12 HRM and Distributed Work

Abstract

The phenomenon of managing work that is distributed over geographical distance is not new but is increasing in both frequency and intentionality as a function of globalization and knowledge-centric strategies. I review the literature on geographically distributed work, both that which highlights liabilities of loss of proximity and more recent research that emphasizes “virtual teams” as an intentional organizing device. I explore the adaptations, remedies, and countervailing strategies deployed to support such teams, contrasting those that minimize distance with those that increase individual and group capacity for coping with distance. I also emphasize that other dimensions of distance—cultural, administrative, and economic—affect the organization of work, the experiences of those doing the work, and individual and organizational outcomes. Here I highlight the “blended workforce” in which standard (traditional employees) and nonstandard (temporary and contract) workers are organized to accomplish interdependent tasks—and again contrast problems of distance with emergent adaptations. Finally, I explore the implications for human resource management (HRM), first considering which HR systems are best suited to work distributed over different types of distance, and then reviewing literature on specific HR practices—selection, training, task/job design, compensation, and performance appraisal. I close by arguing that HRM research must reach beyond its past focus on managing employees within a single firm over a prolonged career under collocated conditions. As the world generates countless new distance-related phenomena, our research must tackle the challenges of managing both standard and non-standard workers engaged in interdependent tasks of limited duration across multiple employers/clients and involving multiple dimensions of distance.

Notes

1. Some studies attempt global assessments of these impacts (e.g., the McKinsey Global Institute study; Farrell et al., 2006), while others take a domestic focus (e.g., forthcoming National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Engineering studies of the impact of offshoring on both the United States economy's innovation capability and labor market and career prospects for U.S. engineers).

2. Transnational is Bartlett and Ghoshal's (1998) terminology for an approach to structuring a global company—moving beyond “multidomestic” and “multinational” approaches—that combines legal consolidation and geographical dispersion.

3. For a more extended treatment of the research issues surrounding nonstandard work, see Ashford, George, and Blatt, chapter 2, in this volume.

4. Kiesler and Cummings (2002) opened their review with an intriguing historical observation. In the early days of group dynamics research pioneered by Kurt Lewin and his colleagues, social psychologists were deeply immersed in under standing the microdynamics of interaction in small, collocated, face-to-face groups. “A social psychologist in the 1960s, when speaking of proximity, might be talking about the seating arrangements at a table of diners, among a jury, or a committee” (p. 58). From this starting point, it was natural to devote a great deal of research attention to the role of proximity in small groups.

5. That such a threshold effect exists means that the effects of geographical distance do not increase monotonically, as we might assume. In terms of spontaneous communication and unplanned interaction, the other side of the city (or campus) can be as far away as halfway around the world—although the potential for planned/intentional face-to-face interaction is obviously more directly related to physical distance.

6. This literature predicted that videoconferencing would provide a richer medium for dealing with geographical distance by providing both visual and verbal cues, albeit accompanied by nuance-defeating side effects such as delay, fuzzy resolution, limited visual scope, and so forth. Subsequent research, however, has found videoconferencing to have disappointing and, at times, negative effects, even as the technology has improved. Indeed, this research shows that teleconferencing phone calls—once all participants recognize each other's voices—can be more effective at communicating nuances of meaning and emotion than videoconferencing. Whether Internet 2-powered videoconferencing (the new buzzword is “telepresence”) can achieve more nuanced communication among distributed work groups remains to be seen.

7. I will focus primarily on what is possible in this “best-case scenario” for virtual teams, in terms of problems and related adaptations/remedies for those problems. At the same time, it should be acknowledged that many individuals may experience virtual teams as short-term and unstable, may not be aware of who is and is not a member (Mortensen & Hinds, 2002), and could even be members of multiple virtual teams (as well as collocated teams) at the same time, each making competing demands. The problems of virtual teams reported here are certainly going to be much exacerbated under such volatile conditions—but collocated teams might also suffer under these conditions.

8. Virtual teams are still a relatively new phenomenon and some of these problems could be regarded as those of an immature organizational form. Armstrong and Cole (1995) provided an early in-depth study of virtual teams that revealed a staggering number of problems. In an addendum to a reprint of this study, Armstrong and Cole (2002) stated that “most distributed groups do not attain the ideal of being a real team: a work group with a stable and denned member ship that has established a shared working process in the pursuit of a common goal that they can only achieve together (Hackman et al., 2000)” (p. 189). At the same time, “we have been impressed with the qualities of those distributed groups that have become real teams., modest in size and stable over time so the members get to know each other and establish a track record” (p. 189). Similarly, many of the “lack of social context” findings from the early research on e-mail (e.g., Constant, Sproull, & Kiesler, 1986)—for example, the high incidence of uninhibited “flaming”—seem to be moderated in today's e-mail usage, given the developments of norms for e-mail that are either reinforced by ongoing personal relationships or enforced by institutionally established means (from Web site monitors to automated filters).

9. Given that organizations often determine or influence the location where an employee works, Reskin's (2003) argument may also help explain why individual self-identification tied to site/location is so powerful and often competes successfully with virtual team membership to influence an individual's sense of shared identity.

10. Parallel teams carry out part-time activities involving specific problem-solving activities, such as quality circles or suggestion teams, whereas management teams are collectively responsible for supervising particular activities or people; both rarely appear as virtual teams.