Tutorial 4 : Managing Remotely

How Has Managerial BeHavior CHanged witH tHe

sHift to virtual working? - Birkinshaw
The Covid pandemic in March 2020 led to many professionals and knowledge workers
working from home, leading to the adoption of a flexible workplace model by firms like
Google, Microsoft, and Siemens. This change has led to improved productivity and job
satisfaction. However, the impact of virtual working on managerial behavior remains unclear.
During the lockdown, surveys revealed that managers were motivated and committed to
doing a good job, but the virtual environment negatively affected their effectiveness. They
turned inward, became task-focused, and found few opportunities to develop new skills. The
findings suggest that the virtual working environment exposes managers to the challenging
aspects of their work, leading to a tendency to shift towards "task mode" and acting in a more
narrow and controlling way. As virtual working becomes a normal mode of working, it is
crucial for managerial work to evolve to address these issues and realize the potential benefits
of this new way of working.
The co-evolution of management and technology
Over the past 150 years, management has evolved from mechanistic to organic ways of
working, mirroring the transition from the industrial to digital age. Technological progress
has played a significant role in this evolution, with the invention of assembly line technology
in the 1920s introducing tight control systems, mainframe computers in the 1960s enabling
operations research, and personal computers and cloud computing revolutions in the 1980s
promoting individual empowerment and more organic coordination. Virtual working, which
allows individuals to work from different locations without meeting, gained popularity in the
2010s, with large firms allowing it. However, evidence around its benefits and costs remains
ambiguous.
The changing nature of managerial work
The nature of managerial work has evolved over time, with early literature focusing on
activities such as forecasting, planning, organizing, commanding, and controlling. The
"Scientific Management" era of F.W. Taylor led to high turnover and low worker morale, with
managers focusing on formal authority, incentives, and controlling information flow. The
human relations movement in the 1930s and 1970s emphasized the normative aspects of
organizations and emphasized the role of top managers. With the advent of computer
technology, information was shared among employees, reducing the manager's traditional
source of power. Managers now see their role as supporting, coaching, and facilitating
coordination with others. This evolution is reflected in the global virtual working experiment
underway since March 2020, where managers face new challenges in doing their job
effectively due to the availability of informal levers of influence.
Results
Tutorial 4 : Managing Remotely

A study reveals that virtual managers are highly effective in cognitive aspects of their work,
such as problem-solving, time management, and personal reflection. These aspects receive
the highest ratings in the virtual context, possibly due to the location-neutral nature of virtual
work. Task-oriented aspects of work are also rated better in the virtual environment,
indicating that many aspects of management can be done remotely as well as in person.
However, people-based aspects of management work are consistently and significantly lower
in the virtual context. This is due to challenges such as bringing new people into a team,
managing poor performance, and delivering negative feedback through video. Innovation and
creativity are also low, as they depend on interpersonal connections for their effectiveness.
The analysis suggests a shift in emphasis towards personal reflection and task-based action,
away from the relational, employee-engagement narrative of recent decades.
Discussion
The study reveals that managers faced challenges when transitioning to virtual work during
the pandemic. During the lockdown, managers focused on task-based work and less on
enabling and motivating their subordinates, leading to fewer opportunities for personal
growth and reduced ability to create a supportive environment. This shift was enabled by
technology, education, and social change. With the shift into a virtual working environment,
managers have fewer immediate influence levers, but there are still options for how they view
their role. One way forward is to emphasize the task dimension, such as managing
outsourcing and freelance relationships, while another is to maintain an emphasis on people
management in the virtual environment. This involves transferring existing practices from
face-to-face to virtual and developing new practices that are only possible in virtual working.
The evidence suggests that managers were stuck between these two approaches, struggling to
deliver on their intentions. However, as short-term challenges are overcome and benefits of
virtual working become clearer, there is potential for management innovation and
experimentation to make management an "inspiring and enabling" activity.
Conclusions
The transition from office-based to virtual working in March 2020 allowed firms to develop
expertise and patterns that may endure beyond Covid. However, many managers struggled
with the transition, focusing on analytical tasks and task-based activities at the expense of
people development and relationship management. To facilitate a more people-centered
approach, managers need to adopt tactics and consider systemic changes. The virtual working
environment exposes managers to the challenge of inspiring and enabling others.
Tutorial 4 : Managing Remotely

Unpacking Virtual Work’s Dual Effects on Employee

Well-Being: An Integrative Review and Future
Research Agenda - Hill
Over the past two decades, virtual work has experienced explosive growth, with dispersed
employees interacting using technology-mediated communication (TMC). This shift has been
identified as one of the biggest business trends in the coming years. However, research
suggests that virtual work can significantly change employees' work characteristics, with both
negative and positive implications for their psychological well-being.

Currently, there is a lack of comprehensive understanding of well-being in virtual work due

to research occurring in siloes and related to different virtual work domains. A comprehensive
review of 115 quantitative and qualitative studies focused on employees' psychological well-
being in virtual work shows that virtual work influences well-being by changing employees'
perceptions of their work characteristics.

To address this, a work design theoretical lens was applied to develop an integrative
framework for understanding how virtual work both helps and harms well-being by
influencing perceived work characteristics. The framework integrates the siloes in virtual
work research by examining the effects of four subdimensions of technology dependence
(communication leanness, asynchronicity, technical complexity, and flexible connectivity)
and three subdimensions of dispersion (spatial distance, temporal distance, and out-of-office
context).

The framework also addresses calls to extend work design theorizing to reflect the
Tutorial 4 : Managing Remotely

contemporary workplace by contextualizing the integrated work design framework (IWDF)

for virtual work settings. It identifies mediating work characteristics in four categories: task,
knowledge, social, and work context.

Finally, the framework shows that the same subdimension can influence well-being both
positively and negatively, highlighting the importance of understanding factors that determine
the strength of these opposing effects. This highlights the need for interventions at different
levels to enhance virtual work's benefits for employees' well-being and mitigate its
downsides.
Literature review
The review explores the psychological well-being in virtual work, focusing on the differential
impacts of virtual work subdimensions on different types of well-being outcomes and the
pathways through which these effects occur. The review includes more studies on this topic
than in past reviews and is the first to explicate the differential impacts of virtual work
subdimensions on different types of well-being outcomes and the pathways through which
these effects occur. The definition of virtual work at the individual level is defined as any
work interaction with others that is not conducted in person (face-to-face) and that uses
technology tools to transfer thoughts and ideas. Two core dimensions of virtual work are
technology dependence and dispersion. Technology dependence refers to the extent to which
work interactions are mediated by technology rather than occurring in-person, while
dispersion refers to the degree to which virtual work occurs at a distance from different
locations. The review makes two key assumptions: the degree of virtuality in a job lies on a
continuum from low to high, and technology dependence and dispersion are distinct
dimensions.

Psychological well-being, defined as "feeling good and experiencing fulfillment and

purpose," is the most commonly examined aspect of employee well-being. It is influenced by
two philosophical perspectives: hedonic well-being, which focuses on pleasure attainment
and pain avoidance, and eudaimonic well-being, which focuses on the pursuit of meaning,
authenticity, and self-realization. Virtual work has been studied to understand its impact on
both hedonic and eudaimonic well-being outcomes.

Employee well-being research has often focused on hedonic concepts, such as job satisfaction
and the absence of negative experiences, while eudaimonic well-being includes experiences
such as thriving, work engagement, and effective functioning in life. Poor eudaimonic
functioning can lead to work-family conflict and loneliness.

Conclusion
Virtual work is becoming “an essential and increasingly common element of conducting
business” — even more so because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, managers need to
understand how to maximize their employees’ psychological well-being in different virtual
work arrangements. Toward this goal, we have applied a work design theoretical lens to
Tutorial 4 : Managing Remotely

develop an integrative framework based on a synthesis of 115 empirical studies. Our

framework illuminates how subdimensions of technology dependence and dispersion
differentially relate to hedonic and eudaimonic well-being outcomes through positive and
negative effects on perceived task, knowledge, social, and work context characteristics,
including multilevel contingencies of these effects. Our proposed agenda for future research
promises to help promote higher levels of well-being in an expanding virtual workforce.

Navigating In A Jungle Of Paradoxical Tensions -

Koksha
The digitalization of the workplace has led to paradoxical tensions and challenges for
individuals and organizations. This is due to the increasing presence of digital technologies,
which have transformed social interactions, business opportunities, and the pace of change in
the workplace. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the adoption of digital technologies
and paved the way for a lasting transformation of work.

Digital technologies can have different effects on the nature of work, such as converging
work, transforming work, and transforming the organization. However, the emerging
complexity brought by engaging with digital technologies can lead to negative outcomes for
individuals, such as technostress caused by information technology.

The paradox perspective emphasizes interdependencies between individual-level and multiple

tensions, as organizations face multiple situations where they must make choices between
opposing alternatives. To activate tensions' synergetic potential, individuals need to recognize
the complex relationships between their opposing elements.

An example of a tension in the digital workplace is the autonomy paradox, which illustrates
how digital communication tools provide high levels of flexibility while creating the pressure
of constant connectivity and availability.
Tutorial 4 : Managing Remotely

This study aims to explore the diffusion of digital technologies in the white-collar workplace
and the tensions and related paradoxes they create. Results indicate that with higher exposure
to digital technologies, managers experience individual- and meta-level paradoxes. Managers
have distinct coping mechanisms for these paradoxes, such as rules, mores, and subjective
solution spaces.

To develop effective coping mechanisms, managers need to think holistically about how to
cope with paradoxes, both individual and joint, and enable their teams to create awareness
and cope with the multiple levels of paradox tensions caused by digital technologies in the
workplace.
The increasingly Digital Workplace
COVID-19 and lockdown measures have significantly accelerated the development of digital
and virtual work, leading to increased comfort and acceptance of physical distance from
teams. Many organizations are transitioning to hybrid workplaces that combine virtual and
on-location work, while others like Twitter are transitioning to 100% digital work. Digital
technologies have the potential to improve efficiency and productivity, with innovations like
digital assistants and chatbots assisting workers through real-time feedback. However, the
increasing use of digital technologies at work has its downsides, such as the disclosure of
email habits and workflows, which can be costly and time-consuming.

Chatbots have been shown to reduce a firm's need for human workers, with some companies
like TD Ameritrade not hiring new human customer service agents since they started using
chatbots in 2017. Additionally, machines have the influence to learn by observing human
workers and tracking their actions, potentially influencing rewards or punishments. The
blurred boundaries between work and personal life during the lockdown have led to increased
levels of technostress and Zoom fatigue among employees. These examples highlight the
tensions created by digital technologies in the workplace, raising the question of what we
truly know about paradoxical tensions in the digital workplace.
Paradoxical Tensions in the Digital Workplace
A paradox is a contradiction of competing elements that appear logical but are inconsistent
when juxtaposed. These interdependent elements simultaneously oppose and support each
other in a dynamic and interwoven manner. Paradoxes cannot be solved by splitting and
choosing, and require a simultaneous balancing of the opposing poles. Recent research has
identified several potentially interrelated paradoxes in the use of digital technologies in the
workplace, such as the autonomy paradox, distraction-focus paradox, and the reliance on
machines to distinguish real from fake news.

Digitalization affects individuals by shaping personal habits, interests, and work routines,
leading to increased professional commitment and challenges to work-life balance. The
paradox literature has focused on exploring the tensions and related coping mechanisms at
the organizational level, but more work is needed to understand how individuals engage with
Tutorial 4 : Managing Remotely

paradoxical tensions and the level of support required from their organizations to help them
cope. The tensions caused by the digitization of the workplace and how managers develop
mechanisms to deal with these tensions are still in the early stages of understanding.
Findings: Individual – level paradox
The autonomy paradox is a challenge faced by managers in managing the increasing
accessibility of digital tools to their teams and organizations. While these tools can improve
interactions and collaboration efficiency, they also cause stress due to constant availability
and expectations of immediate responses. To address this, managers often focus on regaining
control over their time and managing expectations differently.

The information paradox involves balancing the increasing availability of data with the risks
and challenges of information overload and transparency. Managers must manage the top-
down information push to avoid needless information overload, focusing on job roles and
providing the right amount of information to different populations. Individuals must also
manage their information pull by focusing on their mission and the level of detail needed to
excel in their job.

In conclusion, the autonomy paradox and information paradox are significant issues that
managers must navigate in today's digital landscape. While digital tools can improve
interactions and collaboration efficiency, they also present challenges such as information
overload and transparency. Managers must balance these challenges by focusing on
individual needs and addressing the information overload that arises from the increased
accessibility of digital tools. By doing so, they can ensure that their teams and employees are
well-equipped to handle the demands of the digital age.

The interaction paradox refers to the increased efficiency gained by using digital
communication and collaboration methods. Interviewees appreciate the benefits of digital
interaction, such as reduced travel costs and time, and the ability to involve more people.
However, they also face challenges such as handling sensitive or conflict-laden issues,
resulting in more conflicts and frustrations with technology not supporting their work to the
degree it should.

To address this paradox, interviewees emphasize the need to define and implement rules and
social etiquette of personal behavior when using digital means of interaction. These rules
often emerge from the bottom up, leading the team to take care of adherence to their own
agreements. They also stress the need for discipline and empathy to compensate for the lack
of personal interaction.

Despite the benefits of digital interaction, there is still a need for physical, face-to-face
interaction. Trusting each other and understanding each other within a team requires spending
time together, which cannot be achieved through Skype. Managers also perceive the necessity
for physical co-location to avoid misunderstandings and solve complex challenges.
Tutorial 4 : Managing Remotely

In conclusion, while digital communication has its advantages, it is essential for managers to
maintain a balance between digital and physical interaction to ensure effective
communication and collaboration.
Meta – level paradoxes
The opportunity paradox is a challenge managers face in balancing the advantages of digital
technologies with the perceptions of raising pressure and stress to engage in those
opportunities and choose the right ones. Digital tools provide managers with more data and
help them connect with experts, but it is becoming increasingly difficult to make the right
choice. The increasing pace of development makes it difficult to concentrate on any one
thing, and people feel pressured to constantly make choices while being afraid of missing out.

To deal with the opportunity paradox, managers must constantly focus and prioritize,
focusing on doing less but doing it in greater depth and with more attention. They also
emphasize focusing on doing less but doing it in depth instead of investigating everything
superficially.

The engagement paradox describes managers' struggles to balance the growing interest and
pressure around engaging with digital technologies with handling the uncertainty that digital
technologies bring to the workplace. Interviewees generally expressed a more balanced view
on workplace developments, stating that some populations, such as operators, technicians,
and drivers, can easily adopt digital tools, while others may feel excluded.

Involving people who fear the future is challenging, as they are afraid of what it means for
themselves, their tasks, and roles. Learning about digital services is intuitive and less
complex, but people still do not engage in it with optimistic expectations about the
technology's impact.
Discussion
The transformational potential of digital technologies is likely to increase the magnitude of
tensions in workplaces that will become more digitally driven. Five paradox tensions,
including autonomy, interaction, and information paradoxes, occur at the individual level as
managers are increasingly exposed to digital technologies. Meta-paradoxes arise when
workplace technologies challenge the nature and meaning of work and are more complex to
understand and embrace.

When individual-level tensions occur, employees react with coping mechanisms at the
individual and collective levels by establishing rules and mores that create subjective
solutions spaces. These coping strategies are similar across all three individual-level
paradoxes identified in the study.

The autonomy paradox occurs when individuals perceive increased autonomy and flexibility
gains but suffer from being overly accessible to their organization and co-workers. Digital
technologies create multiple benefits, such as establishing new connections between people,
Tutorial 4 : Managing Remotely

computers, and objects, but also lead to increased accessibility and a loss of boundaries
between work and home environments. Managers experience the autonomy paradox
personally and feel impelled to help their teams deal with this tension. Solutions proposed at
the collective level include rules for digital interactions and introduction of in-person
interactions in largely digital work environments.

The information paradox encapsulates the tensions individuals experience between the
benefits of having vastly more information at their fingertips and the downsides of increasing
levels of control and fatigue when exposed to large quantities of information. Organizations
with higher levels of exposure to digital technologies show that they are better prepared to
deal with the tensions by having coping strategies in place to help deal with tensions when
they become salient or keeping them at bay with effective rules and mores.

Meta-level paradoxes are unintended and unexpected changes in work patterns and nature,
arising at different levels. These paradoxes are difficult to deal with and require organizations
to configure new practices and learn new ways of working. In organizations with low
exposure to digital technologies, there is no indication of the existence or awareness of such
meta-level paradoxes.

The opportunity paradox captures the tension emerging from the increasing variety of options
and choices provided by digital technologies, which can lead to freedom of choice but also
pressure to make the right choices. Managers must constantly prioritize, learn to say "no" to
opportunities, guide employees in establishing their priorities, and follow up on them.

The increasing engagement with technologies creates opportunities for individuals to delegate
repetitive tasks to machines, but it can also lead to a fear of replacement. This leads to an
engagement paradox, which captures individuals' struggles between engaging in activities
that drive the changes caused by digital technologies and preventing potential personal
disadvantages, particularly being replaced by technology.

Organization-level responses can further enhance coping strategies and perception of the
paradoxes. By paying attention to the paradoxical nature of ambidextrous organizational
designs, managers can be ready to deal with employees' coping mechanisms regarding the
tensions inherent in the design.

Future work needs to examine the effect of organizational design choices on how managers
and their teams experience paradoxes. Overall, managing meta-level paradoxes requires
understanding the complexities of digital technology use, coping mechanisms, and
organizational design choices.
Conclusion
The paradox perspective has become crucial in understanding and guiding contemporary
organizations due to the increasing competition, global changes, and shifts to digital work
environments. The complexity of digital technologies intensifies paradox tensions, leading to
Tutorial 4 : Managing Remotely

more complex and interwoven paradoxes. Middle managers face high exposure to these
paradoxes, as they lead teams through change processes. The study identifies five paradoxes:
autonomy, interaction, information, opportunity, and engagement. These paradoxes occur
simultaneously and interdependently within a nested, hierarchical structure. Understanding
these meta-level paradox tensions is essential for developing effective coping strategies.
Interrelated coping mechanisms are necessary to navigate through the jungle of paradoxes.

Summary Larson et al. - A Guide to Managing Your

(Newly) Remote Workers
In response to the uncertainties presented by Covid-19, many companies and universities have asked
their employees to work remotely. there are specific, research-based steps that managers can take
without great effort to improve the engagement and productivity of remote employees, even when
there is little time to prepare.

Common challenges of remote work

Challenges inherent in remote work include:

 Lack of face-to-face supervision

 Lack of access to information (from coworkers).
 Social isolation  loneliness.
 Distractions at home.

How Managers Can Support Remote Employees

There are relatively quick and inexpensive things that managers can do to ease the transition:

 Establish structured daily check-ins.

 Provide several different communication technology options  richer technology than email
alone. Also, messaging that is simpler, less formal, and less time-sensitive.
 Establish “rules of engagement”: set expectations for frequency, means, and ideal timing of
communication.
 Provide opportunities for remote social interaction  informal
 Offer encouragement and emotional support: it is important for managers to acknowledge
stress, listen to employees’ anxieties and concerns, and empathize with their struggles.