about work, space, and ourselves. The changes in our work practices during the pandemic have been numerous and with the relocation of workspaces from the offices, factory floors, classrooms, and other organisational settings, into our homes, The book Work from Home: Multi-level Perspectives on the New Normal, edited byProfessors Payal Kumar, Anirudh Agrawal, and Pawan Budhwar, could not have been more timely.

From my conversations with a broad group of friends and colleagues, I was fascinated to hear about the diversity of experiences and impacts that working from home had on them. While some thrived and resolved to ‘never go back to the old normal’, others encountered multiple difficulties and cannot wait to return to their workplace. The first part of this book, which is focussed on individual-level aspects of WFH, provides multiple scholarly explanations for this diversity ofreactions. The second part, which deals more with macro- and organisation-levelthemes, sheds further light on the issue of differential effects of WFH by examining topics which appeared often in media discussions, such as the different effects of WFH on women and men, and how diversity aspects act as moderators of WFH effects on well-being and performance.

The full range of themes that are included in this edited book covers multiple dimensions of WFH, and I appreciate the critical evaluation of both technologies and organisational practices that many of its chapter authors engage in. This book strikes a good balance between studies that put forward conceptual frameworks and empirical studies that test current theories and models. I was also satisfied to see the wide range of chapter authors’ nationalities, making this book truly international and, as such, relevant for people in both the global north and south.

As someone who has been teaching in higher education for over 25 years, with rich experiences in directing master’s programmes and leading in international academic organisations and also having published research on learning, management, and work aspects, I can attest to the rigour and relevance of this book. It would make a valuable addition to organisational scholars from management, sociology, psychology, social sciences, and education disciplines and would also be a useful resource for policymakers, business leaders, and practitioners.

Prof. Jacob Eisenberg

UCD 2021 Innovation Fellow

Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School

University College Dublin

Dublin, Ireland

Preface

The COVID-19 pandemic is a black swan event that has thrown our lives into deep uncertainty. Firms have been compelled to take drastic measures, including reducing workforce and production, while re-designing organisational processes and delivery. Like disruptive events in the past that changed human and organisational behaviour, this pandemic too has wrought a tremendous change in policies, norms, and behaviour. One such disruptive change that has become the ‘new normal’ is the work from home (WFH) phenomenon. This edited volume – Work from Home: Multi-level Perspectives on the New Normal – makes empirical and conceptual contributions on the impact of WFH on individuals, organisations, teams, service providers, and institutions.

Some studies suggest that firms that adopted WFH practices quickly saw their valuations go up, received higher brand visibility, and their employees perceived greater business resilience (Mulki, Bardhi, Lassk, & Navaty-Dahl, 2009). However, the other side of the coin is that some employees face work–life imbalance and strife, and that organisational productivity is not always up to the mark (Deloitte, 2020; Unison Public Service Union, 2019). WFH during the COVID-19 pandemic offers an opportunity for new academic inquiry, which we hope to take further in this edited volume.

Organisations which are fast movers in adopting technology tend to provide greater choices to their employees including the choice of WFH. Many studies have suggested that WFH has seen improvement in work–life balance through reduction in commuting time and increased flexibility in allocating time for work and family. Since people need not commute to work as often as before, WFH leads to decrease in traffic jams and vehicular pollution, and consequently increases sustainability (ILO & EUROFOUND, 2018). While, these benefits are certainly encouraging, it is important to look critically into what types of organisations are best suited for WFH, and how its practice impacts organisational productivity, employee–organisational relationship, and work identity.

This edited volume attempts to answers such questions and more. This book is divided into two broad sections. The first section contains five chapters, and the second contains seven chapters. The first section primarily focusses on conceptual- and individual-level frameworks. This section focusses on the individual perspective and how they could think, adapt, change and re-train, and manage their lives while trying to stay productive and relevant in the new post-pandemic work environment. The second section focusses on the strategic-, organisational-, and policy-level scenarios. It discusses how firms and countries should be strategic- and policy-driven in managing relevance, employment, innovation, and competitiveness.

The first section of this book studies how the transition to WFH affects individuals and how they managed to balance their home life with WFH. WFH may have adverse implications on employee motivation, leading to burnout (Giurge & Bohns, 2020). There are potential conflicts between work and home (family life) from the organisational boundary theory perspective, which could reduce productivity (Kreiner, Hollensbe, & Sheep, 2009). Van der Lippe and Lippényi’s (2020) exhaustive cross-country study on team performance in a WFH scenario shows negative team productivity when multiple co-workers WFH. At the individual level, there are many points of discussion which this volume and, in particular, the first section explores.

The first chapter by Carmine Gibaldi and Ryan T. W. McCreedy suggests that virtual work is positively correlated with productivity. Their detailed study investigated how sustained virtual work impacts perceived individual productivity, perceived organisational productivity, collaboration, job satisfaction, and connectedness over 15 weeks. They found that perceived productivity and connectedness were exceptionally high in the initial weeks, tapering downwards as a function of time physically removed from co-workers, while job satisfaction remained essentially unchanged and collaboration yielded no reportable trends. The second chapter by Ada T. Cenkci takes a contrary position to Chapter 1. It suggests that working from home globally has contributed to loneliness and isolation because of the lockdowns while providing practical recommendations to enable organisational leaders and human resource practitioners to decrease workplace loneliness.

Communication plays a vital role in organisational innovation, production, and value creation. Companies offer several channels for employees to communicate their ideas and issues. Digitalisation has brought forth additional channels for communication, which have assumed greater importance in the post-COVID world. The third chapter by Christina Fuchs and Astrid Reichel focusses on employee communication. Their chapter shows that while digital informal voice channels do influence employees’ willingness to communicate, they also observe a ‘missing spark’ in digital communication. Work–life is a significant challenge among young families. The chapter on women’s global view on work–life by Kerri Cissna, Lene Martin, Margaret J. Weber, and Amanda S. Wickramasinghe explores the stories of women on work–life integration issues. It offers a strategic framework for WFH that traces theoretical progressions while proposing a new perspective.

When higher education institutions had to be closed suddenly because of the pandemic, instructors quickly adapted to the online teaching environment. Fifth chapter by Holly Chiu, William Hampton-Sosa, and Tomas Lopez-Pumarejo tries to understand the effects of the quality of instructional technologies on compatibility and psychological availability, which further affect online teaching satisfaction and online teaching intention. Their work offers a clearer picture of the experiences of instructors since the imposition of the lockdown.

In their 2020 edited volume, Kumar, Agrawal, and Budhwar suggest that technologies are changing the way employees engage in productive activities and, consequently, leading organisations to re-imagine organisational practices and boundaries. The general understanding is that technological breakthroughs have substantially impacted spatial characteristics of productivity, including WFH (Agrawal, Schaefer, & Funke, 2018; Shamir & Saloman, 1985). However, technology is an enabler and not a solution. Although technology has dramatically helped the WFH transition, it cannot possibly consider the human dimension of this shift. Technology is not a panacea to all problems. We also need to consider the sociological, psychological, and economic costs on individuals and organisations asked to make transitions.

The second section explores technological, organisational, and institutional behaviour and their outcomes in the WFH transition. Shared leadership is achieved and maintained through the types of interaction between team members and the leader. Exploring communication problems among teams engaged in WFH, the sixth chapter by Dr Neha Chatwani explores how shared leadership among distributed teams working from home can increase trust, productivity, and effective coordination. Women face well-documented barriers to career success while working in male-dominated spaces. The seventh chapter by Seterra D. Burleson, Debra A. Major, and Kristen D. Eggler reviews key career obstacles for women in male-dominated fields. It analyses the impact of WFH on these obstacles while providing actionable strategies for organisations to implement WFH in a way that promotes rather than hampers the success of women in these fields. The eighth chapter by Devalina Nag shows that the varied personality types of employees may hinder employee performance, given that introverts and extroverts thrive in different work environments. It also discusses strategies to accommodate introverts’ and extroverts’ preferences while designing the physical workplace.

WFH as the new normal has challenged existing organisational cultures. The chapter by Sumita Raghuram reviews research that shows the relationship between remote work and organisational culture and its subsequent impact on critical outcomes of interest such as organisational identification, socialisation, knowledge sharing, employee turnover, and productivity. This chapter includes a model and propositions, adding to previous research on voluntary and mandatory remote work programmes. Organisations promote certain behaviours and norms as and when their culture is developed. However, this can be challenging in uncertain times such as these. The tenth chapter by Matthew D. Deeg, Andrew Fitzgerald Henck, and Doreen Matthes seeks to explain how the organisation, HR managers, and employees can both conflict and complement each other in an internal three-way tug of war during crises, provides recommendations for organisations, and further avenues for research.

The eleventh chapter by Elizabeth Spradley and R. Tyler Spradley extends WFH literature by recasting WFH performances that emphasise agents’ manipulation of the scene. Drawing on the dramatist paradigm, the study uses Burke’s pentadic criticism to code the social media application Pinterest’s ‘work from home’ and ‘home office’ pinboards for act, agent, agency, scene, and purpose. Start-ups faced volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity times during these pandemics. The flexible, start-ups that adapted to WFH environments had higher survivability potential than those that remained dependent on a brick-and-mortar business model.

In this context, the last chapter by Anirudh Agrawal, Payal Kumar, Shalaka Sharad Shah, and Pawan Budhwar explores how start-ups in India are managing the new normal. They draw on an institutional logics framework to contrast the difference between work from office and WFH. Their findings suggest that although WFH is strongly sustainable, it may increase stress in the long run and decrease innovation capabilities and trust. They suggest a hybrid approach to work, as the way for the future.

This volume tries to address a recent event and the related outcomes on employees, organisations, and institutions. It covers a whole gamut of interests, from practical effects on people and technology to a more conceptual approach, to looking back and placing this new normal of work from home in a broader context of employees, theories, nations, productivity, work–life balance, and organisational performance.

Admittedly, we did not envisage that the pandemic would still be raging when we started this book project over a year ago. While scholarship on WFH is in its infancy, we hope this edited volume will make a valuable contribution for other scholars to build upon. It is hoped that both researchers and practitioners alike will enjoy reading this volume and will gain new insights from early research by numerous authors from both the Global North and Global South. We thank the contributors, reviewers, and the publisher for making this edited volume possible.

References

• Agrawal, A., Schaefer, S., & Funke, T. (2018). Incorporating Industry 4.0 in corporate strategy. In R. Brunet-Thornton & F. Martinez (Eds.), Analyzing the impacts of Industry 4.0 in modern business environments (pp. 161–176). Hershey, PA: IGI Global. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-5225-3468-6.ch009

• Deloitte. (2020). Remote collaboration facing the challenges of COVID-19. Retrieved from https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/de/Documents/human-capital/Remote-Collaboration-COVID-19.pdf

• Giurge, L. M., & Bohns, V. K. (2020). 3 Tips to avoid WFH burnout. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2020/04/3-tips-to-avoid-wfh-burnout

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• Mulki, J., Bardhi, F., Lassk, F., & Navaty-Dahl, J. (2009). Set up remote workers to thrive. MIT Sloan Management Review, 51(1), 63–69.

• Shamir, B., & Saloman, I. (1985). This content downloaded from 195.78.108.199 on Fri. The Academy of Management Review, 10(3), 455–464.

• Unison Public Service Union. (2019). Working alone: A health and safety guide on lone working for safety representatives. Retrieved from https://www.unison.org.uk/content/uploads/2016/10/Working20alone.pdf

• van der Lippe, T., & Lippényi, Z. (2020). Co-workers working from home and individual and team performance. New Technology, Work and Employment, 35(1), 60–79.