Virtual Workers Research Articles

Communication Patterns as Determinants of Organizational Identification in a Virtual Organization

Recent advances in information technologies provide employees the freedom to work from any place and at any time. Such temporal and spatial dispersion, however, weakens the ties that bind organizations and their members. We suggest that organizational identification may be the critical glue linking virtual workers and their organizations. We explore the role that information technologies play in the creation and maintenance of a common identity among decoupled organization members.

Communication technology use and multiple workplace identifications among organizational teleworkers with varied degrees of virtuality

Although over 11 million virtual workers in the USA are classified as teleworkers, we know relatively little about them. Drawing on the construct of telepresence, the relationships among four sets of variables seem especially important: actual communication technology use, identifications with aspects of work, degree of virtuality, and various teleworker demographic characteristics. A survey of 86 teleworkers in a wide range of organizations revealed that basic telephone and voicemail are the most frequently used and most vital communication technologies. However, several differences in technology use based on message content and interaction partners also exist. Additionally, moderately virtual teleworkers are more identified with their work team, organization, and occupation than are those who telework small or large portions of their work week. Also, use of advanced phone technologies is most predictive of organizational and occupational identification. Among the implications discussed are: equipping teleworkers with appropriate communication technologies and establishing telework programs where workers are only virtual for a portion of the working week.