Managing Social Distance in Geographically Distributed Teams

The chapter highlights the social distance, i.e. lack of emotional connection, formed among individuals working remotely in a geographically distributed team. The virtuality and cultural diversity of such teams creates limited opportunities for dispersed members to build social ties with remote team members leading to formation of ‘us' versus ‘them' attitudes which corrode team effectiveness. Based on a survey of 482 Indian IT professionals working in distributed teams, we find that social distance negatively impacts team effectiveness. Further, the results of the study show that practices such as task interdependence, inclusive communication, contextual information and shared identity can moderate the negative relationship between social distance and team effectiveness at varying levels of perceived status equality among individuals working in geographically distributed teams. The chapter provides recommendations for the effective management of geographically distributed teams whereby managers act as a bridge between the team members to overcome social distance.

Work, Family, and Identity

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the existing transition to remote work and, more broadly, flexible forms of work. Much energy and attention have been dedicated to analysing this transition and how governments and other actors can best respond to it. This chapter takes a step back and analyses the potential impacts of the transition to remote work on our individual and collective identities. Recognising that work is an important part of who we are and has historically been a microcosm and a catalyst of broader social change, this chapter analyses how remote work challenges gender roles, contemporary family structures, and our conceptualisation of the relationship between work and other commitments. The chapter admittedly offers more questions than it does answers. It complexifies our understanding of remote work and seeks to spark future discussions as to its consequences.

Remote Work, Sexual Harassment, and Worker Well-Being

Workplace sexual harassment is a serious occupational hazard, adversely affecting workers' employment trajectories, economic well-being, and mental and physical health. Prior to COVID-19, it was widespread and primarily perpetrated by men against women, both in the physical workplace and physical and virtual public spaces associated with work. This chapter examines how the transition to remote work has effected changes in the prevalence and types of sexual harassment, paying attention to its gendered nature. Remote work holds both promise and peril. While exposure to physical harassment has fallen, information and communications technology has increased the risk of sexual harassment in virtual spaces. The cases of the United States and India are explored in more detail to compare worker experiences across the Global North and Global South, in countries with vastly different socioeconomic structures. This chapter contributes to the understanding of the benefits and challenges of remote work in combatting sexual harassment.

Working, Caring, Surviving

Drawing from a questionnaire answered by 455 people during social distancing in Brazil, the chapter analyzes how individuals who worked remotely and those who did not cope with the increase in domestic and care work and how this extra work was divided in gender terms. The questionnaire indicates that the pandemic increased both domestic and care activities, with the former being more frequent for women and those under remote work. In general, this was not accompanied by a better division of these activities across sexes as women remained mainly responsible for them. Nevertheless, some improvements in the division of the domestic work were observed amongst those under remote work. However, when such a rebalance does not occur, remote work tends to be associated with an increase in women's overburdening.

Engagement and Efficiency of Remote Higher Education

The suddenness of COVID-19 forced, literally overnight, a transformation in the higher education sector. Students and instructors were migrated to an online engagement and knowledge transfer process, which created unforeseen challenges to instruction and prompted the development of new delivery systems. Further, the transition merged private and academic life as home life converged with work and ultimately, albeit unintentionally, promoted a more human perspective through widespread use of video-based communication. This chapter will address how COVID-19 affected the teaching of Introductory Economics, highlighting a case study of a course offered at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts. The discussion addresses both positive and negative outcomes related to instruction and the role that COVID-19 has potentially had on teaching beyond the pandemic.

White-Collar Career Advancement When Working From Home

Across the world, COVID-19 has driven millions of white-collar employees to work from home (WFH). Anticipated business benefits of WFH will likely compel employers to extend the work practice for several employees post-pandemic. WFH, by affecting job task execution, as well as opportunities to enhance and demonstrate capabilities, will hold implications for employee career advancement. In this context, a new model for career advancement is proposed, the competence career advancement model, comprising three cyclical stages (achieving, improving, and proving competence) based on the self-determination theory's psychological need for competence. The chapter covers job demands and resources that influence each stage of career advancement, as well as how these demands and resources are themselves affected under WFH conditions. Also discussed are the consequences of satisfaction/frustration through the stages of career advancement for worker well-being and work attitudes/outcomes. Human resource and technology practices to enable employee career advancement under WFH are suggested as well.

Implications for Places of Remote Working

A shift to remote working raises important issues about the changing geography of work and the associated implications for places. It seems unlikely that a ‘new normal' after the COVID-19 pandemic will replicate the pre-COVID-19 picture. This has implications for the geography of work, both directly and indirectly because remote working in some jobs has implications for the sustainability of other jobs previously reliant on them. This chapter traces the possible short- and medium-term implications for places of remote working, addressing important questions relating to (1) the changing attractiveness of places in the context of greater remote working; (2) the future for city centres; (3) a possible revival of outer urban centres, market towns, and rural areas; (4) implications for geographical segregation and inequalities as different sub-groups face different possibilities for remote working; and (5) the implications of remote working for place-based policy.

Teaching Remotely During a Pandemic

This chapter presents a qualitative research project called “Oversight Points.” Fifty-nine Italian teachers participated in in-depth semi-structured interviews focusing on their perceptions, grievances, and hopes about remote teaching during the COVID-19 lockdown. Interviewees belong to a national school network and share a longstanding cooperation in blended action research initiatives. The research was inspired by the teacher professional identity (TPI) theory, and dialogical self-theory (DST) was used as an analytic lens. Data was organised through Nuvolar, a software that can generate word-clouds and provide timestamps of related video-clips. Results suggest that teachers are peculiar smart-workers. For them freedom of space and time, self-improvement, and autonomy—distinctive aspects of smart-working—acquire specific meanings, implying both positive and negative aspects. A set of positionings was found. The authors discuss how they compete in determining the re-organisation of teacher identities' landscape. Finally, they indicate some possible developments and practical implications.

The Problem With Productivity

In this chapter, the author problematises and challenges the mantra of productivity as an occupational raison d'etre. She argues that equating an effective worker with their capacity for productive output over meaningful outcome undermines employee well-being and human-centred values. She explores the impact of neoliberalism on work and the individualisation of the worker and argues that productivity has gained the status of a value. Lastly, the author outlines a range of solutions in the second part of the chapter and explores the rise of recent socio-political movements which redefine rest and contemplative practices as tools of rebellion against the ruthless neoliberal push for productivity.

Home Alone

Some might think that the COVID-19 pandemic changes little, because novelists have always worked from home and found isolation to be necessary for their creative process. But in fact, there is a spectrum in sites of production. Even in a novelist's solitary study, her task is to construct a narrative out of her past social experience. The pandemic has caused a drastic reduction in such face-to-face activities. Changes in the consumption of fiction during the pandemic can be tracked on Amazon and include a shift from print to Kindle, and also shifts in genres. The biggest gain in share on Kindle has been in children's books. Post-publication activities have become steadily more important, as promotion of a book is now integral to its production. The rise of self-publishing on Kindle Direct Publishing bypasses traditional gatekeepers. With KDP almost everyone now can have their own press, and the centres of gravity of publishing have moved from London and New York to Seattle. Post-apocalyptic fiction envisions life in the wake of natural disasters.