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Sustainable Implications of Anywhere Working

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (1 October 2020) | Viewed by 5952

Special Issue Editor

Macquarie Business School, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia
Interests: telework; anywhere working; telehealth; information systems in business

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Anywhere working, alternative workspaces, telework, telecommuting, remote working, flexible work, and other terms refer to work that occurs in a location other than a central office such as at home, a co-working centre, a café, or a client site. That is, work can be done at the worker’s location rather than the worker moving to the work. Many commentators credit Jack Nilles with coining the terms telecommuting and telework in the mid-1970s, referring to the substitution of commuting with any form of telecommunications. The adoption of telecommuting (telework) in the 1970s held great promise for reducing congestion on the roads and reducing pollution, a sustainability focus.  

Since the 1970s, the literature on anywhere working has shown that the primary motivations for adopting anywhere working include increasing productivity, cost savings, and improving well-being.  Sustainability has not been a key driver of anywhere working, for example, a benchmarking study in 2018 found that sustainability as a program driver for anywhere working fell from 25% in 2011 to just 2% in 2017 (Hood et al. 2018). In November 2019, the United Nations report on the Emissions Gap showed that we are increasing greenhouse gas emissions.

Technology has advanced to the extent that collaboration and communication, although not able to replicate face-to-face interactions, can go a long way to supporting anywhere working. Technology is not able to effectively resolve the main limitations of working anywhere, which include social and professional isolation; however, these limitations can be managed. There is also a perception from management and, in some cases, co workers, who believe that anywhere working is a privilege rather than a business-as-usual arrangement that can benefit an organization, its workers, and its customers. In late 2019, some federal agencies in the United States rescinded teleworking arrangements for some workers, and since 2013, starting with Yahoo, other organizations such as Bank of America and IBM have reduced working-from-home arrangements. 

The increasing urgency of climate change suggests that this is a good time to revisit anywhere working and sustainability. Therefore, the focus for this Special Issue is to revisit and stimulate debate on how anywhere working can contribute to a sustainable future. Removing vehicles from congested roads, more sustainable building design, the policy and regulatory environment, smart cities, and emerging technologies can support working anywhere and contribute to a more sustainable future. 

The papers selected will be subject to a double-blind peer-review procedure, with the aim of the rapid and wide dissemination of research results, developments, and applications.


Dr. Yvette Blount
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Anywhere working
  • Teleworking
  • telework
  • working from home
  • remote work
  • sustainable commuting
  • social sustainability
  • environmental sustainability   

Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

21 pages, 985 KiB  
Article
Trait Optimism and Work from Home Adjustment in the COVID-19 Pandemic: Considering the Mediating Role of Situational Optimism and the Moderating Role of Cultural Optimism
by Michal Biron, Hilla Peretz and Keren Turgeman-Lupo
Sustainability 2020, 12(22), 9773; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su12229773 - 23 Nov 2020
Cited by 21 | Viewed by 5578
Abstract
An organization’s capacity to sustain a crisis, and to benefit from work-from-home (WFH) arrangements in routine times, is dependent on its employees’ ability to successfully adjust to WFH conditions. The COVID-19 pandemic, which forced vast numbers of employees worldwide to WFH, provides an [...] Read more.
An organization’s capacity to sustain a crisis, and to benefit from work-from-home (WFH) arrangements in routine times, is dependent on its employees’ ability to successfully adjust to WFH conditions. The COVID-19 pandemic, which forced vast numbers of employees worldwide to WFH, provides an unprecedented opportunity to identify factors that facilitate WFH adjustment. Leveraging this opportunity and drawing from theories on person-environment fit and work adjustment, we consider trait optimism as a possible facilitator of WFH adjustment during the pandemic. We further investigate how situational optimism and cultural (country-level) optimism contribute to the relationship between trait optimism and WFH adjustment. Using data from 388 employees in five countries, we find that trait optimism positively relates to WFH adjustment. This relationship is partly mediated by situational expectations regarding health/financial benefits of WFH amid the pandemic. Moreover, trait optimism is more strongly related to WFH adjustment in countries with high (vs. low) cultural optimism. This study addresses the call to investigate whether and how personality traits relate to WFH adjustment. Our findings can improve organizations’ ability to select and train employees who WFH, and to enhance operational resilience to future crises. Managers in global firms can draw from our results to understand how cultural differences affect the ease with which WFH is adopted, and to develop country-specific WFH practices. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Implications of Anywhere Working)
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