Are Telecommuters Remotely Good Citizens? Unpacking Telecommuting's Effects on Performance Via I‐Deals and Job Resources

Despite their widespread adoption, concerns remain that virtual work arrangements can harm employee job performance and citizenship behavior. Does telecommuting really hamper these critical dimensions of employee effectiveness? To answer this question, we develop a theoretical framework linking telecommuting to task and contextual performance via a dual set of mechanisms—reflecting proposed effects of i‐deals and job resources. Further, we propose that the meaning of and outcomes from these paths depend on the social context surrounding telecommuting. We test the framework with field data from 323 employees and 143 matched supervisors across a variety of organizations. As predicted, we find that telecommuting is positively associated with task and contextual performance, directly and indirectly via perceived autonomy. These beneficial effects are contingent upon two aspects of the social context: leader‐member exchange and signals of its normative appropriateness among coworkers and one's supervisor.     

Boundaryless LMX: Examining LMX's Impact on External Career Outcomes and Alumni Goodwill

Research has convincingly shown that leader–member exchange (LMX) is associated with a range of beneficial outcomes for employees within organizations. As employees increasingly pursue boundaryless careers that straddle multiple organizations, it is important to ask: Do advantages from LMX extend beyond the current organization and persist even after employees have left it? We propose that employees in higher quality LMX relationships with their managers benefit from stronger professional development, which can pay off in the form of better career outcomes on the external job market. Further, after leaving, whether or not ex‐employees (i.e., alumni) harbor goodwill toward their former organizations is likely to depend on their LMX quality prior to leaving. Alumni goodwill matters because organizations can potentially reap important strategic benefits from their alumni. Using time separated data including alumni interviews conducted by third‐party consultants, we find that, among employees who quit, pre‐turnover LMX is positively related to higher salaries and greater responsibility in their next jobs and is also positively related to alumni goodwill. Moreover, the strength of the LMX–alumni goodwill relationship depends on whether managers made robust retention efforts after employees communicated their decisions to quit.     

The good, the bad, and the unknown about telecommuting: meta-analysis of psychological mediators and individual consequences

What are the positive and negative consequences of telecommuting? How do these consequences come about? When are these consequences more or less potent? The authors answer these questions through construction of a theoretical framework and meta-analysis of 46 studies in natural settings involving 12,883 employees. Telecommuting had small but mainly beneficial effects on proximal outcomes, such as perceived autonomy and (lower) work-family conflict. Importantly, telecommuting had no generally detrimental effects on the quality of workplace relationships. Telecommuting also had beneficial effects on more distal outcomes, such as job satisfaction, performance, turnover intent, and role stress. These beneficial consequences appeared to be at least partially mediated by perceived autonomy. Also, high-intensity telecommuting (more than 2.5 days a week) accentuated telecommuting's beneficial effects on work-family conflict but harmed relationships with coworkers. Results provide building blocks for a more complete theoretical and practical treatment of telecommuting.