Voluntary versus involuntary telecommuting and employee innovative behaviour: a daily diary study

Abstract

During the COVID-19 crisis, telecommuting has gradually attracted the public’s attention. Past studies on the subject have produced inconsistent findings, suggesting that telecommuting can lead to simultaneous benefits and drawbacks. To discuss the deeper reasons for this finding, we divided telecommuting into two types—voluntary and involuntary telecommuting. Based on the job demands-resources model, we explored the impact of voluntary-involuntary telecommuting on employee innovative behaviour through co-worker emotional support, and we examined the cross-level moderating effect of organisational identification. Using the daily diary method, we collected 455 valid observations from 65 employees for eight consecutive days. The results show that compared with involuntary telecommuting, voluntary telecommuting leads to more co-worker emotional support, in a mediating role, and employee innovative behaviour. Furthermore, a high level of organisational identification enlarges the difference in co-worker emotional support for employees voluntarily or involuntarily telecommuting. Our results uncover those differences and fill the research gap on telecommuter motivation.

Keywords:

• Voluntary telecommuting
• involuntary telecommuting
• employee innovative behaviour
• co-worker emotional support
• organisational identification

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, upon reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant number 72072110; 72072128; 72102033]; the Shanghai Philosophy and Social Science Planning Project [grant number 2019BGL001]