Telework Benefits and Barriers to Adoption

Transcription

1 Technovation 22 (2002) and barriers of telework: perception differences of human resources managers according to company s operations strategy M.P. Pérez *, A.M. Sánchez, M.P. de Luis Carnicer Area de Organizació de Empresas, Centro Politécnico Superior, María de Luna, 3, Zaragoza 50015, Spain Abstract Telework as an integration of Information and Telecommunication Technologies with Human Resources management, means a new job organisation paradigm for companies working in the New Economy. However there are very few empirical studies that have analysed the perception differences of telework benefits and barriers in industrial and service companies. This paper contributes with empirical data to the relationship between the use of telework techniques and the implementation of this new work organisation with the company s operations strategy. The paper uses data from Spanish companies to test the relationship between innovation, employee training, and other production strategy performance parameters with the feasibility of telework adoption Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Telework; Operations and human resource strategy; Flexibility 1. Introduction Telework is an alternative way to organise work that integrates two sources of competitive advantage: the own company s Human Resources and the new Information and Telecommunication Technologies. Although there is no agreement in literature about telework definition and its different meanings telecommuting, remote working, homeworking some common features allow us to consider telework as the complete or partial use of Information and Telecommunication Technologies to enable workers to get access to their labour activities from different and remote locations. In some studies, telework is viewed as encompassing a variety of intraorganisational functions (e.g. telecommuting, mobile work, and virtual corporation) and interorganisational relations (e.g. electronic data interchange and interorganisational team-based working). Perceived this way, the management of telework shares activities with the management of technology (information systems), * Corresponding author. Tel.: ; fax: addresses: [email protected] (M.P. Pérez), [email protected] (A.M. Sánchez), [email protected] (M.P. de Luis Carnicer). the management of innovation (organisational change), and the management of knowledge (technology flows). Three main types of telework are usually found in operation: home-based telework, satellite offices, and mobile working. Home-based telework refers to employees who work at home on a regular basis, though not necessarily (and, in fact, rarely) every day. Homebased workers who are self-employed or who otherwise have no connection to a central workplace are not considered as teleworkers. A person can be said to be a teleworker if her telecommunications link to the office is as simple as a telephone; however, teleworkers often use other communications media such as electronic mail and personal computer links to office servers. Either the firm or the employee purchases the home-based equipment. In satellite offices, employees work both outside the home and away from the conventional workplace in a location convenient to the employees and/or customers to reduce commuting time. It is in some sense a branch office whose purpose is to alleviate employees commutation pronblems. The satellite office is equipped with office furniture and equipment provided by the firm; in addition, administrative help may be available there. In contrast to teleworkers who work from one designated location outside the main office, mobile workers are frequently on the road, using communications tech /02/$ - see front matter 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S (01)

2 776 M.P. Pérez et al. / Technovation 22 (2002) nology to work from home, from a car, from a plane, or from a hotel communicating with the office as necessary from each location. Marketing managers, salespersons or investment bankers are examples of mobile teleworkers. The development of telework started in the 1970s but the number of teleworkers has been keeping below expectations. There are very few organisational studies that have analysed the influence of organisational features on company s telework adoption feasibility. Besides, much of the literature is speculative and anecdotal, and in some empirical studies the sample sizes are too small to warrant generalisation. The purpose of this paper is to study the relationship of a few production strategy s variables with telework benefits, barriers and feasibility. The next section reviews the main telework benefits and barriers for companies. Then the empirical study is divided into five sections: methodology, telework benefits and barriers; the differences of benefits and barriers according to some production strategy s variables; factor analysis of telework benefits and barriers; and contingency analysis with those variables which had a relationship with telework feasibility. 2. and barriers to telework There are some studies in the literature which show the advantages and barriers to telework adoption and their organisational implications (Nilles, 1994; Kurland and Bailey, 1999; Shin et al., 2000). According to this literature, the main telework benefits for the company are the savings in building costs and the increase in their Human Resources productivity. Regarding the employee, telework gives them more labour time flexibility and less commuting time. The main telework disadvantages or barriers are the access to technology and the integration of telework with the company s strategy and organisational structure, as well as the teleworkers motivation and control (Table 1). This paper focuses the analysis on the organisational benefits and barriers of telework adoption for industrial and service companies. The success of existing telework programmes is due primarily to the benefits of flexibility offered to both the company and the teleworker. The more flexible the working arrangements, the more likely that a worker will become motivated to perform in an effective, resultsoriented manner (Nilles, 1994). Improvements in management effectiveness have also been widely noted. The notion of managing results rather than an employee s presence is increasingly seen as a key factor in the success of telework. Other positive telework results state that teleworker productivity is higher than that of the non-teleworkers. Productivity increases may be due to several factors such as selection procedures that favour highly motivated staff as teleworkers, or the establish- Table 1 Some telework benefits and barriers (source: own elaboration) For the company Office space savings Productivity increase Less absenteeism Labour relations flexibility Better customer service Management by objectives For the employee Flexibility Autonomy Personal freedom Self-employment Cost savings Less labour problems Opportunity to disabled people Barriers For the company Organisational structure changes Equipment costs Task selection mistakes Employee motivation For the employee Organisational difficulties Difficulties to teamworking Perception of status loss Difficulties to promote Psychological problems ment of pay and reward systems closely related to employee performance. Telework benefits companies in ways beyond productivity. It enables them to cut costs related to office space, as well as to address space constraints. Another reason to adopt telework is that it widens the knowledge portfolio available to the organisation. Recruitment and retention of qualified employees is then seen as a significant benefit of telework programmes to employers. Recruiting becomes more effective because the flexible nature of a telework programme can be marketed as a unique benefit. Qualified employees with special needs such as family responsibilities or a geographic restriction can still be offered full employment status, thus giving the employer a competitive recruiting advantage. Employees are more likely to remain with a company where such flexibility is offered as long as career paths are defined for the teleworker. Administrators of telework programmes cite decreased turnover as one of the most desirable long-term benefits of telework to the organisation. In response to the decrease in the overall supply of qualified technical workers and the cost of replacing workers, any programme that can avoid employee turnover is extremely valuable. Similarly, managers of telework programmes report a lower absentee rate among teleworkforces compared with workers as a whole. Teleworkers support these statements by admitting that they had worked productively while feeling ill and if they could not have worked from home, they would have called in sick on some occasions. Companies instituting telework programmes have felt the need to keep teleworkers visible by requiring them to come into the office at least one day per week. This is considered necessary in order to keep them from becoming completely isolated from their peers and the social aspects of the office environment. Attachment to the corporate culture and the peer network is seen as

3 M.P. Pérez et al. / Technovation 22 (2002) being essential to career advancement as well as ensuring that the teleworker is having his or her work-related social needs met. Telework may then negatively affect the social network in the workplace, and thereby pose other challenges for managers. For example, telework can negatively impact those who remain in the workplace by disrupting teamwork. Managers may find it difficult to create team synergy and to overcome the absence of informal, interactive learning. Sometimes, formal, scheduled meetings is not enough. When employees work off-site, they miss the learning that occurs informally, spontaneously-learning that cannot be scheduled. Other challenges or barriers relate to coordinating and organising work. One barrier has to do with how organisations distribute tasks between teleworkers and office workers. Although empirical studies rarely report effects of telework on employees task reorganisation, academic opinions were largely divided into two schools of thought (Chapman et al., 1995). The first of these recommended that teleworkers given enlarged jobs with high degrees of control, autonomy, and responsibility might show better performance and satisfaction. On the other hand, other studies suggested principles of task structuring and clustering of responsibilities in order to assign structured and repetitive tasks and to make teleworkers more productive. However, depending on the level of electronic linkage at an organisation (e.g. accessibility to an Intranet), such clustering of similar tasks may not necessarily constitute an essential condition for effective work coordination and control. Profound technological advancement is literally allowing virtual work to be more productive in many cases, even for communication-intensive tasks. Another challenge relates to the teleworker s availability. When teleworkers take advantage of flexibility in scheduling their work, they may be unavailable to work peers and customers who keep nine to five business hours. This may pose a challenge to, for example, virtual product development teams in multinational or export-oriented companies. In some organisations, telework programs progressively evolved into an established organisational structure. In other organisations, attempts to establish the flexible work system failed or were abruptly terminated, often due to lack of employee response. The acceptance of telework by an organisation or worker may be contingent on its compatibility with existing organisational norms. A telework program that fits into current organisational cultures, procedures, and value systems may have a higher chance of success. Major resistance to a telework program often comes from middle managers, primarily because they perceive that supervision and coordination will become more difficult and that their workloads will be increased by having to manage teleworkers appropriately. Naturally, overcoming the concerns of middle managers and gaining their support may be critical to success. Supervisors also may have to increase their management-by-objective (or management-by-results) skills to set clearly defined goals, assess progress, and give regular feedback. In order to analyse the influence of some organisational variables on the telework benefits, barriers and feasibility, a survey was made among industrial and service companies. The purpose of the survey was to test if there were any differences in the perception of Human Resources managers according to some Operations management variables. 3. Empirical study 3.1. Methodology and sample A mail survey was carried out in the second half of the year The mailing was addressed to the Human Resources Manager of each company with more than 25 employees located in the Spanish region of Aragon. Human Resources managers were chosen for the study because they are in charge of several telework implementation stages such as the teleworkers selection or reward system. A total number of 157 useful questionnaires were received (a response rate of 21%) and a few of these companies were then visited by the authors to get inside and more comprehensive information on the feasibility of telework adoption. The companies surveyed belong to the primary industry (5.7%), manufacturing industry (64.3%) and services (30%). The statistical distribution of the sample on company s sector and size does not show any significant difference with the objective population and barriers to telework This section describes the perceived benefits and barriers of telework adoption. Table 2 indicates the main benefits for the companies surveyed and their employees. According to the results, the Human Resources managers perceived that telework would benefit more to the employees than to the company. The most important Table 2 Telework benefits according to the surveyed companies (note: the importance of each benefit was measured on a Likert scale from 1 (no importance) to 4 (very important); N=157) for the company for the employee Productivity increase 2.86 Labour time flexibility 3.04 Fixed cost reduction 2.78 Less commuting to work 2.98 Work organisation 2.77 Autonomy 2.81 flexibility Easier work life 2.75

4 778 M.P. Pérez et al. / Technovation 22 (2002) benefit perceived for the companies was the productivity increase, followed by the fixed costs saving and labour organisation flexibility; the most important benefits for the employees were a more flexible labour time and less commutation time. On the other hand, Table 3 shows the barriers to telework adoption and implementation. The most important barrier to adoption would be the resistance to change job procedures because of its costs related to technological and Human Resources adaptation. Secondly, the surveyed companies did not seem to know all the possibilities which telework may offer, and neither they had nearby telework adoption experiences. They also valued over average the costs of new technologies acquisition and software adaptation. Finally, the most important barrier to telework implementation is the management of teleworkers. Neither information security or communication problems with teleworkers were perceived as important barriers to implement a telework program, maybe because these companies already used the appropriate Information and Telecommunication Technologies Telework benefits and barriers differences This section of the paper shows the mean differences of telework benefits and barriers, according to some Operations and Human Resource strategy variables: firm size, employees involvement in job and task design, degree of innovation, export intensity, employees training, company s age, HR manager s gender, telework feasibility, and telework diffusion. 1. Firm size. The innovation literature and the telework literature differ as to the relationship between size and innovation. Telework researchers (Gordon, 1990) Table 3 Company s barriers to telework (note: the barriers to telework adoption and implementation were measured on a Likert scale from 1 (no importance) to 4 (very important); N=157) Barriers to telework adoption Barriers to telework implementation Resistance to change job 3.12 Teleworkers management 3.05 procedures Little telework knowledge 3.07 Work and job control 2.97 Computer and 2.83 Customer direct contact 2.95 communication costs Telework introduction 2.75 Labour activity 2.94 costs management Managers resistance 2.61 Information security 2.93 Access to 2.50 Communication 2.70 telecommunication difficulties equipment Employees opposition 2.49 Teleworkers isolation 2.70 Unions reluctance 2.27 Loss of corporate identity 2.67 Health and security 2.06 Teleworkers selection 2.58 suggest that smaller organisations are able to accept change more easily and are less concerned about organisational obstacles; therefore small organisations are more likely to assimilate telework. Smaller companies have valued more the telework benefits and barriers than larger companies. The significant differences are found in the reduction of fixed costs and the productivity increase (Table 4). Regarding the barriers, the most significant difference appears to be the ignorance of telework possibilities. Small companies have less telework knowledge than larger companies. Smaller companies also think that labour management and supervision would be more difficult for them than for the large companies. At the same time, smaller companies also perceived more difficulties to externalise because it may jeopardise the company s core knowledge and activities; large companies may externalise more activities through telework and outsourcing because they have a more complex organisation and diversified staff and workforce. 2. Employee involvement in task design. Teleworking jobs might be expected to involve greater control (especially timing control), greater cognitive demands, increased responsibility and reduced interaction with others. The level of previous involvement in job design by employees may help to select teleworkers and adopt a telework program since they will be more used to organise their own tasks. Companies where employees were involved in task design, perceived more value to telework benefits and barriers than other companies. However, the only significant differences (Table 5) are found for the cost and access to communication equipment. A plausible explanation for this result is that companies with no employee involvement, may also perform less training in the use of new technologies which it may generate managers reluctance to expect that employees perform their jobs without direct supervision. 3. Degree of innovation. Greater innovation and knowledge reflects self confidence among organisational members. Cohen and Levinthal (1990) suggest that Table 4 barriers according to company size (**p 0.05, *p 0.1) 180 employees Cost fixed reduction 2.85* 2.50 Little telework knowledge 3.14** 2.71 Health and security 2.12** 1.79 Work and job control 3.04* 2.68 Labour activity management 3.01** 2.64 Teleworkers selection 2.65** employees

5 M.P. Pérez et al. / Technovation 22 (2002) Table 5 barriers according to employees involvement in work design and procedures (*p 0.1) Yes Access to telecommunication equipment * Computer and communication costs * Customer direct contact 3.08* 2.75 knowledge is self-reinforcing; i.e. that prior knowledge permits the acquisition and exploitation of new knowledge. This knowledge must exist at all levels for organisations to achieve maximum innovation ability. Without such innovation experience accumulation, the organisation will be less sensitive to innovation opportunities and the exploitation of new technologies. Managers in the more innovative companies have valued more the telework benefits and barriers. The degree of innovation was measured by the percentage of sales from products with less than three years in the market. Table 6 indicates the significant differences. The most significant barrier is the resistance to change job procedures; this result suggests that innovative companies are conscious of the actual difficulties aroused by such an organisational change as telework. Therefore, these companies perceived that they would have more difficulties to change the present work procedures than companies less used to produce innovations. 4. Export intensity. The only significant difference for this variable (Table 7) is the difficulty to manage teleworkers. High export intensity may be one of the reasons to introduce telework in order to manage on-line foreign No Table 7 barriers according to company s exports (*p 0.1) High ( 60%) Teleworkers management 3.40* 3.02 Low ( 60%) markets, or companies and customers with different time zones and business hours. 5. Employees training. Typically the training of teleworkers falls short of necessary requirements both in terms of professional development and preparations for the work arrangement itself (Heilmann, 1988). Failure to meet teleworkers training and development needs can have negative consequences for both the individual and the organisation. Teleworkers may become less flexible in terms of skills/abilities over centrally located staff. According to this literature, companies with training programs have perceived less telework barriers, being significant most of the differences (Table 8), mainly the employees opposition and teleworkers management. The fact that companies with training programs trust more their employees than other companies, agrees with other studies where training is found to overcome employees opposition to technological and organisational change (Martínez, 1993). The few studies on this topic emphasise that teleworkers can participate as much in training measures as organisation-bound employees do and that they have the same career opportunities. Concerning career progress, teleworkers are actually thought to have a greater chance as their motivation and performance were positively valued by the management (Konradt et al., 2000). 6. Company s age. Older companies usually have a Table 6 barriers according to company s innovation degree (***p 0.001, **p 0.05, *p 0.1) Table 8 barriers according to employees training (****p , ***p 0.001, **p 0.05, *p 0.1) High Low Yes No Cost fixed reduction 3.21*** 2.61 Productivity increase 3.14** 2.76 Less commuting to work 3.19* 2.89 Resistance to change job procedures 3.40*** 3.02 Little telework knowledge 3.38*** 2.95 Telework introduction costs 3.00** 2.66 Access to telecommunication equipment 2.79** 2.39 Employees opposition 2.69* 2.41 Unions reluctance 2.50** 2.17 Teleworkers management 3.36*** 2.93 Communication difficulties 2.98** 2.58 Telework introduction costs **** Employees opposition **** Little telework knowledge *** Resistance to change job procedures ** Access to telecommunication equipment *** Computer and communication costs *** Health and security ** Teleworkers management **** Teleworkers selection ** Communication difficulties *** Work and job control * Labour activity management *

6 780 M.P. Pérez et al. / Technovation 22 (2002) more rigid or static organisational structure. But it is repeatedly emphasised that the implementation of telework requires extensive measures of reorganisation within the organisation. There is a consensus that a delegative, goal-oriented concept of management is the most adequate for the successful implementation of telework (Van Sell and Jacobs, 1994). The variable age has taken into account the year 1980 to divide the sample in two groups because that is when telework programmes began to be regularly adopted. The analysis shows that younger companies (i.e. companies started after 1980) perceived greater benefits of telework for companies and employees alike, but they also perceived greater barriers than older companies. These results indicate that younger companies may be more receptive to the organisational change than older companies because they are less rigid and therefore they are more conscious of the possibilities opened by the telework as an organisational innovation. Table 9 indicates the significative differences: younger companies perceived more benefits from cost fixed reduction, productivity increase and work organisation flexibility; younger companies also perceived that telework may arise greater barriers than older companies, maybe because younger companies are also smaller and have then fewer resources which may put limits to their innovation efforts. 7. HR manager s gender. Female HR managers perceived greater telework benefits and barriers than male HR managers with most differences being significant (Table 10). This result suggest than women may be more sensitive to the implementation of telework. Some studies (Konrad and Mangel, 2000) indicate that companies with larger percentages of female employees develop more work-life programs that impact besides on the firm productivity. However, teleworkers may have difficulty Table 9 barriers according to company s age (****p , ***p 0.001, **p 0.05, *p 0.1) Cost fixed reduction **** Work organisation flexibility * Productivity increase **** Little telework knowledge ** Access to telecommunication equipment ** Telework introduction costs ** Computer and communication costs ** Health and security * Teleworkers management ** Work and job control ** Labour activity management * Communication difficulties *** Table 10 barriers according to the company s Human Resource Manager gender (****p , ***p 0.001, **p 0.05) Male Female Cost fixed reduction *** Productivity increase *** Work organisation flexibility ** Less commuting to work ** Labour time flexibility *** Autonomy ** Easier work life ** Little telework knowledge **** Access to telecommunication equipment **** Resistance to change job procedures *** Telework introduction costs **** Computer and communication costs **** Managers resistance ** Health and security *** Labour activity management *** Communication difficulties *** Work and job control ** establishing a home environment that is conducive to work. Children, especially, may have a tough time learning not to interrupt their working parent. Indeed, telework may hinder employees productivity if they are expected to simultaneously raise children who may need constant attention, trapping women in the dual roles of caretaker and employee while working at home. 8. Telework feasibility. The means difference analysis has also included two variables related to the implementation of telework in the surveyed companies: the feasibility of such a program and the potential diffusion rate within the company. First, the telework feasibility (Table 11) shows that companies which considered telework as feasible have valued more the telework benefits, and perceived at the same time less barriers to their adoption Table 11 barriers according to company s telework feasibility (****p , ***p 0.001, **p 0.05, *p 0.1) Yes Work organisation flexibility 3.26**** 2.63 Productivity increase 3.37**** 2.71 Less commuting to work 3.26** 2.89 Labour time flexibility 3.34** 2.93 Autonomy 3.16*** 2.70 Work and job control ** Teleworkers isolation 2.92* 2.62 No

7 M.P. Pérez et al. / Technovation 22 (2002) and implementation. And so, work and job control was a less important barrier to companies with feasible telework programs. This result was not found with other explanatory variables. Similarly, this is the only variable that makes employee isolation to become significant. Therefore, companies with feasible telework programs are more sensitive to the difficulties of employees integration within the company s traditional structure. Those difficulties are precisely in the adequate integration of the company s human resources with the company s knowledge management. 9. Telework diffusion. The variable of telework diffusion was measured by the percentage of the company s jobs that could be performed by teleworkers. Companies with higher diffusion rates perceived more benefits from telework (Table 12), similarly to companies with feasible telework programs Technology and human resources telework factor analysis A factor analysis of main components has been carried out to extract the factor groups of telework benefits and barriers. The purpose of this analysis was to compare the importance of factors related to technology with factors related to Human Resources. Our hypothesis was that those factors related to the company s production and technology strategy should have more importance as telework barriers than those factors related to the organisation and management of teleworkers. Tables 13 and 14 show, respectively, the results of the factor analysis made to telework benefits and barriers. The factor analysis of the benefits clearly reveals the differences between the company benefits and the employee benefits: advantages related to employees are a much more important factor than the telework advantages for the companies themselves. The factor named Employee explains 60.6% of variance while the factor named Company explained only 18.7% of variance in the analysis of telework benefits. However, from the telework barriers point of view (Table 14) the factor of employee difficulties (Employees) is located in fourth position and it only explained 6.7% of variance. The most important barrier factor is the initial investment, which it explains 32% of variance, and includes the cost and access to telework equipment. This result supports the hypothesis that companies valued telework as an innovation more beneficial to employees than to the company itself. As long as those introduction factors which are cost barriers do not improve significantly, the probability of telework adoption might keep below expectations Telework feasibility analysis This last section of the paper deals with the telework feasibility in the surveyed companies. Around 24.5% of companies were favourable to the implementation of telework. Table 15 shows the results of a contingency analysis with some company variables. These results indicate that telework feasibility is primarily related to the availability of tasks that may be carried out by telework. Similarly, companies that used more the Information and Communication Technologies thought of telework as feasible in greater proportion than companies with lesser use of these technologies. Therefore, having tasks to be teleworked together with knowledge and experience in the use of Information and Communication Technologies were the two most explanatory variables of telework feasibility in the contingency analysis. Other significant variables were to keep the type of contract to the future teleworkers, the employees involvement in task design, the company s size and the percentage of sales employees. Telework feasibility was primarily found in large companies, companies with a large percentage of employees in sales jobs (potential remote teleworkers), companies where employees were already involved in task design, and in companies that would offer to keep the type of contract to employees who decide to become teleworkers. Other variables included in the analysis were not significant such as the employees training, the company s age, the employees age, and the variable compensation. Table 12 barriers according to company telework diffusion potential (***p 0.001, **p 0.05, *p 0.1) 6% 6% Work organisation flexibility 3.02** 2.68 Productivity increase 3.27*** 2.69 Autonomy 3.02* 2.71 Managers resistance 2.80* 2.52 Employees opposition 2.73** Conclusion The empirical results of this paper showed that telework adoption in the surveyed companies was related to some variables that may have an influence on the company s production strategy. For example, those companies with employee training programmes perceived lower barriers to telework adoption. The variance of telework barriers was better explained by technological factors than by Human Resources factors. Additionally, telework feasibility was found primarily in companies that had more percentage of tasks that could be tele-

8 782 M.P. Pérez et al. / Technovation 22 (2002) Table 13 Factor analysis of telework benefits (note: factor analysis methodology main components and varimax rotation) Factor Eigenvalue Components Communality % variance Employee Easier work life Autonomy Labour time flexibility Less commuting to work a= Company Productivity increase Fixed cost reduction Work organisation flexibility a= Table 14 Factor analysis of telework barriers (note: factor analysis methodology main components and varimax rotation) Factor Eigenvalue Components Communality % variance Investment Telework introduction costs Computer and communication costs Access to telecommunication equipment a= Management Work and job control Labour activity management Teleworkers management a= Culture Teleworkers isolation Loss of corporate identity Customer direct contact Information security a= Employees Employees opposition Unions reluctance Teleworkers selection a= Trust Health and security Communication difficulties a= Change Resistance to change job procedures Little telework knowledge Managers resistance a= Table 15 Contingency analysis of telework feasibility Variable p-value Number of tasks than can be accomplished by telework Use of Information and Communication Technologies Keeping the type of contract Employees involvement in task design Company s size Percentage of sales employees Company s age Employees age worked and in companies that used more Information and Communication Technologies. References Chapman, A., Sheehy, N., Heywood, S., The organizational implications of teleworking. International Review of Industrial and Organizational Psychology 10, Cohen, W., Levinthal, D., Absorptive capacity: a new perspective on learning and innovation. Administrative Science Quarterly 35, Gordon, G., Telecommuting: dialing up the remote office. Rural Telecommunications 9 (4),

9 Heilmann, W., The organizational development of teleprogramming. In: Korte, W. et al. (Eds.) Telework: Present Situation and Future Development of a New Form of Work Organization. North- Holland, Amsterdam. Konrad, A., Mangel, R., The impact of work-life programs on firm productivity. Strategic Management Journal 21, Konradt, U., Schmook, R., Mälecke, M., Impacts of telework on individuals, organizations and families a critical review. International Review of Industrial and Organizational Psychology 15, Kurland, N., Bailey, D., The advantages and challenges of working here, there, anywhere, and anytime. Organizational Dynamics 28 (2), Martínez, A., The role of small firms in the development of the robotics market in Spain. Prometheus 11 (2), Nilles, J., Making Telecommuting Happen. A Guide for Telemanagers and Telecommuters. Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York. Shin, B. et al., Telework: existing research and future directions. Journal of Organisational Computing and Electronic Commerce 10 (2), Van Sell, M., Jacobs, M., Telecommuting and quality of life: a review of the literature and a model for research. Telematics and Informatics 11 (1), M.P. Pérez et al. / Technovation 22 (2002) Angel Martínez Sánchez is an Associate Professor of Production and Business Management at the University of Zaragoza (Spain). He holds a PhD in Engineering and a MBA. Dr Sanchez has been a Research Fellow at universities in Europe, North America, Australia and Japan. He has conducted research and consulted on R&D management and technology policy. Dr Martínez has published two books and more than 100 research papers on these topics in national and international journals. M Pilar de Luis Carnicer is an Associate Professor of Business and Human Resources Management at the University of Zaragoza (Spain). She holds a PhD in Economics and Business Administration. Her research projects and publications deal with gender and human resources management. She has published several articles on these topics in national and international journals, and presented papers and given lectures in international conferences and foreign universities. Manuela Pérez Pérez is a Senior Lecturer of Production and Business Administration at the University of Zaragoza (Spain). She holds a PhD in Economics and Business Administration. Her research projects and publications deal with telework, human resources management, and production management. She has published several articles on these topics in national and international journals.