The Impact of Alternative Telework Arrangements on Organizational Commitment: Insights from a Longitudinal Field Experiment

ABSTRACT: While the structure of telecommuting, or telework, varies across companies, most arrangements offer employees the option to perform their work responsibilities from various locations. A number of factors provide a compelling case for employers to consider such arrangements for their employees, such as motivating better performance and fostering commitment to the organization. Using data that were collected during the longitudinal experiment reported in Hunton (2005), the present study seeks to better understand how organizations might achieve these goals by examining the impact of alternative telework arrangements on the organizational commitment of employees and by evaluating the relationships among telework arrangements, organizational commitment, and task performance. Participants in three of the telework conditions exhibited significant increases in affective, continuance, and normative commitment, relative to a control group; however, in one of the telework conditions (working exclusively a...

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