The axis of accessibility and the duality of control of remote workers: A literature review

Abstract

Remote work has become a routine experience for many managers, forcing them to adapt to new ways of ensuring that employees follow company procedure and achieve job targets. Key among these changes have been to the move to computer-mediated surveillance (CMS), where managers monitor employees through electronic representations of work and computer-mediated interaction (CMI), where managers interact with employees through online communication. The outcome of this move is ambiguous and contradictory. CMS can strengthen control because of how effective it is at reporting on work. However, CMI can weaken control because of how effective it is at withholding work practice. We review the literature on remote work to explain how these apparently contradictory effects interact. We show that the joint effect of CMI and CMS goes beyond changing the amount of control over employees. Instead, this joint effect requires managers to ensure the accessibility necessary for control of remote work: that employees make their work visible and that they make themselves reachable for interaction with managers and peers. We use this new domain of control to outline a two-dimensional model of control.