Remote Work

by

Ryan S. Grant, Kristen Shockley

• LAST MODIFIED: 17 April 2025
• DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199828340-0329

Introduction

Remote work refers to working some portion of one’s work hours from a location that is not a main, shared office space. Initial discussions of remote work began as early as the 1970s, but increases in technology, particularly the home computer, greatly increased the availability of remote work. The biggest change in the remote work landscape occurred in 2020 following the COVID-19 pandemic, when an unprecedented number of workers worked from home due to shelter-in-place orders. Post-pandemic, many organizations are offering hybrid work arrangements, where employees work remotely a few days per week. There is considerable interest in developing best practices surrounding a remote and hybrid work force, and the research literature is still burgeoning. To date, main areas of focus have been on individual (e.g., job satisfaction, organizational commitment, career advancement) and organizational (e.g., turnover, profit) outcomes associated with working remotely compared to working a standard arrangement. Research findings on remote work are often inconsistent. On the one hand, remote work increases flexibility and autonomy which improves performance and job attitudes, but at the same time can blur boundaries and increase professional isolation which harms well-being and work-nonwork management. Part of these mixed findings may be due to the presence of several key boundary conditions. For example, remote work experiences seem to vary considerably based on the extent of remote work, remote worker personality, and the nature of the job. Lastly, there is a small body of research on effective supervisory practices for remote workers, with findings suggesting that although core leadership behaviors matter, there are also unique skills that effective remote work managers must possess.

General Overviews

Much of the interest in remote work has been focused on understanding the consequences of engaging in this unique work arrangement. Several narrative review papers have been published that focus on consequences. Allen, et al. 2015 is a general review of telecommuting that was published in Psychological Science in the Public Interest, a journal that aims to publish reviews of existing research that are accessible to non-academic readers. This review covers a variety of topics, including the history, measurement, consequences, and contextual factors related to remote work. Beckel and Fisher 2022 is a more recent narrative review, with an explicit focus on studies that examine well-being and health consequences of remote work. Lastly, the meta-analysis Gajendran, et al. 2024 provides an empirical assessment of the link between telecommuting versus standard work and numerous outcomes, as well as the relationship between extent of telecommuting with outcomes. There is also a body of work that has developed focused on virtual work, which shares a great deal of overlap with remote work, but relies more on the virtual team’s literature as a background. In a seminal piece on the topic, Bell and Kozlowski 2002 proposes a theoretical framework to help better understand how virtual teams vary and the particular challenges of leading virtual teams. Bell, et al. 2023 expands on the leadership aspects of this in a review paper that applies the leadership literature to the virtual work context. The authors of Hill, et al. 2022 created an integrative review of virtual work, integrating subdimensions of virtual work with work design theory to show how virtual work changes one’s perception of their job characteristics, affecting well-being. Moving away from consequences of remote work, Makarius and Larson 2017 is a review of what makes a virtual worker successful. This review highlights individual behavioral skills and support from organizations and managers that virtual workers require to be successful. Finally, Raghuram, et al. 2019 is a review of research from the different fields that conduct research on virtual work in different ways (e.g., telecommuting, virtual teams, computer-mediated work) and describes common themes that emerged.

• Allen, T. D., T. D. Golden, and K. M. Shockley. 2015. How effective is telecommuting? Assessing the status of our scientific findings. Psychological Science in the Public Interest 16.2: 40–68.

  DOI: 10.1177/1529100615593273

  This is a review piece summarizing the extant literature on remote work that gives a sense of the status of the science on the topic. It was published in Psychological Science in the Public Interest, which is a journal aimed at producing summaries that are accessible to non-academic audiences.

• Beckel, J. L., and G. G. Fisher. 2022. Telework and worker health and well-being: A review and recommendations for research and practice. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 19.7: 3879.

  DOI: 10.3390/ijerph19073879

  This narrative review piece focuses specifically on the implications of remote work for worker health and well-being. The authors summarize the current state of research on this topic and offer recommendations for future research and practice.

• Bell, B. S., and S. J. Kozlowski 2002. A typology of virtual teams: Implications for effective leadership. Group & Organization Management 27.1: 14 49.

  DOI: 10.1177/1059601102027001003

  This is a seminal review paper that proposes a theoretical framework to help better understand how virtual teams vary and the particular challenges of leading virtual teams. Given the overlap between virtual teams and remote work, it has direct implications for the understanding of these issues in remote work contexts.

• Bell, B. S., K. L. McAlpine, and N. S. Hill. 2023. Leading virtually. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior 10:339–362.

  DOI: 10.1146/annurev-orgpsych120920-050115

  This review piece covers the dominant leadership theories and discusses empirical work that has applied them as well as theoretical relevance where empirical assessments are lacking.

• Gajendran, R. S., A. R. Ponnapalli, C. Wang, and A. A. Javalagi. 2024. A dual pathway model of remote work intensity: A meta‐analysis of its simultaneous positive and negative effects. Personnel Psychology 77.4: 1351–1386.

  DOI: 10.1111/peps.12641

  This is the most comprehensive meta-analysis examining the consequences associated with remote work versus standard work and the extent of remote work. The authors also examine dual mediating pathways of relationships and whether effect sizes differ based on time of study in relation to COVID-19.

• Hill, N. S., C. Axtell, S. Raghuram, and N. Nurmi 2022. Unpacking virtual work’s dual effects on employee well-being: An integrative review and future research agenda. Journal of Management 50.1: 752–792.

  DOI: 10.1177/01492063221131535

  This review uses work design as a theoretical framework to examine how the differential impacts of virtual work on well-being occurs through altering worker’s perceptions of job characteristics.

• Makarius, E. E., and B. Z. Larson. 2017. Changing the perspective of virtual work: Building virtual intelligence at the individual level. Academy of Management Perspectives 31.2: 159–178.

  DOI: 10.5465/amp.2014.0120

  This paper reviews the virtual work literature to identify the individual behaviors and skills along with organizational and managerial support needed to facilitate remote worker success.

• Raghuram, S., N. S. Hill, J. L. Gibbs, and L. M. Maruping. 2019. Virtual work: Bridging research clusters. The Academy of Management Annals 13.1: 308–341.

  DOI: 10.5465/annals.2017.0020

  This review piece examines the different research clusters in which virtual work research has occurred and identifies similarities across fields.