Human capital : further guidance, assistance, and coordination can improve federal telework efforts : report to the Chairman, Committee on Government Reform, House of Representatives /

GAO-03-679.

Communication and control : case studies in Australian telecommuting

This paper discusses the results of in-depth semi-structured interviews with 39 telecommuters from 12 Australian organisations. The paper serves two broad aims: firstly, it identifies current trends in telecommuting and offers a perspective on Australian developments. Secondly, it provides a focus on significant communication aspects of the Australian telecommuting experience. Findings are that the majority of interviewees reported overall satisfaction with telecommuting as an important contributor to their improved work and lifestyle outcomes. Overall, telecommuters appear to cope with communication aspects of their work environments. They also were not overreliant on advanced communications media when telecommuting. Difficulties as reported by telecommuter interviewees included: perceived discomfort over lack of management support for their telecommuting; reduced levels of interpersonal communication suggesting the likely need to adopt a ‘media mix’ approach to servicing their communication needs; problems of information access; and telecommuters’ reported levels of difficulty with their uses of some computer and communication technologies. Problems relating to telecommuters’ perceived professional and social isolation, were also identified. Finally, the paper underscores where organisational communication theorists and practitioners need to more energetically embrace the concepts of virtual work and telecommuting

Regulating supply-chains to address the occupational health and safety problems associated with precarious employment: The case of home-based clothing workers in Australia

Over the past 20 years the labour market, workforce and work organisation of most if not all industrialised countries have been significantly refashioned by the increased use of more flexible work arrangements, variously labelled as precarious employment or contingent work. There is now a substantial and growing body of international evidence that many of these arrangements are associated with a significant deterioration in occupational health and safety (OHS), using a range of measures such as injury rates, disease, hazard exposures and work-related stress. Moreover, there is an emerging body of evidence that these arrangements pose particular problems for conventional regulatory regimes. Recognition of these problems has aroused the concern of policy makers - especially in Europe, North America and Australia - and a number of responses have been adopted in terms of modifying legislation, producing new guidance material and codes of practice and revised enforcement practices. This article describes one such in itiative in Australia with regard to home-based clothing workers. The regulatory strategy developed in one Australian jurisdiction (and now being ‘exported’ into others) seeks to counter this process via contractual tracking mechanisms to follow the work, tie in liability and shift overarching legal responsibility to the top of the supply chain. The process also entails the integration of minimum standards relating to wages, hours and working conditions; OHS and access to workers’ compensation. While home-based clothing manufacture represents a very old type of ‘flexible’ work arrangement, it is one that regulators have found especially difficult to address. Further, the elaborate multi-tiered subcont racting and diffuse work locations found in this industry are also characteristic of newer forms of contingent work in other industries (such as some telework) and the regulatory challenges they pose (such as the tendency of elaborate supply chains to attenuate and fracture statutory responsibilities, at least in terms of the attitudes and behaviour of those involved).

L'autorisation du télétravail comme acte de confiance

Ce mémoire vise à comprendre le processus menant à un acte de confiance dans un contexte organisationnel en étudiant l’implantation du télétravail. Il explore la manière dont un gestionnaire franchit les différentes étapes du processus menant à un état d’attentes positives à l’égard d’un employé et, sur cette base, prendre le risque de lui autoriser le télétravail. D’un point de vue théorique, j’adopte une vision dynamique de la confiance en mobilisant notamment l’approche processuelle ainsi que le concept de suspension (Möllering, 2001, 2006). Cette étude est basée sur des entrevues semi-structurées réalisées auprès de six gestionnaires ayant autorisé le travail à domicile. Les participants ont été rencontrés à deux reprises et ont chacun rédigé une courte réflexion écrite sur le thème de la confiance. Leurs témoignages ont été analysés selon la méthode d’analyse inductive. Mes résultats révèlent que lorsqu’un gestionnaire envisage d’autoriser le télétravail, il mobilise une banque de connaissances qu’il a préalablement acquises à travers ses interactions avec l’employé pour construire une fiction optimiste de l’avenir. Cet exercice imaginatif lui permet de suspendre son incertitude et d’anticiper avec optimisme le comportement de ses télétravailleurs. La prise du risque que représente l’autorisation du travail à domicile ne découle cependant pas uniquement de cet état d’attentes favorables. Dans les grandes entreprises, la concrétisation de cet acte de confiance semble également reposer sur une suspension collective de l’incertitude et de la vulnérabilité organisationnelle.