ABSTRACT

Despite initial evidence on employees’ motives for telecommuting, studies so far never investigated if and how distinct telecommuting motives might co-occur. In the current study (N _{wave 1} = 1297 employees; N _{wave 2} = 564 employees), we use Latent Class Analysis and identify three classes reflecting three specific combinations of telecommuting motives: the job requirement class (telecommuting because one has to), the efficiency class (telecommuting to cope with deadlines and pressure) and the work-life balance class (telecommuting to have a healthy balance between work and family/leisure). Our analyses show that employees belonging to the same class also tend to share a certain context (in terms of job characteristics such as speed of work and autonomy). Furthermore, the telecommuting motive classes predicted outcomes six months later: Whereas we found no significant associations between the job requirement class and the study outcomes, employees in the efficiency class reported more vigour and less emotional exhaustion, and employees in the work-life balance class reported more vigour, less emotional exhaustion and more job satisfaction. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

摘要

尽管有关于员工远程办公动机的初步证据，但迄今为止的研究从未调查过不同的远程办公动机是否以及如何同时出现。在当前研究中（N_{波 1}  = 1297 名员工；N_{波 2} = 564 名员工），我们使用潜在类别分析并确定反映远程办公动机的三种特定组合的三个类别：工作要求类别（因为必须进行远程办公）、效率类别（远程办公以应对截止日期和压力）和工作-生活平衡课程（远程通勤以在工作和家庭/休闲之间取得健康的平衡）。我们的分析表明，属于同一阶层的员工也倾向于共享特定的环境（在工作特征方面，例如工作速度和自主性）。此外，远程办公动机类预测了六个月后的结果：虽然我们发现工作要求类和学习结果之间没有显着关联，但效率类的员工报告说更有活力和更少的情绪疲惫，工作与生活平衡班的员工表示更有活力，更少的情绪疲惫和更高的工作满意度。讨论了对理论和实践的影响。