Green Economy: Researching Working from Home in Building Sector

Abstract

The rapid growth of telework or working from home (WFH) is inspired by the growth in knowledge-based economy, rapid technology progress, virtual operations and digital workforce. The original push on teleworking as a tool for cutting traffic congestion and improving air quality did not lead to large-scale adoption of teleworking in Malaysia. Indeed the research of WFH in Malaysia is scarce and its implementation among the organizations almost unavailable even though the nation is moving towards promoting green economy. However, with the sustainability and green concerns, teleworking can be considered a part of firm’s strategic and innovative to enhance competitive advantage which may lead to economic and environmental improvement. Thus the emerging trend for sustainable growth (e.g. quality education, modern workforce, green innovation, knowledge and digital society) has inspired this research to seek the benefits of working from home (WFH), factors that trigger WFH and basic requirements for WFH to be initiated have been unearthed by many researchers and implemented by many developed countries in the world. This paper explores the literature on WFH in some of the developed countries and the topic of WFH in Malaysian scenario is discussed by proposing a framework for future research to be carried out by Malaysian organizations.