A review of workplace stress in the virtual office

ABSTRACT

Virtual offices give employees the ability to work anytime, anywhere, using information and communication technologies, thereby blurring the temporal and geographical boundaries of work. Workplace stress is thus allowed to spill over from traditional offices to virtual offices, and vice versa. This review article presents key research from work psychology and information systems on workplace stress experienced in virtual offices (interruptions, workload and the work-home interface). It further discusses the main threats faced by organizations and office managers: reduced social interactions, poor communication, and deviant behaviors. Suggestions are also offered to practitioners seeking to design virtual offices in which employees can feel and work well, and to academics seeking to research this phenomenon in a transdisciplinary way.

KEYWORDS:

• Virtual place-making
• occupant comfort
• human–computer interaction
• human behavior
• flexibility

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributor

Jean-François Stich is an Assistant Professor at ICN Business School (France) and a research fellow at CEREFIGE, research lab in Management at Université de Lorraine (France). He holds a PhD in Management from Lancaster University, a Master’s degree in Business Management from EDHEC Business School and an MSc in Organizational Behavior from Aston Business School. His research interests gravitate around the psychological impacts of technology on employees, covering areas such as technostress, telecommuting or cyberdeviancy. He has published in Information Systems Journal, Journal of the Association for Information Systems, Information Technology & People, and New Technology, Work and Employment.