Monitoring, Control and the Performance of Virtual Work

When personnel are removed from the immediate sphere of their colleagues and managers and engage in virtual work, one of the most significant concerns of management becomes that of monitoring and controlling performance. There is a sense amongst many managers that without observation and correction, the performance and commitment of distributed staff will deteriorate. In this research we observed the constraints and rules which keep virtual workers delivering high performance in Unit 2. We applied the dual lenses of direct and indirect control to our observations and found that the range of constraints is actually more pronounced and pervasive than is initially obvious. Taken together, these controls suggest that the grip over performance is not as tenuous as managers might fear and, conversely, there is a range of managerial instruments available to monitor and control performance.

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