Final Report: ITS Implementation Center
May 2006
Telework
Dr.
Roger Stough
Dr.
Kenneth Button
Executive Summary
Telework holds promise as a potential
mechanism to reduce traffic congestion and air pollution, but there are ample
disbenefits and barriers to implementing telework. Individual employees must
possess the motivation to voluntarily telecommute, and there are numerous
social, psychological, and often, economic factors that must be brought to bear
before opting to telework. In addition, the interests of businesses and
individuals do not always coincide on matters such as telework sites. Employees
largely prefer home-based options, whereas businesses may prefer employees to
telecommute from a work center under formal telework programs.
Furthermore, some commuters simply will
not accept telework; others like commute time to “unwind’ or redirect their
focus between other activities; and others simply enjoy driving. Although work
trips may be shortened, or eliminated, by telecommuting, travel and trip making
continues. Trip generation and distance is partially determined by gender,
household responsibility, presence of children and income. These are factors
that are largely unalterable.
Finally, suburbanization of employment and residences contributes to the shape of the modern urban form. Telework options may promote continued dispersion and complex travel patterns as persons move further into remote areas, which may or may not be desirable from a planning perspective.
Videoconferencing. The
early optimistic forecasts that videoconferencing would provide, in a very
short space of time, a popular and widely used telecommunications instrument
for business that would reduce the need for travel to face-to-face meetings
were not well founded. In particular, such predictions ignored, on the
supply-side, the inherent limitations of the infant technology available, the
socioeconomic difficulties of converting to the new media and the high costs of
use while, on the demand-side, the capacity of conventional transport modes
still provided reasonably reliable and efficient means of facilitating
face-to-face contacts.
These forecasts also ignored the possibility of
other new technologies that would find a market niche much more rapidly, such
as the facsimile, and have tended to divert resources away from
videoconferencing. One must also add that the external benefits often derived
from business travel (visiting new places, making new acquaintances and being
out-of-the-office) may well have been underestimated in these predictions. As a result, the diffusion of
teleconferencing has been slower than expected.
New
land patterns. Telework may well contribute to long-term
changes in land use patterns, but history shows that such changes are slow to
occur and difficult to forecast.
TELECOMMUNICATIONS AND TRAVEL BEHAVIOR
INTRODUCTION
Many
in transportation management are looking to telework as a means of providing an
interim, less costly and fairly expeditious way of reducing traffic congestion
and traffic related pollution; the ‘intelligent transportation approach’.[1]
Generally, it is believed that telework has the potential to eliminate or
otherwise shorten work commutes during peak travel times since with telework,
employees work from home or travel to nearby work centers. Such options provide
individuals with increased control over work and family requirements, and
provide employers benefits such as lower costs, increased employee morale, and
higher productivity.
There
has also been interest from the policy perspective in the role that teleworking
and the like may play in reducing the environmental costs of transportation,
and in particular the pollution associated with the automobile. Cars both
create a large amount of environmental damage and produce a diverse range of
harmful effects that, it is often argued, require a range of policy options to
combat.[2]
Whilst not a direct means of internalizing these social costs of transportation
by affecting the amount and nature of personal and goods movement it is felt
that telecommunications policy may have desirable effects on the problems of
traffic and the environment.
Telecommunication
advances have created ranges of ‘teleprocesses’ that afford the development of
varied work methods and arrangements for individuals and firms alike (Nilles,
1994). Teleprocesses encompass teleservices (online banking and shopping), but
also include telework. Telework is a term that is used quite loosely and has a
variety of definitions – the scope of which is either very broad or very
narrow. In the literature the term ‘telecommuting’ is used more frequently.
Internationally, however, ‘telework’ is the more common term. In Europe,
telework is a slightly broader concept than telecommuting and refers to work
performed from distant locations and does not necessarily substitute for the
journey to work.
Nonetheless, telework is generally understood to
involve ‘using telecommunications to conduct business at a distance and
includes videoconferencing, online database searches, facsimile transmission,
cellular [and standard] phone calls, voicemail, and electronic mail’ (Handy and
Mokhtarian. 1995). Technically, telecommuting is a subset of telework; it
eliminates or reduces the length of commute trips because work is completed at
home or in telecenters; and has direct transportation implications (Mokhtarian,
1991). Here, the terms telework and telecommunications will be used
interchangeably. The definition of telework undergirding this book refers to:
company/government
employees in any occupational group working full- or part-time for whom the
commute to work is eliminated, shifted out of peak commute times, or shortened
through the performance of the work role at home or at an alternative work
center, and who communicates with the usual place of work using electronic,
tele/videoconferencing or other means instead of traveling there.[3]
Complements or
Substitutes?
One of the primary
reasons behind the push for the increased investigation of telework options is
the belief that telecommunication advances will function as a substitute for
travel, or affect travel behavior in such a way that peak period congestion is
reduced. There is, however, no accepted consensus on the exact nature of the
links between telecommunications, and especially teleworking, and
transportation use. Two basic hypotheses have been proposed to describe the
dominant potential relationship. These are related to notions that information
systems may be a substitution or a complement to travel.
Concepts of complementarity and substitutability
Mokhtarian (1997) points out that, ‘Historically, transportation and
communications have been complements to each other, both increasing
concurrently, rather than substitutes for each other. And we have no reason to
expect that relationship to change’. But this is not a view all share, and
empirical testing is difficult.[4]
Complementarity
is, for ease of analysis, commonly discussed in specific terms of enhancement
and efficiency, although in practice complementarity is essentially a hybrid of
the two.
In
the case of enhancement, communication stimulates the need or incentive for
travel by precipitating the transfer of additional information, specifically
information about available opportunities. A brief e-mail, for example, may
spark one to identify relevant information (that may or may not involve
transportation) on a completely different project. This type of
cross-fertilization, synergy, or enhancement is more likely to occur now,
purely as a result of the permeability, magnitude, and timeliness of
information flows made possible by technology.
An
example commonly used to illustrate enhanced efficiency is in freight
transportation, where communications technology makes the supply chain more
‘transparent’ and, therefore, assists efficiency of scheduling and customer
service. In personal transportation, an individual may choose to telework in
the morning, avoid the morning peak period of traffic congestion, and drive to
work later in the day attending business meetings en route. It is argued that
the person’s efficiency is improved.
Until recently, substitution has been
the more popular of the hypotheses, and one that has been taken on board my
many politicians and a painless way of tackling traffic congestion. Salomon
(2000) succinctly outlines the theory of substitution with regard to
transportation and telework; an increase in the supply and use of
telecommunications will result in a diminishing demand for transport services. He asserts,
however, that there is little evidence to support substitution. He states,
‘Consumers are likely to make their choices on the use of either travel or
telecommunications on the basis of which mode better serves their ends.’
Thus, instead of substitution, a more plausible
telecommunication-travel relationship is that of travel modification. According
to the theory of modification, the availability of telecommunications will
modify the demand for travel but not in one unique direction. The realities of
the impacts of past communication advances (i.e. the telephone[5]
and facsimile), and present research, supports modification of travel patterns
with respect to telework.
A complicating factor of the substitution
hypothesis is an assumption that the total volume of interactions, whether by
travel or communication (e.g., interactions between people or between workplace
and employee) is constant.[6] This assumption may not be the case
(Albertson, 1977). The Institute pour Frantide shows a gradual increase in
passenger transport miles and the number of remote communications in France
between the early eighteenth century and late twentieth century. Also in
practice, the policies adopted regarding the way the transportation system used
and the way teleworking is treated by companies and government, for example
regarding tax incentives, will be influential on the level of teleworking
adopted.
Supporting this hypothesis, over time the aggregate amount of all forms of communication has increased. Incomes have risen, car ownership has risen, and socioeconomic life of western economies has evolved to encourage greater levels of interpersonal contact. High growth in the service sector and information industries, for example, has resulted in a greater inherent emphasis on face-to-face communication and the development of interpersonal relationships during work hours.
Drawing
on the ideas of Sviden (1983) a more complete picture seems to be, therefore,
that the interactions between telecommunications and transportation have
potentially three dimensions. In some cases there is complementarity with
advanced communications stimulating teleworking, in other cases there is
substitution, but in the third case it may stimulate additional interactions
involving both some substitution but also some additional travel (Figure 4.1)
The
links are thus not always clear and are often more complex than is sometimes
assumed. Increasingly, business and pleasure are merging, and networking is a
valued skill in contemporary working life. The complexity of social, economic
and technological forces can be such that a firm’s success frequently depends
heavily on continuously adaptive organizational interactions or networks. This
can be particularly so in the case of political and social complexity where a
meeting face-to-face may be more desirable than a telephone, videoconference or
e-mail interaction. Individuals may be more comfortable discussing the
complexities and or sensitivities of a project or process in person. The
availability of multiple modes of communication, personal and electronic,
enhances the range of opportunities for interaction.
Figure 1 Substitution, enhancement, and synergies
The nature of work
The degree to
which telecommunications acts as either a substitute or a complement for
transportation will change over time as the nature of work itself changes. The
idea of what work entails has historically undergone change as economies have
shifted through the centuries from agriculture, heavy industry, manufacturing
to an information/knowledge era. We are now moving into a global economic
environment. Sullivan (1999) compares the traditional work relationships that
generally existed to ‘boundaryless’ or more individualist career paths that
exist today (Table 1.1).
Table 1.1 Comparison of traditional and boundary
less careers
|
|
Traditional |
Boundaryless |
|
Employment
relationship |
Job security
for loyalty |
Employability
for performance and flexibility |
|
Boundaries
(employers) |
1 or 2 firms |
Multiple
firms |
|
Skills |
Firm specific |
Transferable |
|
Success
measured by |
Pay,
promotion, status |
Psychologically
meaningful work |
|
Responsibility
for career |
Organization |
Individual |
|
Training |
Formal
program |
On-the-job |
|
Milestones |
Age-related |
Learning-related |
The locus of control for work and career
paths has shifted from the company to the individual. Similarly, telework
options increase the levels of autonomy and responsibility for employees.
Technological advances and globalization, both of which create the need to use
flexible scheduling and work options to meet global service and personal needs,
enhance the practicality of telework alternatives for businesses and
individuals alike (Lobel et al, 1999). Also, telework is the type of work
arrangement that influences individual outcomes like work–family balance, job
satisfaction and stress, as well as organizational outcomes like worker morale,
productivity, and commitment (Sullivan, 1999). Thus, telework has the potential
to further influence the nature of work.
The components of telework’s influence on
the nature of work are reflected in, amongst other things, increased use of
flexible work hours, satellite offices, innovative monitoring systems, and
alternative office arrangements like ‘hoteling’. Hoteling involves reducing the
number of private offices and having employees share or reserve office space
only when a workspace in the primary office is needed (Saveri, 1995) while they
work at home or are at meetings elsewhere for the rest of their work time. The
influence of telework also involves aspects of social connectedness/cohesion as
well as several dimensions of trust.[7]
Fukuyama (1996) suggests that the social
interaction of workplaces is an important element of fostering a sense of
community over individualism. He contends, ‘Work and money are much more
important as sources of identity, status and dignity ... This kind of
recognition cannot be achieved by individuals; it can come about only in a
social context.’
Teleworking does interfere with this
‘community building’ process, if only modestly at this juncture. It can also be
said that telework adds a dimension of uncertainty that may not bode well for
trust within an organization as ‘trust reduces social complexity by going
beyond available information and generalizing expectations of behaviors in that
it replaces missing information with an internally guaranteed certainty,
(Blois, 1999). Diminished levels of face-to-face interaction may reduce trust
among managers and staff. Significant increases in the levels and penetration
of telework may, however, pose threats to social stability via reduced levels
of social capital and shared norms. The reduction in social interaction may
create problems for some workers, but not all necessarily.
However, if the costs of videoconferencing
equipment and the like diminish, then perhaps teleworking will not have a
negative impact on community building or a shared organizational culture. If
organizations develop formal strategies to promote the use of videoconferencing
and other means of keeping teleworkers ‘connected’ socially, then a new form of
organizational communication may emerge that helps to foster trust instead of
diminishing it. The additional communication outlet may help promote increased
levels of informal social interaction and cohesion.
Fukuyama (1999) contends that in the case
of Silicon Valley informal social networks within the various flat, loosely
structured organizations facilitated trust and its economic boom. Therefore,
employees themselves may find informal ways to maintain social connections
despite being physically separated from the work– place. Also, reconnecting
work and home may have positive benefits. Fukuyama states, ‘...it is if
anything more natural and more in keeping with the experience of human beings
throughout history that home and work should be co-located’. With respect to
identity, telework may help to ‘regenerate’ some of the family and community
norms that have been on the wane.
Giving workers the flexibility to manage
their work and family requirements may in the very least reduce stress and
improve dispositions and interpersonal interactions. Nonetheless, these types
of social and psychological issues are complex and need to be evaluated
carefully as there is uncertainty regarding the direction and level of
telework’s impact at this juncture.
Expanding interactions
Improved and
novel transportation technologies, together with additional transportation
infrastructure and hardware, have allowed personal interactions to grow
considerably over time. These developments, coupled with new demands stemming
from changing behavioral patterns have permitted more frequent interactions
between the same individuals or groups (a ‘deepening effect’) and for a larger
number of interactions among different individuals (a ‘widening effect’).
In
practice, however, at any point in time there are physical and logistical
constraints on the capacity of individuals to meet face-to-face; the
transactions costs, to use the jargon of institutional economics, can be very
high. This constrained interaction curve is shown graphically in Figure 1.1.
Public concerns about the environmental implications of further infrastructure
expansion and the high financial costs of such investments, combined with
changes in life-styles, suggest that this interaction curve is now beginning to
flatten in many countries. It is becoming more difficult and costly to meet
face-to-face. Questions can also be raised concerning the marginal social
utility of additional transportation infrastructure provision, especially if it
leads to additional travel.
Figure 1.1 The constrained interaction curve and
telecommunications
Through
telecommunications technology a greater number of interactions are possible
because of the empowerment provided through timely (in some cases real-time)
information transfer (the unconstrained interaction curve in Figure 4.2). This
development means that telecommunications has the scope to not only fill the
potential interactions, but also to push up the unconstrained curve. What types
of interactions are most efficiently replaced by telecommunications in this
process is by no means certain.
Factors affecting interactions
An important factor
affecting the nature of human interactions is the complexity and security of
the information that has to be transferred. In general, the more complex and
sensitive the information, the more important is the need for face-to-face
contact. There is also the uncertain issue of the additional amount of
interactions that are generated by the very existence of new forms of
interaction. What is currently evident is that people are engaged in a wider
range of interactions than before and that the net effect is a greater number
of interactions in total.
It
is useful in looking at the link between telecommunications and transportation
to review the sociological context within which personal transportation take
place. Much of the early modeling of travel patterns was essentially aggregate
in nature and engineering driven. While more recent work has been more closely
allied to behavioral types of models, often based in microeconomic theory, it
is still in many ways very simplistic. In particular it has traditionally been
assumed that people travel to work just to earn an income. Other motivations
for making these types of trip are now seen as important and can impact on
travel patterns.
The
journey-to-work, and the associated traffic congestion, has been at the center
of debates on urban transportation policy. Because road space is publicly owned
and not provided in a market setting, and consequently road users are not made
fully aware of the full costs of their actions on others at the time trips are
made, there tends to develop excessive levels of commuter congestion. Excessive
congestion is seen as inefficient in a purely transportation sense and, because
of the pollution generated, is often an environmental issue. Considerable
research and policy-based analysis has been expended seeking a socially
acceptable way of limiting the congestion problem.[8]
Recent analysis suggests, however, that the issue may be more complex than is
traditionally thought.
In
much of the transportation and communications discussions, there is the
implicit assumption that individuals wish to reduce their travel time, and in
particular that involved in the journey-to-work. This has stemmed, in part,
from the notion that travel is largely a derived demand existing for the sake
of other ends (e.g., to earn an income, shop, transport children or socialize),
rather than being an end in itself.
Research
in California challenges this assumption, drawing on the findings of a survey
of over 1,300 workers that found that only 3% of people desired a zero-to-two
minute commute. It showed that almost 50% of respondents preferred a commute of
20 minutes or more. This type of finding would not be inconsistent with the
notion of the constant travel budget hypothesis that some traffic engineers
have long supported. Such an amount of time spent in traffic congestion may be
seen as a reasonable price to pay for a suburban life-style.
Policy makers and
researchers focus on the negative impacts of the commute in terms of
environmental impacts, congestion, stress and so on, while the positive
attributes are not recognized. It can be argued that individuals often value
the transition between home and work and the ability to use the time
productively. They may also value the opportunity to drive a status-oriented
automobile or the chance to experience the sites by traveling. They may value a
non-home destination for work because of the social/professional interaction
opportunities it affords, the scenic location, or the shopping and other
location amenities. There are also the opportunity benefits involved in not
spending time in a commute such as doing household chores.
Various
pressures and constraints appear important for individuals to change their
prevailing work routine. In the majority of cases, a threshold level of
dissatisfaction with one or more aspects of life was necessary to cause an
individual to consider an alternative to conventional work patterns. This
dissatisfaction may be manifest in a desire to accomplish certain goals in
work, family, leisure or travel.
Constraints
could also be manifest in the amount of telecommuting permitted by the nature
of the job or by the employer, the availability of suitable remote technology,
whether supervisors support telecommuting, and the propensity toward
distractions at home. Individual are likely to be more productive if they are
easily able to switch off from, and separate, home duties.
Interest has grown in
the travel patterns of the genders, particularly the apparent idiosyncrasies of
travel by women. More part-time work, increases in female non-home based
travel, partly through a greater proportion of women in the workforce, and
flexible employment have contributed to increased demand for off-peak travel.
Women remain responsible for the majority of household duties and child care
and this leads to more complex travel patterns involving linked trips and
greater car dependency. The flexibility, and complementarity, provided by
teleworking is likely to be valued by women, particularly those with
dependants.
Employers
may find benefits in stimulating or facilitating teleworking. The current
relatively strong economy in the US, even in the early 2000s, favors employees.
Employers, particularly in the information technology sectors experience
difficulties retaining high-quality staff, resulting in valuable expertise and
tacit knowledge walking out the door. Employers are often creative in terms of
the remuneration packages that they offer, but they also need to provide and
manage the work environment. More subtly, telecommunications provides the
advantage of impersonalizing communication. It may be more advantageous to
employers to use telecommunications to emphasize content and minimize social
influences, and to reduced socio-emotional communication and increased task
orientation that can enhance group work and efficiency. The success of this
effort depends on the context and environment in which the telecommunications
mediums are used.
According
to some psychologists, the interpersonal attraction dimension of social
influence is a multidimensional construct, comprising task attraction, physical
attraction and social attraction. The more people are attracted to one another,
the more they will communicate with one another. But the more they are
attracted to another person, the more influence that person has in
interpersonal communication. Interpersonal attractiveness can thus enhance
communication and detract from it. Strategically employers could use either
telecommunications or face-to-face methods depending on the individuals
involved and the company’s objectives. It provides employees with more options.
From
a financial perspective, employers have identified benefits from savings in
office space, lighting and utilities by outsourcing to one-person businesses.
In some cases, new office buildings are being designed on the premise that
workers will ‘rent’ rather than ‘own’ space, that is; they will have no dedicated
desk, but book one when they need to visit the office (hot desks). Estimations
of savings are, however, scant.
In
summary, the benefits to employers are largely idiosyncratic, depending on the
circumstances and environment of each firm. Transition costs may be large and
they are also likely to vary according to the current working practices and
fixed investments of firms. Changing working practices is not cost-less and can
be disruptive in terms of meeting customer demands.
Trends and realities
fostering interest in telework
The potential for teleworking
Teleworking can
take a number of different forms. Exact delineation is difficult but there has
been a convergence to some standard classification. In the US telework options
exist in two basic forms (US Bureau of
Transportation Statistics. 1993):
·
Home-based. Employee works
at home 1–2 days/week and spends the rest of the week at the main office or
other facility;
·
Regional
centers/workcenters – These centers serve as extensions of the
normal workplace, but are located closer to employees’ homes, in less congested
areas or near public transit locations. Regional centers exist in three primary
forms:
(i) Satellite workcenters – These centers
are established and equipped by an organization to accommodate its teleworking
staff;
(ii) Local work centers – Teleworkers from
different organizations use these facilities and share office space/equipment
(iii) Neighborhood work centers – These are
smaller centers that serve fewer workers, but generally are located within
walking distance of employee residences.
Typically, information or knowledge-based
jobs are more suitable for telework. That is, jobs where workers’ primary
activity involves the creation, processing, manipulation, or distribution of
information. McCloskey and Igbaria (1998) note that within this context, both
jobs with a high division of labor and external control (clerical) and a low
division of labor and internal control (professional or managerial) are
amenable to telework. According to Nilles (1988), jobs or tasks that are not
location dependent and/or do not require significant levels of face-to-face
interaction, are likely to be good candidates for telecommuting. Korte and
Wynne (1996) suggest the following are possibilities for teleworking:
Data entry or
typing
·
Programming or other specialist computing
·
Secretarial or administrative work
·
Translation
·
Financial services, book-keeping or accountancy
·
Ordering, information or booking services
·
Sales, marketing
·
Editing
·
Research, consultancy
·
Design, architectural work
·
Training, education
·
Management
·
Repair, maintenance.
The up-take of teleworking
As
seen in previous chapters, the amount of teleworking still varies considerably
from country to country, and also inevitably within countries. But there is,
nevertheless a steady growth in its
adoption
that extends across virtually all countries. Table 4.2, for example, reports
the growth in teleworking within the European Union in the 1990s. Although the
data are not strictly comparable across years, inverse levels of utilization
are clear but so is the overall positive growth path.
Table 1.2 Teleworking in EU
countries
Country Level
of teleworking – formal and informal
1994 1997 1998/9
Austria 0.35 1.50 2.00
Belgium 0.48 5.3o 6.20
Denmark 0.37 9.70 11.60
Finland 2.50 6.30 10.00
France 0.98 1.10 1.80
Germany 0.41 1.90 5.10
Greece 0.46 0.50 1.30
Ireland 1.40 6.10 7.10
Italy 0.46 0.90 1.70
Netherlands 1.22 9.10 18.20
Portugal 0.56 1.30 2.20
Spain 0.82 0.60 0.90
Sweden 3.77