The role of working from home within the context of family-friendly work policies and its relationship to firm performance: Implications for managers
(2021) BUSN79 20211Department of Business Administration
- Abstract
- Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate the role of working from home within family friendly work policies (FFWPs) and its relationship to firm performance, and whether this is affected by the choice of management practices within an organization.
Methodology: A cross-sectional dataset from 2004, including data from 732 firms and four countries, accessed through World Management Survey was used in this explorative study. To run the tests of the hypotheses, multivariate regressions were made.
Theoretical perspectives: This study focuses on three theories, agency theory, management control and identity, with the objective of finding new ways of intertwining them together. In line with agency theory, managers need to... (More) - Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate the role of working from home within family friendly work policies (FFWPs) and its relationship to firm performance, and whether this is affected by the choice of management practices within an organization.
Methodology: A cross-sectional dataset from 2004, including data from 732 firms and four countries, accessed through World Management Survey was used in this explorative study. To run the tests of the hypotheses, multivariate regressions were made.
Theoretical perspectives: This study focuses on three theories, agency theory, management control and identity, with the objective of finding new ways of intertwining them together. In line with agency theory, managers need to control employees through either monitoring or trust. In relation to this, the type of management control used could be either strict or soft where the first type is closely related to monitoring while the second one is associated with trusting the employees. The choice of management practices should build upon the best fit in each case depending on the industry or tasks. In addition, through personnel control employees' identities can both affect or be affected by the work environment.
Empirical foundations: Working from home is shown to imply greater increases in firm performance while combined with other policies within FFWPs, in this case job switching. In this sense, viewing FFWPs as a package is found to improve the performance of firms. Also, the use of coercive control and monitoring appears to be the most effective way to control the employees in the sample of manufacturing firms regarding the adoption of FFWPs leading to an increase in firm performance. Still, there are some limitations with this study, where mainly some contextual factors imply that the findings of this research will only be applicable for medium-sized manufacturing firms.
Conclusions: Working from home has, based on the result, best effects on firm performance while included in FFWPs, together with other policies, seen as a package. Also, the use of a stricter control and monitoring seems to incur greatest increases in firm performance while adopting FFWPs, at least in the context of manufacturing firms. Also, firms with higher levels of managers experience greater increases in firm performance while adopting FFWPs. Lastly, the results also indicate that firms are benefiting from focusing more on work-life balance compared to their competitors, leading to an increase in firm performance. Acknowledging the limitations of this study and that it might bring different results if data were gathered specifically for the purpose of this study, it is of utmost importance to continue studying this topic. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/9053440
- author
- Thunberg, Hanna LU and Karlsson, Malin LU
- supervisor
- organization
- course
- BUSN79 20211
- year
- 2021
- type
- H1 - Master's Degree (One Year)
- subject
- keywords
- Working from home, Family-friendly work policies, Firm performance, Management practices, Identity
- language
- English
- id
- 9053440
- date added to LUP
- 2021-09-08 14:24:18
- date last changed
- 2021-09-08 14:24:18
@misc{9053440,
abstract = {{Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate the role of working from home within family friendly work policies (FFWPs) and its relationship to firm performance, and whether this is affected by the choice of management practices within an organization.
Methodology: A cross-sectional dataset from 2004, including data from 732 firms and four countries, accessed through World Management Survey was used in this explorative study. To run the tests of the hypotheses, multivariate regressions were made.
Theoretical perspectives: This study focuses on three theories, agency theory, management control and identity, with the objective of finding new ways of intertwining them together. In line with agency theory, managers need to control employees through either monitoring or trust. In relation to this, the type of management control used could be either strict or soft where the first type is closely related to monitoring while the second one is associated with trusting the employees. The choice of management practices should build upon the best fit in each case depending on the industry or tasks. In addition, through personnel control employees' identities can both affect or be affected by the work environment.
Empirical foundations: Working from home is shown to imply greater increases in firm performance while combined with other policies within FFWPs, in this case job switching. In this sense, viewing FFWPs as a package is found to improve the performance of firms. Also, the use of coercive control and monitoring appears to be the most effective way to control the employees in the sample of manufacturing firms regarding the adoption of FFWPs leading to an increase in firm performance. Still, there are some limitations with this study, where mainly some contextual factors imply that the findings of this research will only be applicable for medium-sized manufacturing firms.
Conclusions: Working from home has, based on the result, best effects on firm performance while included in FFWPs, together with other policies, seen as a package. Also, the use of a stricter control and monitoring seems to incur greatest increases in firm performance while adopting FFWPs, at least in the context of manufacturing firms. Also, firms with higher levels of managers experience greater increases in firm performance while adopting FFWPs. Lastly, the results also indicate that firms are benefiting from focusing more on work-life balance compared to their competitors, leading to an increase in firm performance. Acknowledging the limitations of this study and that it might bring different results if data were gathered specifically for the purpose of this study, it is of utmost importance to continue studying this topic.}},
author = {{Thunberg, Hanna and Karlsson, Malin}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{The role of working from home within the context of family-friendly work policies and its relationship to firm performance: Implications for managers}},
year = {{2021}},
}