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Edited by
Svein Bergum · Pascale Peters · Tone Vold

Virtual Management
and the New Normal
New Perspectives on
HRM and Leadership
since the COVID-19
Pandemic
 Virtual Management and the New Normal

“This is a timely and important book since responses to Covid-19 marked a

juncture in how human resources are managed, particularly where work is done.
It brings together an impressive set of contributions offering insights from
research conducted in public and private sector organisations across a number of
European countries. Its focus on what can be learned from experiences of remote
working during this time and resulting implications for future ways of working
in a post-lockdown world, means that it represents an invaluable resource for
researchers, policy makers and managers as organisations adjust to a new
normal.”
—Clare Kelliher, Professor of Work and Organisation, Cranfield School
of Management, Cranfield University, UK

“When the idea of ‘telecommuting’ was introduced 50 years ago, the notion that
people should be allowed and enabled to work remotely instead of travelling to
a traditional office seemed both obvious and far-fetched, as veteran telework
guru Jack Nilles outlines in his foreword to this excellent edited volume. Despite
tremendous advances in technology and work organisation, the fundamental
challenges surrounding remote working have hardly changed. What has changed,
however, is the wealth of knowledge that is now available to deal with these to
make virtual management both effective and beneficial for all, which is sum-
marized in this outstanding book.”
—Karsten Gareis, Senior Project Manager and Researcher,
empirica GmbH, Bonn, Germany
 Svein Bergum • Pascale Peters
Tone Vold
Editors

Virtual Management
and the New Normal
New Perspectives on HRM and
Leadership since the COVID-19
Pandemic
Editors
Svein Bergum Pascale Peters
Inland Norway University of Applied Inland Norway University of
Sciences Applied Sciences
Lillehammer, Norway Breukelen, Norway

Tone Vold
Inland Norway University of Applied
Sciences
Rena, Norway

ISBN 978-3-031-06812-6    ISBN 978-3-031-06813-3 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-06813-3

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature
Switzerland AG 2023
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether
the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of
illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and
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The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication
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 Foreword

Jack M. Nilles, “the Father of Telecommuting”

Evolving Telework
The Beginning

In the 1960s and early 1970s—those were my rocket scientist days—I

often wondered how the technology we used for space could be applied
to real-world situations. As part of my search in 1971 I came across a
regional planner who said to me, “If you people can put a man on the
moon, then why can’t you do something about traffic? Why can’t you just
keep people off the freeways?” It was a revelation to me. Why not indeed?
I started to examine the problem from the first principles. Why do we
have traffic, particularly rush-hour traffic? It turned out that a large pro-
portion of rush-hour traffic comprises people driving to or from their
homes and their workplaces. What do they do when they get to their
workplaces? A little research showed that almost half of them were work-
ing in offices. What do they do when they get to their offices? A substan-
tial amount of their time, at least in 1971, was spent on the phone talking
to someone somewhere else.

v
vi Foreword

If that is the case, I thought, then why can they not just phone from
home and save the trips, not to mention gas costs, energy waste, air pol-
lution, and depreciation to their cars?
I happened to be the secretary of my aerospace engineering company’s
research committee at that time. I asked the committee members to
spend some effort and funds on the idea of substituting telecommunica-
tions (the telephone) for transportation (the freeways). They asked me
what I would need to do to conduct the research. I said that we would
probably need to hire a psychologist or two and maybe an economist—
we already had many engineers—to examine the implications of this
rearrangement of work. Their response was disappointing. “We are an
engineering company. We don’t want to deal with this touchy-feely stuff.”
I could not convince them otherwise.
I was complaining about this reaction to a friend of mine who taught
in the School of Engineering at the University of Southern California
(USC). I told him that USC had the right kind of people to do this
research, whereas my engineering company did not. Shortly thereafter, I
repeated my assessment to the Executive Vice President of the university.
He asked, “Why don’t you do it here?” So, I left the engineering company
and went to USC to become its first director of Interdisciplinary Program
Development. My job was to develop and manage research programmes
that involved multiple schools of the university.
As part of that job, I applied to the National Science Foundation for a
grant entitled, Development of Policy on the Telecommunications-­
Transportation Tradeoff. I got the grant and my chance to test my ideas in
the real world. My team, comprising university faculty from the Schools
of Engineering, Communication, and Business, enlisted the support of a
major national insurance company. The insurance company’s motivation
had nothing to do with our attempt to test our theory. Their objective
was simply to reduce the rate at which employees left the company. They
were willing to try distributing their workers into satellite offices near
where they lived, instead of requiring them to come into the company’s
downtown offices every day.
In the test project, the output of the employees’ work in the satellite
offices was transmitted to in-office minicomputer concentrators. The
minicomputers uploaded each day’s work to the company’s mainframes
 Foreword vii

every night. The project ran from 1973 through 1974, and was a resound-
ing success. Worker productivity and job satisfaction increased, along
with other positive indicators, and none of the employees involved in the
project left. We estimated that the company could save several million
(1973) dollars annually by broadly adopting our design.
Early in the project, I decided to call the process telecommuting or tele-
working, depending on the audience, to make it more understandable to
people than the telecommunications-transportation tradeoff. A book based
on the project was published in 1976 in the US and 1977 in Japan.
To my dismay, the project did not continue. The company manage-
ment was concerned that, if their workforce continued to be scattered
around the region, it would be too easy for them to be unionized. A few
months later, I spoke with a planner for the AFL/CIO about our research.
He also said that telecommuting was a terrible idea. Why? Because, if the
workers were scattered all over the region, how could they be organized
by the union? Both rejected telecommuting, though for completely
opposite reasons. I was getting the idea that telecommuting might be a
bit too radical for both groups, as fear of change seemed to be an issue.

The Middle

Then there began a series of requests for research funding, trials, and
demonstrations of telecommuting in the real world. In the 1980s, we
enlisted the support of a number of Fortune 100 companies, many of
which adopted telecommuting for their own employees. While giving us
data on how well telecommuting was working in large US corporations,
those projects produced another problem. Like the initial project with
the insurance company, we were not allowed to divulge the names of our
participants. Therefore, when executives of prospective telecommuting-­
adoptive companies asked who else was doing this, all we could say was
“Fortune 100 companies.”
In the meantime, the technology of the telecommunications infra-
structure was rapidly improving. In 1973, the option for telecommuting
from home was out of the question since the telephone system could not
provide the necessary transmission bandwidths at a reasonable price.
viii Foreword

With the introduction of the IBM PC in 1981, the technology landscape

suddenly grew brighter for home-based telecommuting. The PC pro-
vided the office at home, thereby reducing the need for always-on con-
nectivity, while faster modems allowed ever easier communications to the
traditional office.
Yet, we still had the same fundamental problem in expanding the use of
telecommuting. We quickly learned that enlisting potential telecommuters
was no problem. However, attracting their management, particularly mid-
dle managers, was another issue altogether since we could not point to
specific companies to say, “The Xers have adopted telecommuting and are
enthusiastic about it.” We would point out telecommuting’s improvements
in productivity reduced the use of sick leave, reduced turnover, and dimin-
ished facilities costs for very little in up-front investment. The response was
often, “It may work for X, but it won’t work for us.” The idea that managers
might not be able to check on their employees’ progress was a clear issue.
“How do I know they’re working if I can’t see them?” [Yet, once that reluc-
tance was overcome, and the managers were trained to think about perfor-
mance differently, telecommuting generally became a great success.]
Frustrated by all this reluctance, we tried another tack by going to
government agencies. With governments involved in telecommuting, we
could run the demonstration projects and release the data publicly. In the
late 1980s and early 1990s, we and others had successful projects with
state and municipal governments. After these projects, several people
have learned to design and run successful telework projects, both in
industry and in government. We knew how to manage them successfully
and developed the tools. I even wrote some books on the details; fore-
most among them is Managing Telework: Strategies for Managing the
Virtual Workforce. My wife Laila and I spent a considerable amount of
time in Europe, under the auspices of the European Commission, and in
Asia in the 1990s giving presentations about telework.
Yet, as the saying goes, the other shoe did not drop. Many managers
were still reluctant to take a chance on telecommuting for the reason
already stated. After all, what you knew now may be troublesome, but
something new might be worse. Risk aversion was endemic, except in
many small- to medium-sized start-ups that got the message beginning in
the 1980s. Even IBM and Yahoo gave up telework in the twentieth
 Foreword ix

century, largely because of management errors for which telecommuting

was blamed (in my opinion).
So, what could be the secret sauce that would grab the attention of
CEOs everywhere? What is the sauce that would break their reluctance
to change?

The Dawn, Among Other Things, Breaks

The secret sauce is a microscopic virus called COVID-19. Essentially
overnight, the world learned how important it is to keep people isolated
from each other in order to avoid becoming infected with a severe, often
fatal, disease. For roughly half the workforce in developed countries, tele-
work, alias remote work, became the key to survival.
Even so, my first thought in March 2020 focused on all those millions
of people, managers and teleworkers alike, who were thrust into tele-
working without a clue as to how to do it. For many, it was a formidable
struggle, though for long-time teleworkers it was business as usual. Those
who adapted quickly learned to manage by results, not by visual observa-
tion. Now that effective vaccines have arrived, the panic has abated. So,
are we about to go back to business as it was before 2020?
I think not. Evidence is growing daily that a substantial number of
these newly bred teleworkers like it just fine, and do not want to go back
to that pre-2020 office environment—at least not full time. The new
“normal” is becoming a hybrid; a mixture of home-based and office-based
work, with the average about half time in each location. The office work-
space of the future also is a different concept than yesterday’s cacopho-
nous, dysfunctional rows of cubicles. It is morphing into a centre for
comfortable face-to-face communication, both formal and informal.
Much of the sensitive interpersonal communication is performed in the
office; the detailed, focused work is done at, or near, home.
The successful management of the future is not necessarily what you
are used to. But you may enjoy it more.

Los Angeles, CA, USA Jack M. Nilles

June 2021
 Preface

Since the 1970s, when the American engineer Jack Nilles coined the term
telecommuting, scholars like us have been interested in innovative ways
of working in which people can work away from their employer or prin-
ciple, enabled by information and communication technologies (ICT),
meanwhile reducing commuting time, and, hence, contributing to “a
good cause.” Since that time, expectations about the possibilities for
remote working, for example working from home, have been high. In
contrast to the dystopian views on alienation due to the lack of physical
human contact being replaced by machine-mediated connectivity, as pic-
tured in the short story “The Machine Stops” by E. M. Forster (1909),
futurologists, such as the American Alvin Toffler, known for his book
“The Third Wave” (1980), predicted that technology and new social
structures would drastically change our everyday lives. According to
Toffler, in the short-term, administrative staff would only travel to work
in Japan because the collectivist culture would not fit with working from
home. In the rest of the world, the work was expected “to come” to the
administrative staff, living in their home-centred societies, providing
opportunities for new forms of entrepreneurship. Due to the rise of work-
ing from home in “electronic cottages,” central offices would no longer
be needed.
During the 1980s and 1990s, there was a huge interest for telecom-
muting and telework, as an innovative means to decentralize work, and
xi
xii Preface

stimulate regional development. Concepts such as telework centres and

satellite offices were launched as alternatives to the home office. Then,
people could work closer to home, but share technology and maintain
social contact, which were seen as problems of individual work at home.
In the late 1990s and early 2000, the diffusion of mobile communication
and internet made work even more independent of time and space, and
concepts such as mobile telework and multi-locational work received
growing interest.
Despite high expectations and forecasts, in practice, changes in the
traditional way of working did not go as fast as expected. Many articles
about working from home, or remote working in general, including ours,
started by noticing that IT-mediated working was not as big a trend as
thought. Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands were runners in
front, partly because of their individualistic national cultures, advanced
infrastructure, trust-based leadership, and independent employees.
However, in those countries too, the number of home workers only rose
slightly over the past decades, and remained a privilege for some groups,
such as highly educated workers in knowledge-intensive industries.
Obviously, most organizations, managers, and people stuck to old rou-
tines; there was no urgent need to change the traditional way of working
and, in many cases, a loss of communication, control, coordination,
cooperation, cohesion, co-learning, commitment, coaching, and career
progress, to name some well-reported issues, were feared.
About 50 years after Nilles’ first experiments with telecommuting,
however, the tremendous health risks of the COVID-19 virus caused a
great breakthrough of working from home. Never had workers around
the globe worked from home on such a large scale, so intensively, so
inclusively, as during the lockdowns in the COVID-19 pandemic. Since
March 2020, previous discussions on the pros and cons of remote work-
ing, for employers, employees, their families, communities, and custom-
ers, and the way remote work and collaboration can be managed have
been rekindled.
This book is aimed at both scholars and practitioners who are inter-
ested in “where remote working is going after the COVID-19 pandemic.”
To further stimulate the scientific and societal conversations, and to
explore possible directions, the authors of the chapters of this book
 Preface xiii

present novel insights based on sound scholarly research. All of them

reflect on how the COVID-19 pandemic has caused disruptions in “the
world of work” in their particular contexts and the (potential) conse-
quences for organizations, employment relationships, HRM, leadership,
and people, both at the time of the pandemic and beyond. The general
belief is that governments and businesses will continue to focus on (part-­
time) remote working as the “new normal.” Although some contours of
the “new normal” may be visible, the question remains: Will the “new
normal” be a utopian or a dystopian, or perhaps both? The answer to this
question for a large part depends on human decision-making.
One of the triggers of the 1970s experiments with telecommuting was
the Yom Kippur War in the Middle-East, which led to scarcity of oil. In
the last stage of this volume being published, a new war has again affected
the oil prices (amongst other things) to a near staggering double over a
short period of time and is predicted to rise to the double of this within
a short period of time. Will this, combined with our experiences from the
COVID-19 pandemic, prepare for new remote working experiences? As
the cost of electricity in Europe has also risen dramatically, the cost of
commuting may influence on the number of employees choosing to work
from home, where this is provided as an option. Hopefully, this book will
be able to contribute towards insights for making decisions for the “new
normal.”
We sincerely hope that society has learned from the COVID-19 pan-
demic and that these insights provide “a window of opportunity” to real-
ize multiple values that can be strived for by adopting remote working.
Based on the insights from the chapters in this book, we can conclude in
any case that for the “new normal” to be sustainable, we need to consider
multiple societal, organizational, and individual values. In view of poten-
tial paradoxical tensions, we will argue that this demands a continuous
balancing act. Regarding “people,” we need to strive for health, safety,
work-family balance, and labour market and (gender) equalities, among
other values. Regarding “profit,” efficiency, innovation, and continuity
for organizations and people’s careers are important values. Regarding
“planet,” values such as environmental sustainability, diversity, and inclu-
siveness need to be considered.
xiv Preface

To conclude, we would like to thank all those who have contributed to

and supported the publication of this volume. First, we would like to
express our gratitude to all the authors for their cooperation and insight-
ful chapters. Second, we would like to thank the crew at Palgrave
Macmillan, Alec Selwyn, Mary Amala Divya Suresh, and Liz Barlow, for
their help throughout the project. Third, we would like to thank Jack
Nilles for his swift and valuable reply with a foreword to this manuscript.
Fourth, we would like to thank our universities, Inland Norway University
of Applied Sciences in Norway and Nyenrode Business Universiteit, in
the Netherlands, for their support during the process. Last, but not least,
we are thankful for the warm support from our spouses Ingebjørg,
Hendrik, and Yngvar.

Lillehammer, Norway Svein Bergum

Geldermalsen, The Netherlands  Pascale Peters
Rena, Norway  Tone Vold
June 2022
 Contents

1 I ntroduction  1
Svein Bergum, Pascale Peters, and Tone Vold

Part I Reflections on Remote Working in the Past and Future

and the Impact on the Organizational Level: Remote
Working Pre-Pandemic and Post-Pandemic  15

2 Three
 Organizational Perspectives on the Adoption of
Telework 17
Tor Helge Pedersen and Svein Bergum

3 Shaping
 Hybrid Collaborating Organizations 39
Jeroen van der Velden and Frank Lekanne Deprez

4 Constructing
 New Organizational Identities in a Post-­
pandemic Return: Managerial Dilemmas in Balancing the
Spatial Redesign of Telework with Workplace Dynamics
and the External Imperative for Flexibility 59
Siri Yde Aksnes, Anders Underthun, and Per Bonde Hansen

xv
xvi Contents

5 How
 Working Remotely for an Indefinite Period Affects
Resilient Trust Between Manager and Employee 79
Marianne Alvestad Skogseth and Svein Bergum

6 Exploring
 Virtual Management and HRM in Thin
Organizational Places During the COVID-19 Pandemic 99
Mikael Ring

Part II Reflections on How to Manage Hybrid Working:

HRM and Leadership 119

7 
The Employment Relationship Amidst and Beyond the
COVID-19 Pandemic: The Role of (Responsible)
Inclusive Leadership in Managing Psychological
Contracts121
Melanie De Ruiter and Rene Schalk

8 Human
 Resource Management in Times of the
Pandemic: Clustering HR Managers’ Use of
High-Performance Work Systems141
Ann-Kristina Løkke and Marie Freia Wunderlich

9 
Changes in Learning Tensions Among Geographically
Distributed HR Advisors During the COVID-19
Pandemic161
Svein Bergum and Ole Andreas Skogsrud Haukåsen

10 Old
 Normal, New Normal, or Renewed Normal: How
COVID-19 Changed Human Resource Development181
Eduardo Tomé and Diana Costa

11 How
 Can Organizations Improve Virtual Onboarding?
Key Learnings from the Pandemic203
Marcello Russo, Gabriele Morandin, and Claudia Manca
 Contents xvii

12 Onboarding
 and Socialization Under COVID-19 Crisis:
A Knowledge Management Perspective223
Hanne Haave, Aristidis Kaloudis, and Tone Vold

13 Leadership
 in Hybrid Workplaces: A Win-Win for
Work-­Innovation and Work-Family Balance Through
Work-­Related Flow?243
Robin Edelbroek, Martine Coun, Pascale Peters,
and Robert J. Blomme

Part III Reflections on Outcomes of Remote Working 267

14 Dual
 Role of Leadership in ‘Janus-Faced’ Telework
from Home269
Matti Vartiainen

15 Security
 Issues at the Time of the Pandemic and
Distance Work291
Reima Suomi and Brita Somerkoski

16 Eroding
 Boundaries and Creeping Control: “Digital
Regulation” as New Normal Work313
Ariane Ollier-Malaterre

17 COVID-19
 “Passports” and the Safe Return to Work:
Consideration for HR Professionals on How to
Navigate This New Responsibility333
Aizhan Tursunbayeva and Claudia Pagliari

18 P
 erceived Lockdown Intensity, Work-­Family Conflict
and Work Engagement: The Importance of Family
Supportive Supervisor Behaviour During the COVID-19
Crisis359
Marloes van Engen, Pascale Peters, and Frederike van de Water
xviii Contents

19 S
 ustainable Leadership and Work-­Nonwork Boundary
Management and in a Changing World of Work383
Christin Mellner

20 Epilogue:
 The Future of Work and How to Organize
and Manage It405
Svein Bergum, Pascale Peters, and Tone Vold

I ndex435
 Notes on Contributors

Siri Yde Aksnes studied social anthropology at the University of Oslo

and holds a PhD in Social Policies from Oslo Metropolitan University.
She is a senior researcher at the Work Research Institute, OsloMet. Her
main fields of interests range from welfare politics and labour market
inclusion to teleworking and the flexible working life.
Svein Bergum is Associate Professor of Organization and Management
at the Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences (HINN), Faculty of
Economics and Social Science. He has been a visiting academic at the
New York University Interactive Telecommunications Program and has
been the leader of research projects financed by the Norwegian and
Swedish Research Council on remote leadership and the role of middle
managers in digital transformation.
Robert J. Blomme is Full Professor of Organization Behavior and Full
Professor Management and Organization at the Open University
Netherlands. Also, he is a visiting professor at a diversity of (inter)national.
Recipient of awards and research grants, he published peer-­reviewed arti-
cles in highly ranked journals, academic books, and book chapters.
Diana Costa is a PhD student in Management. Previously she did a
master’s in tourism and hotel management and a double degree in tour-

xix
xx Notes on Contributors

ism plus hotel management. All the courses happened at Universidade

Europeia, Lisbon.
Martine Coun (PhD) is Assistant Professor of Organisation Studies at
the Faculty of Management Sciences (Open University, Netherlands). In
her research she focusses on leadership behaviour in remote and hybrid
work contexts and the consequences for collaboration in organizations.
She published her work in, for example, European Management Journal,
Frontiers of Psychology, International Journal of Human Resource
Management, and Journal of Leadership Studies.
Melanie De Ruiter is Associate Professor of Work and Organizational
Psychology at Nyenrode Business University. Her research mainly focuses
on psychological contracts, leadership, motivation, and well-being. She is
associate editor of Human Resource Development Quarterly and serves on
the editorial review boards of Journal of Applied Behavioral Science and
Journal of Managerial Psychology.
Robin Edelbroek , MSc, holds a position as a part-time PhD candidate
at Nyenrode Business Universiteit, where he researches innovative work-­
behaviour in inter-organizational and hybrid (remote) working contexts.
He has co-authored and published several articles in international peer-­
reviewed journals such as Journal of General Management and Frontiers in
Psychology.
Hanne Haave is a researcher and lecturer at the Inland Norway University
of Applied Sciences, Inland School of Business and Social Sciences, having
lectured quantitative and qualitative data collection methods for several
years. Besides being a project manager in several large research projects,
she has been conducting important gender research. She is doing research
into student active methods and game-based learning.
Per Bonde Hansen is a senior researcher at the Work Research Institute,
Oslo Metropolitan University. He holds a PhD in History from the
University of Oslo. Main research interests include industrial relations,
(non-)standard employment, and labour history.
Ole Andreas Haukåsen is a PhD candidate in Innovation and Services
in Public and Private Sector in Department of Economics and Social
 Notes on Contributors xxi

Sciences, Inland University of Applied Sciences, Norway. His PhD

focuses on innovation across distributed organizations.
Aristidis Kaloudis is Full Professor at The Norwegian University of
Science and Technology (NTNU), Department of Industrial Economics
and Technology Management in Norway. His research interests are within
innovation policy, forecasting with AI, skills policy, and research policy.
He is a senior editor of the Springer publication Journal of the Knowledge
Economy, and has co-edited and contributed to several books, as well as
authored and co-authored numerous journal articles and reports.
Frank Lekanne Deprez supports (inter)national organizations to maxi-
mize human dividend by focusing on human contributions that have a
valuable and sustainable impact. He is partner of Better Organizations
and founder & owner of ZeroSpace Advies. From 2006 to 2021 he was
Assistant Professor of People Management and Organization Design at
Nyenrode Business University.
Ann-Kristina Løkke (PhD) is an associate professor at Aarhus
University. Her main research interests lie in the field of human resource
management and its impact on employee well-being and attendance
behaviour. She has published in journals such as The International Journal
of Human Resource Management, Public Management Review, and Review
of Public Personnel Administration.
Claudia Manca is an assistant professor at University of Bologna and
co-director of the Master of Studies in Human Resource and Organization
at Bologna Business School. Her research revolves around the latest
trends of injecting mobility and flexibility in the place of work, and how
these are affecting the way people create and navigate their social lives at
work and beyond.
Christin Mellner (PhD) is Researcher, and Senior Lecturer in Work-
and Organizational Psychology at the Department of Psychology,
Stockholm University, Sweden. Her research focuses on new ways of
working practices, sustainable leadership, and the role of mindfulness-
and compassion-based interventions, as related to work-nonwork bound-
ary management, recovery, health, and work-life balance.
xxii Notes on Contributors

Gabriele Morandin is Professor of Leadership at the Department of

Management of the University of Bologna, Italy, where he is the Director
of the Bachelor in Business Administration. He has been Visiting Scholar
and Research Assistant at the University of Michigan, USA; he is Visiting
Professor at Kedge Business School, France, and Associate Dean at
Bologna Business School, Italy.
Ariane Ollier-Malaterre (PhD) is a management professor at the
University of Quebec at Montreal (ESG-UQAM), Canada. Her research
examines boundaries between work and life across different national con-
texts, with a focus on the regulation of digital technologies. She has
received the Kanter Award for Excellence in Work-Family Research and
co-chairs the Technology, Work and Family research community of the
Work and Family Researchers Network.
Claudia Pagliari is an associate professor at the University of Edinburgh,
UK, where she leads the interdisciplinary Global eHealth Research
Group. Her recent research includes aspects of COVID-19 technologies
and workforce informatics, as well as their ethical and governance impli-
cations. She is a co-founder and theme leader of the NHS Digital
Academy, an executive leadership initiative sponsored by the UK
Government. She also holds a number of external advisory roles and con-
sultancies, most recently with the World Health Organization, the
European Centres for Disease Control, the Scottish Government, and
various EU and international research agencies.
Tor Helge Pedersen is an associate professor at Inland Business School,
Inland Norway University College of Applied Sciences, Lillehammer,
Norway. He received his PhD in Political Science from University of
Tromsø in 2009. His main research areas are within public administra-
tion, organization, and innovation.
Pascale Peters is Full Professor of Strategic Human Resource Management
at Nyenrode Business Universiteit in the Netherlands. She is a member of
the editorial board of Tijdschrift voor Arbeidsvraagstukken and involved in
Holland Management Review. She publishes on topics including the con-
temporary and sustainable organization of work, sustainable HRM, work-
life balance, and boundary management. She is also a Visiting Professor at
the Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences, Norway.
 Notes on Contributors xxiii

Mikael Ring (PhD) is Associate Professor of Human Geography at the

Department of Pedagogics and Special Education, Gothenburg University
Sweden. He has done a wide range of research within regional develop-
ment, organizational development and change, rural development, urban
planning, pedagogics, and disability.
Marcello Russo is Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior at the
Department of Management of the University of Bologna, Italy, and
Director of the Global MBA at Bologna Business School. He is Visiting
Professor at Kedge Business School, France. His research revolves around
the management of the work-life interface and the onboarding of personnel.
René Schalk is associated with the departments of Human Resource
Studies and Tranzo of Tilburg University, the Netherlands. He is extraor-
dinary professor at the Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences
of North-West University, South Africa. His research interests cover
human resources, organization studies, social work, and well-being.
Marianne Alvestad Skogseth has been working with HR for 20 years.
Since 2008 she has been an HR-manager in the Oslo Municipality. She
has held HR-positions in many different Agencies and Districts. She leads
the HR-section in the Agency for Cultural Affairs. In 2021, she completed
her Master Degree in Public Administration at the Inland Norway
University of Applied Sciences. Her Master Thesis was about virtual man-
agement and whether it is possible to maintain trust at distance.
Brita Somerkoski works as senior research fellow in the Department of
Teacher Education, University of Turku, Finland. Brita’s current research
is about fire safety for early education-aged children as well as school
safety and security issues. Her other research areas are occupational safety,
COVID-19 epidemic and consequences, gamification, injuries, learning
outcomes, and curriculum research.
Reima Suomi is Professor of Information Systems Science at the
University of Turku, Finland. His main research interests focus on health-
care information systems and inter-organizational information systems,
eGovernment as well as on different governance structures for informa-
xxiv Notes on Contributors

tion systems management. For 20 years, he has headed the work on the
conference series Well-being in the Information Society (WIS).
Eduardo Tomé did his PhD in Economics in 2001 at the University of
Lisbon. Since then he lectured in a number of Portuguese Universities.
He has published, participated in conferences and organized conferences
in the area of intangibles, namely about Human Resource Development,
Knowledge Management, and Intellectual Capital.
Aizhan Tursunbayeva is an assistant professor at the University of
Naples Parthenope, Italy. Her previous professional roles include Assistant
Professor at the University of Twente, Netherlands, Management
Consultant at KPMG Advisory, Italy, and Manager at HSBC Bank
(Canada, UK, Poland, Kazakhstan). She teaches Organizational Design,
Human Resource Management (HRM), and People Analytics. Her
research lies at the intersection of HRM, technology, innovation, and
healthcare.
Anders Underthun is Research Professor of Economic Geography and
Working Life Studies at the Work Research Institute, Oslo Metropolitan
University. He holds a PhD in Human Geography from The Norwegian
University of Science and Technology in Trondheim. Underthun’s
research interests include atypical employment, flexible work arrange-
ments, and industrial relations.
Jeroen van der Velden is Associate Professor of Strategy and
Transformation and Director of the Centre for Strategy, Organisation
and Leadership at Nyenrode Business Universiteit. As a researcher and
advisor, he has been involved in the introduction of virtual teamworking
in multiple large International Corporations. His main interests are stra-
tegic and digital transformation and new ways of working.
Frederike van de Water (MSc) graduated on the topic Perceived
Lockdown Intensity and Work Engagement with an 8.4 average from
Nyenrode Business University, the Netherlands. During her Master in
Management she specialized in Global Strategy. She is a full-time consul-
tant where her passion lies by helping companies in redefining their cus-
 Notes on Contributors xxv

tomer relationship and thus leading companies to become more

client-centric organizations.
Marloes van Engen is Associate Professor in Strategic Human Resource
Management at the Institute for Management Research at Radboud
University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands. She is also a member of Radboud’s
Work-Life consortium and of the Gender and Power in Management and
Politics hotspot. Her passion in teaching and research lies in understanding
and managing Diversity, Equality and Inclusion in Organizations, and in
sustainability in Work and Care. She is a multidisciplinary scholar using a
range of quantitative, qualitative, and action research methods. She has
published in the Academy of Management Annals, Psychological Bulletin,
Leadership Quarterly, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, Career Development
International, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes,
International Journal of Human Research Management, and others.
Matti Vartiainen is Senior Advisor, Professor (emer.) of Work and
Organizational Psychology at the Department of Industrial Engineering
and Management, Aalto University School of Science. His research inter-
ests focus on psychological and social-psychological phenomena in orga-
nizational innovations, digital work, new ways of hybrid, remote, mobile
and multi-locational work, distributed virtual teams and organizations.
These phenomena are studies from the action regulation theory view-
point. In addition, the role of collaborative digital platforms supporting
knowledge building and future competencies is of interest.
Tone Vold lectures at the Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences,
Norway, in courses within digitalization of workforms and knowledge man-
agement, and is particularly interested in knowledge management, e-learn-
ing, and games for learning. Her PhD is about work relevance of higher
education for innovative and entrepreneurial behaviour in organizations.
Marie Freia Wunderlich (PhD) is a postdoctoral researcher at Aarhus
University. Her research focuses mainly on the topics of Strategic Human
Resource Management, employee experiences, and well-being. She has
presented her work at international conferences such as the British
Academy of Management Conference or the International Conference of the
Dutch HRM Network.
 List of Figures

Fig. 9.1 Changes in knowledge flows between HR advisors because

of the pandemic 174
Fig. 18.1 Conceptual model 367

xxvii
 List of Tables

Table 2.1 The three theoretical perspectives and their assumptions 25

Table 3.1 Lessons learned from previous and current research on
collaborating teams, organizations, and ecosystems in
general and specifically during the stages “onsite” and
“full-remote” working during COVID-19 on performance,
involvement, and innovation at team, organization, and
ecosystem level 46
Table 4.1 List of organizations and their characteristics 66
Table 5.1 Description of the informants 84
Table 6.1 Interviewees 105
Table 8.1 Descriptive results for High-Performance Work System
items148
Table 8.2 HPWS practice utilization reported by HR managers
during the COVID-19 pandemic 150
Table 8.3 Characteristics of the two clusters 152
Table 10.1 Description on studies on work environment and the
COVID-19 pandemic 185
Table 10.2 Relevant content of the mentioned studies 186
Table 12.1 The different phases for the newcomer
(Filstad, 2016, p. 198) 227
Table 12.2 Overview of the use of the 4 C’s in different levels of
onboarding strategies—from Bauer (2010, p. 3)—reprinted
with permission from T. Bauer 228

xxix
xxx List of Tables

Table 12.3 The 4 C’s and KM—what is shared 229

Table 12.4 Overview of the informants 230
Table 12.5 Adapted from Bauer (2013), including type of onboarding:
digital or physical 238
Table 13.1 Descriptive overview of the sample 251
Table 13.2 Construct descriptive statistics 252
Table 13.3 Correlations second wave and the square root of the
Average Variance Extracted (in bold) 252
Table 13.4 Indirect effects 256
Table 14.1 Within category challenge and benefit ambivalences
(N = 228) in teleworkers’ experiences in WFH 279
Table 14.2 Challenges and benefits of WFH in teleworking leaders’
experiences280
Table 17.1 Issues to consider for HR professionals in relation to
COVID-19 vaccination certificatation mandates 340
Table 18.1 Means, standard deviations, correlations, and reliabilities
amongst variables 370
Table 18.2 Hierarchical regression analysis: work engagement 371
Table 18.3 Hierarchical regression analysis: work-family conflict 372
Table 18.4 Moderated mediation model 373
Table 18.5 Hierarchical regression analysis: engagement 374
 1
Introduction
Svein Bergum, Pascale Peters, and Tone Vold

The COVID-19 pandemic declared by the World Health Organization

March 2020, and the social distancing, quarantines, lockdowns, and self-­
imposed isolation that followed, can be characterized as both a health
crisis and a disruptive event that affected the ‘world of work’ and ‘the rest
of life’ in many areas, and perhaps irreversibly. The pandemic reinforced

S. Bergum (*)
Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences, Lillehammer, Norway
e-mail: Svein.bergum@inn.no
P. Peters
Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences, Lillehammer, Norway
Nyenrode Business Universiteit, Breukelen, The Netherlands
e-mail: P.peters@nyenrode.nl
T. Vold
Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences, Rena, Norway
e-mail: Tone.vold@inn.no

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 1

S. Bergum et al. (eds.), Virtual Management and the New Normal,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-06813-3_1
2 S. Bergum et al.

trends that had been going on for several decades, including the flexibili-
zation of labor according to time and place, variously referred to as tele-
commuting, or “telework, remote work, distributed work, virtual work,
flexible work, flexplace, and distance work, among other labels” (Allen
et al., 2015, p. 42). Although these related terms each have slightly differ-
ent conceptualizations, in this chapter, we use the concept of remote
work, which refers to “any form of work not conducted in the central
office, including work at branch locations and differing business units
(Allen et al., 2015, pp. 43–44).”
Organizing work requires management. This, however, has been a
challenge not only during the pandemic, but also with remote work gen-
erally. Most of the literature on leadership and management is about
leading and managing employees that are at the office or other work-
places in close proximity to the management. However, during the pan-
demic, many employees were at their home offices, which requires a
somewhat different approach, also labeled virtual or e-leadership
(Das Gupta, 2011). In this book, the initiatives on both leadership and
management in the context of remote working during the COVID-19
pandemic are referred to as virtual management, which is reflected in the
title of this book.
To reduce the risk of spreading the COVID-19 virus, during the pan-
demic, face-to-face communication was limited as much as possible. To
continue their operations, many organizations introduced, scaled-up,
and/or intensified work-from-home practices, regardless of them or their
stakeholders having experience with remote working and how to manage
it. This type of remote working was particularly introduced for people in
so-called non-essential occupations who could use information and com-
munication technologies (ICT) to communicate with managers, col-
leagues, customers, and other stakeholders. Those in so-called essential
jobs that require physical presence due to the nature of the work activi-
ties, such as health care professionals, could not work remotely. Dingel
and Neiman (2020) estimated that particularly high-income economies
have a high share of jobs that can exclusively be done at home, which are
usually more-paying jobs.
Whereas in 2017, only 5% of the working population in Europe
worked from home on a regular basis and 10% only occasionally, in April
 1 Introduction 3

2020, 37% of the employed had started working from home due to the
pandemic, either exclusively or partially. This stepped up to 48% in July
2020 but decreased to 42% in February/March 2021 (Eurofound, 2020,
pp. 27–36). In line with the findings by Dingel and Neiman (2020), the
home-working figures differed widely across countries, depending on the
type of economy. For example, in the Netherlands, before the COVID-19
pandemic about one in three people worked from home at least occasion-
ally, of which about 6% of them did so (almost) exclusively. At the begin-
ning of the pandemic, about 45%–56% worked remotely, of which many
of them (almost) exclusively (Hamersma et al., 2020). Regarding the pro-
portion of people who worked from home during the first phase of the
COVID-19 pandemic exclusively, Eurofound (2020) estimated that this
ranged from around one-fifth of the workers in Croatia, Poland, Slovakia,
Bulgaria, and Hungary to more than 40% in France, Spain, Italy, and
Ireland. In Belgium, this proportion even was 50%. Conversely, whereas
less than 25% of the workers in Belgium and Spain worked from their
employer’s premises only, this was more than half of the workers in
Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Slovakia (Eurofound, 2020, p. 33).
Also, outside the European context, the proportion of people who
worked from home during the first phase of the COVID-19 pandemic
differed widely. In May 2020, almost half of the workers in the United
States worked from home (Brynjolfsson et al., 2020). In the UK, virtual
working reached 43.1% in April 2020 (Felstead & Reuschke, 2020). For
Japan, the Cabinet Office reported that the virtual work percentage was
34.5% at the end of May 2020 and Morikawa (2020) reported that
approximately 32% worked remotely in June 2020. Delaporte and Pena
(2020) wrote that in Latin American and Caribbean countries, the share
of individuals who worked from home in that period varied from 7% in
Guatemala to 16% in the Bahamas.
Strikingly, also in jobs and for activities that were previously not con-
sidered technological ‘teleworkable,’ many people could work remotely.
The focus on health risks associated with the COVID-19 virus, mean-
while enabling continuity of organizations’ operations, were weighed
more heavily than the reported ‘work-from-home risks’ around control,
coordination, cohesion, knowledge sharing, and work motivation as per-
ceived by managers. Managers’ perceptions and attitudes had been
4 S. Bergum et al.

hindering them to change organizational routines, hence the break-

through of remote working, since the 1970s (Illegems & Verbeke, 2004;
Peters & Batenburg, 2015; Peters et al., 2010). In fact, history shows the
uptake of remote work always to have been prompted by some sort of
crisis (Peters, 2020).
In response to the oil crises of 1973–1974, resulting from the Yom
Kippur War in the Middle East, and to traffic and environmental prob-
lems of that time, in 1973, engineer Jack Nilles (see the preface of this
book), who worked for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration
in the United States of America, came up with the idea ‘to move work to
the people,’ rather than the other way around, which he coined ‘telecom-
muting’ (Allen et al., 2015; Nilles, 1998). These experiments were also
inspired by the alarming report The Limits to Growth (1972) that warned
for overconsumption. After a first phase of experimenting with isolated
projects and (governmental-supported) pilots, and following some early
telework adopters, such as IBM in 2018, depending on countries’ tech-
nological, labor-market, economic and ecological developments, organi-
zations had started to adopt remote working mainly as a strategy to save
overhead costs, deal with workforce issues, meet the demand of mainly
highly educated professionals for more job autonomy and flexibility, or,
often pressured by national policies, to support labor-market participa-
tion of people who are (partly) disabled for work (Allen et al., 2015).
After 2005, much inspired by the white paper entitled the ‘New World
of Work’ by Microsoft’s chief executive officer (CEO) Bill Gates (Gates,
2005), new concepts, broader than teleworking, attracted attention. The
volatile, uncertain, and complex and ambiguous markets called for new
organizational philosophies, cultures, and designs, referred to as ‘new
ways of working,’ that could increase work engagement and stimulate
knowledge sharing and open innovation. Under this credo, and enabled
by new information and communication technologies, organizations
implemented activity-based working, encouraging employees to ‘work
remotely’ and to proactively self-manage their work, and, thereby, to
come up with creative solutions to problems in the workplace to enhance
organizations’ resilience (Peters et al., 2014). Also, with the deployment
of so-called flexworkers and mostly ‘voluntary’ self-employed persons
without staff, the required labor flexibility of organizations was further
 1 Introduction 5

increased. Moreover, natural disasters, such as the earthquake and nuclear

disaster in Fukushima in Japan in 2011, forced organizations to adopt
working from home. In Japan, organizations invested in their ‘telework
infrastructure’ to be better prepared for new natural disasters and crises
(Deccan Herald, 2011), despite the cramped housing of the Japanese
population and the collectivist culture with long office days. In the years
of economic crisis and uncertainty, an increasing number of organiza-
tions in Western economies implemented some form of new ways of
working to reduce overhead costs or simply to mimic the new ways of
working.
Surprisingly, during the COVID-19 pandemic, a large proportion of
remote workers, including those who were not used to working from
home before the COVID-19 pandemic, appeared to be very capable of
organizing their work themselves, taking responsibility together and
coming up with creative solutions and succeeded to maintain or even
enhance their productivity. Others, however, experienced a loss of pro-
ductivity and even financial security, job satisfaction, and well-being
(Lund et al., 2020), enhancing existing social inequalities (Spreitzer et al.,
2017). Also, many employees missed the direct contact with colleagues
and customers, and the spontaneous meetings at the office, where they
can also distance themselves physically, mentally, and behaviorally, affect-
ing their physical and mental health (Lund et al., 2020). Moreover,
research into the division of tasks and work-life balance, for example,
shows that the corona crisis may be experienced different for fathers and
mothers (Yerkes et al., 2020).
Early 2022, the rules around the COVID-19 pandemic were relaxed,
schools were re-opened, and people started to become mobile again. In
future phases of the pandemic, or perhaps, endemic, organizations need
to reflect, learn, and act. The ‘work-from-home risks’ that were taken for
granted at the beginning of the pandemic must be managed sustainably
(Peters, 2020). But how? Some organizations are thinking about how
working from home can further reduce travel costs and buildings and
track remote workers through employee surveillance technology and ana-
lyze their behaviors and productivity through big data. However, can
such ‘micromanagement’ motivate home workers? What are the physical
and mental health consequences of working from home under these
6 S. Bergum et al.

conditions? Are people sufficiently supported in their professional devel-

opment? Or is social inequality being further increased?
During the COVID-19 pandemic, all stakeholders had to give mean-
ing to the pandemic (together) and had to improvise, creating opportuni-
ties for learning and innovation. It can be argued that the crisis not only
offered threats but also opportunities to take new and hopefully more
sustainable paths. After all, the technical infrastructure that has been
built and strengthened over the past period, and that now makes working
from home possible, offers the possibilities to combine the multiple val-
ues that were intended with remote working in the past: people, profit, and
planet. This, however, requires organizations, governments, and individu-
als to seize the momentum to think now about the impact organizations
and their incumbents want to have and to adapt their strategies, policies,
practices, and leadership accordingly (cf. Contreras et al., 2020;
Peters, 2020).
So, what has been learned from the pandemic? What will be different
after the pandemic in terms of the organization of work in time and
space, employment relationships, human resource management (HRM)
(i.e., systems and processes), and leadership (i.e., personal and interper-
sonal dynamics) that guide, motivate, and provide opportunities to peo-
ple to perform? And how will that affect the behavior of and outcomes
for managers, employees, and other stakeholders? To answer these ques-
tions, it is timely to update our knowledge, as management and working
in times of the COVID-19 pandemic may be different, and perhaps dif-
ferently perceived compared to previous periods. This book, entitled
Virtual Management and the New Normal: New Perspectives on HRM and
Leadership Since the COVID-19 Pandemic aims to add new knowledge on
the debate on the management and consequences of (the future of )
remote working. The focus of the book is on how organizations, HRM,
leadership, leaders, and individual workers have been affected by remote
working during the COVID-19 pandemic and how the new experiences
with enhanced remote working and management can be applied in what
has been coined the “new normal.” The book presents theoretical chap-
ters, and quantitative and qualitative (longitudinal) studies, based on
data from organizations, managers, and employees in different, mainly
European countries, but also from Canada. With few exceptions,
 1 Introduction 7

previous studies have argued for general requirements for virtual leaders.
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced managers to differentiate their
management style in relation to different people and different situations,
but how? And technology and digital services have never been used as
extensively in previous telework studies as during the COVID-19 pan-
demic. Our book, therefore, focusses on topics lacking in previous stud-
ies and will also contribute in view of the context of the COVID-19
pandemic mentioned earlier.
This book starts with a unique preface written by ‘the father of tele-
commuting’ Jack Nilles. He gives us his personal journey through the
history and evolution of telework, from the 1970s “Telecommunication-­
Transportation Trade-off” until todays telework related to the
COVID-19 pandemic. The remainder of the book is divided into three
thematic parts. The first part is called: “Reflections on Remote Working
in the Past and Future and the Impact on the Organizational Level:
Remote Working Pre-Pandemic and Post-Pandemic.” In this part the
focus is on organizational perspectives and the impact of the pandemic
on organizational culture, identity, collaboration and trust issues.
In Chap. 2, the Norwegian scholars Pedersen and Bergum discuss
three fruitful theories that can explain the past, current, and future adop-
tion of and changes related to remote working and leadership: the tech-
nological, the performance gap, and the institutional perspective.
Chapter 3, by the Dutch scholars Van der Velden and Lekanne Deprez,
discusses the future of remote working, refered to as ‘hybrid working.’
More specifically, the authors argue that hybrid collaboration requires a
multidisciplinary understanding and effort in which (top) management,
employees, and other internal and external stakeholders share knowledge,
interact, and work together to generate sustainable value. They describe
three stages: before the COVID-19 pandemic, during the lockdown, and
after the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, they discuss some dilemmas
and paradoxes that future hybrid organizations will encounter.
In Chap. 4, the Norwegian scholars Aksnes, Underthun, and Hansen
explore how managers at different levels of authority experience various
levels of organizational presence in a remote workspace, and the organi-
zational identity before and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Their quali-
tative approach focussing on managers in 10 public and private
8 S. Bergum et al.

organizations in Norway has sought to unveil the impact that telework

has had on management approaches, the dynamics, and ‘sense of flux’ on
organizations.
In Chap. 5, the case study by Skogseth and Bergum, conducted in the
Department of Culture at the City of Oslo, builds on semistructured
interviews with managers and employees. More specifically, the authors
explore how trust, which depends on a close relationship between man-
ager and employee, can be maintained when going digital.
In Chap. 6, using a qualitative approach, Mikael Ring seeks to investi-
gate some of the sociospatial aspects of thickness and thinness in large
Swedish organizations as these arise from working from home during the
COVID-19 pandemic. He explores how the post-pandemic work can be
organized and how technology can aid in the process of creating ‘thick
places.’
The second part of the book is “Reflections on How to Manage Hybrid
Working: HRM and Leadership,” and is focused on leadership and HRM
issues in contexts where employees work both at the office and remotely.
In Chap. 7, building on a psychological contract lens and the concept
of inclusive leadership, the conceptual paper by the Dutch scholars De
Ruiter and Schalk discusses how employees experienced the employment
relationship and virtual leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic, and
how those experiences shape mutual obligations between employees and
their organizations beyond the COVID-19 pandemic. By focusing on
challenges regarding distrust, micromanaging, and generational differ-
ences, the authors forecast that safe working environments and inclusion
and diversity will be important dimensions of future psychological
contracts.
In Chap. 8, based on web-based survey data, Løkke and Wunderlich
examine the use of high-performance work systems (HPWS) practices
among HR managers in Denmark, Sweden, and Norway in the later
stages of the lockdown. They categorize the HPWS practices into three
dimensions (ability-enhancing, motivation-enhancing, and opportunity-­
enhancing HR practices) that are important for business continuation in
times of crisis.
In Chap. 9, combining the notions of geographical and cognitive dis-
tance and the paradox perspective, Bergum and Haukåsen employ data
 1 Introduction 9

from interviews, focus groups, observations, and documents to highlight

how tensions between distributed HR advisors affect their innovative
capability in an abrupt and comprehensive change process in a Norwegian
hospital during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In Chap. 10, in their literature review, the Portuguese scholars Tomé
and Costa compare three situations: the ‘old normal,’ the ‘new normal,’
and the ‘renewed normal,’ regarding four aspects of human resource
development and within virtual development relations, namely: work
environment, competences, training, and skills.
Onboarding during COVID-19 pandemic also poses some managerial
issues. In Chap. 11, the Italian scholars Russo, Morandin, and Manca
review the literature on the primary challenges faced by organization
regarding the online onboarding process, which is illustrated by some
practices that companies have used, including social onboarding, gamifi-
cation, and the use of collaborative tasks and tools. They explore the
objectives of the onboarding process and the main challenges experienced
by the newcomers that are onboarded during the pandemic. Issues such
as social isolation, learning opportunities, and trust development are
raised and addressed.
In Chap. 12, Haave, Kaloudis, and Vold also address the onboarding,
but here from a knowledge management perspective. Using a qualitative
approach, they interviewed newcomers in a Norwegian public organiza-
tion to investigate the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the
onboarding process. In addition, they examine the participants’ perspec-
tive of a desired ‘new normal’ when it comes to onboarding within their
organization.
In Chap. 13, Edelbroek, Coun, Peters, and Blomme present a longitu-
dinal quantitative study conducted in the Netherlands and Belgium to
draw lessons from employees’ experiences with leadership during the
COVID-19 pandemic. More specifically, starting from a mutual-gains
perspective, they investigate the mediating role of work-related flow in
the relationships between empowering and directive leadership, on the
one hand, and innovative work-behaviour and work-family balance, on
the other.
The third part of this book is entitled “Reflections on Outcomes of
Remote Working” and focuses on outcomes of the new way of working
10 S. Bergum et al.

during the COVID-19 pandemic for managers and employees, particu-

larly on issues such as safety, general well-being, work-life balance, and
work-family boundary management.
Chapter 14 by Vartiainen opens this part by presenting results of a
survey study examining what kinds of challenges and opportunities were
perceived by Finish teleworkers in a leadership position and employees
during the first phase of the COVID-19 pandemic when everyone was
forced to work from home, and what can be learned from these experi-
ences for the future. The theory on virtual teams and leadership, as well
as on the quality of relationships between teleworkers (encompassing
issues such as trust, socialization, work life balance, and frequency of
interaction) has been used to explain the findings.
Chapter 15 by Suomi and Somerkoski from Finland presents a frame-
work to understand new security issues in remote work. More specifically,
they explore data security and privacy, physical safety, and mental well-­
being issues, which are of vital importance for both organizations and
employees but are not always paid enough attention to in times of crisis.
They draw upon theory on data security and data privacy issues involving
private devices, storage issues, security regarding communication and
networks, and access to help desk services. Also, they focus on the physi-
cal safety regarding working from home, such as ergonomically issues and
injuries, and mental well-being due to social isolation, including how
autonomy and self-leadership affect productivity and work engagement.
Chapter 16 by Ollier-Malaterre from Canada addresses trends in orga-
nizations that rather enhance management control. She focuses on active
regulation of technology and its implications at work and outside of work
that have become an integral part of work in many occupations. She
argues that the management of work in the “new normal” should include
considering how to deal with three major issues: (a) constant connectiv-
ity, (b) self-presentation, and (c) privacy.
In Chap. 17, Pagliari from the UK and Tursunbayeva from Italy
explore how organizations can organize a safe ‘return to work’ by intro-
ducing a ‘COVID-19 vaccine passport.’ More specifically, they examine
sociotechnical considerations for HR professionals managing new
demands by pointing to important issues such as employment rights,
privacy, and ethical issues. Using discourse analysis and articles written by
 1 Introduction 11

HR professionals available on LinkedIn and Google, they present a con-

textual analysis of the adoption of innovations—such as the implementa-
tion of COVID-19 passports—focussing on technology, organization,
environment, and task/processes, tied to the utilization of the innovation.
In Chap. 18, Van Engen, Peters, and Van de Water present a quantita-
tive study among Dutch employees to investigate the relationship between
perceived lockdown intensity and work engagement, the mediating role
of work-family conflict (work-family and family-work conflict), and the
moderating role of family supportive supervisor behaviour during the
COVID-19 pandemic. Perceived lockdown intensity refers to employees’
negative feelings and experiences resulting from national and organiza-
tional COVID-19 regulations, hindering their perceived ability, motiva-
tion, and opportunity (AMO) to perform their work. They argue that
perceived lockdown intensity can enhance work-family conflict and
hence, reduce work engagement. Therefore, they also examine whether
leaders’ attention paid to employees’ work-family situation can mitigate
these negative outcomes associated with the COVID-19 lockdown.
In Chap. 19, based on an interview study conducted before the
COVID-19 pandemic with 20 public and private sector managers in
Sweden, Mellner explores perceptions on leadership in telework and
experiences of managers’ own and their employees’ management of work-­
nonwork boundaries. More specifically, using reflexive thematic analysis,
the role of authentic leadership is shown to play an important role in
managing telework situations.
In the final chapter, the epilogue, Bergum, Peters, and Vold summarize
and reflect on the chapters in this book in the light of the increasingly
loud call for purpose, ‘sustainability,’ inclusiveness, and responsibility in
strategic HRM and leadership, whereby attention is drawn to human and
social aspects of work and organization, such as health, motivation, based
on a broader, inclusive long-term objective, with respect for all labor mar-
ket parties’ career potential (Aust et al., 2020; Booysen, 2021; De Prins
et al., 2015; Van Ingen et al., 2021).
The chapters introduced above present us with a comprehensive pic-
ture of different issues concerning organization, HRM, and leadership
before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic and their conse-
quences for people in organizations. Moreover, they also provide leads for
12 S. Bergum et al.

organizations and organizing the ‘afterlife’ of the pandemic. The ‘new

normal’ will be affected by what has been experienced and will be experi-
enced in the future and how the use of technology has put an imprint on
the future of work. Hopefully, this book will be able to contribute towards
insights for making decisions for the ‘new normal.’ We hope you enjoy
the knowledge and the thought-provoking insights presented in the fol-
lowing chapters!

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 Part I
Reflections on Remote Working in
the Past and Future and the Impact
on the Organizational Level:
Remote Working Pre-Pandemic and
Post-Pandemic
 2
Three Organizational Perspectives
on the Adoption of Telework
Tor Helge Pedersen and Svein Bergum

Introduction
Even though telework is often carried out at alternative locations to the
central workplace, telework happens within organizational structures,
with their geographical and organizational distribution of units, tasks,
functions, responsibilities, rules, roles and people. Key terms defining
telework or virtual work are geographic dispersion (e.g. home offices) and
a dependence on technology in the work-related interaction between
employees (e.g. Gibson & Gibbs, 2006; Raghuram et al., 2019). In the
context of telework, virtual leadership can be understood as having sub-
ordinate employees working at workplaces other than where the leader is
located (Bergum, 2009). The interest in teleworking was sparked in the
1970s (e.g. Nilles et al., 1976), and is still seen as a rapidly growing work-
ing arrangement, which “warrants greater research attention” (De Vries
et al., 2019, p. 588). For example, there is still a growing literature on

T. H. Pedersen (*) • S. Bergum

Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences, Lillehammer, Norway
e-mail: Tor.helge.pedersen@inn.no; Svein.bergum@inn.no

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 17

S. Bergum et al. (eds.), Virtual Management and the New Normal,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-06813-3_2
18 T. H. Pedersen and S. Bergum

telework in relation to its benefits and challenges (Baruch, 2001; De

Vries et al., 2019; Donnelly & Proctor-Thomson, 2015; other contribu-
tions in this volume). However, less literature has paid attention to the
organizational theoretical perspectives that can help to understand orga-
nizational responses to telework and virtual management. For example,
over the past 20–30 years, many public sector organizations have adopted
organizational forms that include multi-located organizational units, in
which leaders and part of their subordinates’ work in different geographi-
cal locations. Such units may be seen as one of several forms of telework
and distance leadership (virtual management). Telework can therefore
take different forms, and these forms are not mutually exclusive:

1. Multi-located units (e.g. new organizational model)

2. Telework by choice (the telework option)
3. Enforced telework (the COVID-19 practice)

The first form is a multi-located unit. As mentioned, multi-located

units are units with work activities in several locations, and where a leader
may have his/her primary workplace in another location than his subor-
dinates. These units may be adopted with telework as a goal in itself, but
also as a consequence of other organizational changes (Bergum,
2009, p. 12).
The second form or category is telework by choice, which had already
been introduced by many organizations before 2020 (Caillier, 2012). It
was more recently studied as an innovation in the public sector context
that “offers a fundamental change to existing work practices and is
intended to change the organization” (De Vries et al., 2017, p. 271), and
that can “improve the working conditions of public servants” (De Vries
et al., 2019).
The third form is “enforced telework” in connection with natural
disasters or the COVID-19 lockdown of workplaces and consequently
work in home offices (e.g. Anderson & Kelliher, 2020; Donnelly &
Proctor-Thomson, 2015), but which is not necessarily intended to change
the organization. Whereas a leader or employees in a multi-sited unit
may have colleagues at his/her workplace, the teleworker in a home office
is normally alone.
 2 Three Organizational Perspectives on the Adoption of Telework 19

This chapter focuses on multi-located units and enforced telework. It

presents and discusses three influential organizational perspectives (the
technological, the performance gap and the institutional perspective) in
relation to changes in telework adoption before, during and after the
COVID-19 lockdowns of physical workplaces. Therefore, the purpose of
this chapter is to contribute to the discussion on telework adoption by
illustrating and discussing three organizational perspectives to changes
related to telework, and especially on how these can help understand the
emergence of a “new normal” (Nilles, 2022; Vyas, 2022), or widely
accepted prescription after the pandemic. More precisely, the contribu-
tion is to extract factors from the perspectives that may affect the pre-
scribed hybrid telework solutions (the mix of home-based and office-based
work) among the same type of organizations. The accepted prescription
may vary from sector to sector, for example, it may vary between health
care and higher education.
The chapter is organized as follows: In Section “Three Organizational
Perspectives”, three perspectives are outlined that have been used in
research on technology and organization, and that represent examples of
the rational and institutional tradition in organization’s research. These
perspectives represent different lenses on continuity (no change or slow
change) and change, and they highlight different drivers of change (e.g.
technology and institutional pressure), for example, related to telework
and virtual management. These perspectives are not used here to analyse
rich empirical material, but rather to illustrate lenses that help to under-
stand organizational changes in relation to telework before, during and
after the COVID-19 pandemic. Section “Teleworking in Multi-Located
Units (Pre-2020)” illustrates how these theoretical perspectives help us to
understand how organizations can adopt multi-located units. In many
cases, these units are based on virtual leadership. Finally, before conclud-
ing, Section “Understanding Telework in the Lockdown and Post-­
COVID-­19 Period” discusses how these perspectives help us understand
the lockdown and emergence of a “new normal” in different sectors in the
post-COVID period. The chapter is limited to factors extracted from the
three perspectives.
Another random document with
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 “There is one point I thought you might be able to tell me,” Rawley
said, looking across the fire when he had finished reading. “This ‘City
which is by the river in the wilderness’—and ‘In the midst thereof a
ferryboat which is by the brink of the river.’ Do you know what place
is meant by that? Is it El Dorado, Nevada? Because Grandfather’s
diary tells of going up the river to El Dorado. And I remember, now,
there was some kind of Bible reference written over the name. I don’t
remember what it was, though. I didn’t look it up. We’ll have to make
sure about that, for the directions start from that point. It says we’re
to go through the city which is by the river, and turn northward—and
so on.”
The Indian reached out a hand, lifted a stick of wood and laid it
across the fire. His eyes turned toward the river.
“Many times, when the air was warm and the stars sat in their
places to watch the night, my sergeant came here with me, and I
gathered wood to make a fire. Many hours he would sit here in his
chair beside the river. Sometimes he would talk. His words were of
the past when he was the strongest of all men. Sometimes his words
were of El Dorado. It is a city by the river, and a ferryboat is in the
midst thereof. It has made many rich with the gold they dig from the
mountains. I think that is the city you must go through.”
“There isn’t any city now,” Rawley told him. “It’s been abandoned
for years. I don’t think there’s a town there, any more.”
“There is the place by the river,” Johnny Buffalo observed calmly.
“There is the great and high mountain. There is ‘the path that no man
knoweth.’”
“Yes, you bet. And we’re going to find it, Johnny Buffalo. I’ve got a
chance to go out that way this month, to examine a mine. I didn’t
think I’d take the job. I wanted to go to Mexico. But now, of course, it
will be Nevada, and I’ll want you to go with me. Do you know that
country?”
A strange expression lightened the Indian’s face for an instant.
“When I killed my first meat,” he said, “I could walk from the kill to
the city by the river. My father’s tent was no more distant than it is
from here to the great city yonder. Not so far, I think. The way was
rough with many hills.”
 Impulsively Rawley leaned and stretched out his arm toward the
Indian.
“Let’s shake on it. We will go together, and you will be my partner.
Whatever we find is the gift of my grandfather, and half of it is yours
when we find it. I feel he’d want it that way. Is it a go, Johnny
Buffalo?”
Something very much like a smile stirred the old man’s lips. He
took Rawley’s hand and gave it a solemn shake, once up, once
down, as is the way of the Indian.
“It is go. You are like my sergeant when he held me in his arms
and gave me water from his canteen. You are my son. Where you go
I will go with you.”
 CHAPTER FIVE
A CITY FORSAKEN
The storekeeper at Nelson stood on his little slant-roofed porch
and mopped his beaded forehead with a blue calico handkerchief.
The desert wrinkles around his eyes drew together and deepened as
he squinted across the acarpous gulch where a few rough-board
shacks stood forlorn with uncurtained windows, to the heat-ridden
hillside beyond.
“It’s going to be awful hot down there by the river,” he observed
deprecatingly. “You’ll find the water pretty muddy—but maybe you
know that. Strangers don’t always; it’s best to make sure, so if you
haven’t a bucket or something to settle the water in, I’d advise you to
take one along. I’ve an extra one I could lend you, if you need it.”
“We have a bucket, thanks.” Rawley stepped into the dust-
covered car loaded with camp outfit. “El Dorado is right at the mouth
of the canyon, isn’t it?”
The storekeeper gave him an odd look. “This is El Dorado,” he
answered drily. “This whole canyon is the El Dorado. There used to
be a town at the mouth of the canyon, but that’s gone years ago.
Better take the left-hand road when you get down here a quarter of a
mile or so. That will take you past the Techatticup Mine. Below there,
turn to the right where two shacks stand close together in the fork of
the road. The other trail’s washed, and I don’t know as you could get
down that way. Car in good shape for the pull back? She’s pretty
steep, coming this way.”
“She’s pulled everything we’ve struck, so far,” Rawley replied
cheerfully. “Other cars make it, don’t they?”
“Some do—and some holler for help. It’s a long, hard drag up the
wash. And if you tackle it in the hot part of the day you’ll need plenty
of water. And,” the storekeeper added with a whimsical half-smile,
“the hot part of the day is any time between sunrise and dark. It does
get awful hot down in there! I don’t mean to knock my own district,”
he added, “but I don’t like to see any one start down the canyon
without knowing about what to expect. Then, if they want to go, that’s
their business.”
“That’s the way to look at it,” Rawley agreed. “I expect you’ve
been here a good while, haven’t you?”
The storekeeper wiped a fresh collection of beads from his
forehead. He looked up and down the canyon rather wistfully.
“About as many years as you are old,” he said quietly. “I came in
here twenty-five years ago.”
Rawley laughed. “I was about a year old when you landed. Seems
a long while back, to me.” He stepped on the starter, waved his hand
to the storekeeper and went grinding away down the steep trail
through the loose sand. Johnny Buffalo, sitting beside him, lifted a
hand and laid it on his arm.
“Stop! He calls,” he said.
Rawley stopped the car, his head tilted outward, looking back. The
storekeeper was coming down the trail toward them.
“I forgot to tell you there’s a bad Indian loose in the hills
somewhere along the river,” he panted when he came up. “He’s
waylaid a couple of prospectors that we know of. A blood feud
against the whites, the Indians tell me. You may not run across him
at all, but it will be just as well to keep an eye out.”
“What’s his name?” Johnny Buffalo turned his head and stared
hard at the other.
“His name’s Queo. He’s middle-aged—somewhere in the late
forties, I should say. Medium-sized and kind of stocky built. He’ll kill
to get grub or tobacco. Seeing there’s two of you he might not try
anything, but I’d be careful, if I were in your place. There’s a price on
his head, so if he tries any tricks—” He waved his hand and grinned
expressively as he turned back to the store.
“He is older than that man thinks,” said Johnny Buffalo after a
silence. “Queo has almost as many years as I have. When we were
children we fought. He is bad. For him to kill is pleasure, but he is a
coward.”
“If there is a price on his head he has probably left the country,”
Rawley remarked indifferently. “Old-timers are fine people, most of
them. But they do like to tell it wild to tenderfeet. I suppose that’s
human nature.”
Johnny Buffalo did not argue the point. He seemed content to
gaze at the hills in the effort to locate old landmarks. And as for
Rawley himself, his mind was wholly absorbed by his mission into
the country, which he had dreamed of for more than a month. There
had been some delay in getting started. First, he could not well
curtail the length of his visit with his mother, in spite of the fact that
they seemed to have little in common. Then he thought it wise to
make the trip to Kingman and report upon a property there which
was about to be sold for a good-sized fortune. The job netted him
several hundred dollars, which he was likely to need. Wherefore he
had of necessity had plenty of time to dream over his own fortune
which might be lying in the hills—“In the cleft of the jagged rocks”—
waiting for him to find it.
Just at first he had been somewhat skeptical. Fifty years is a long
time for gold to remain hidden in the hills of a mining country so rich
as Nevada, without some prospector discovering it. But Johnny
Buffalo believed. Whether his belief was based solely upon his faith
in his sergeant, Rawley could not determine. But Johnny Buffalo had
a very plausible argument in favor of the gold remaining where
Grandfather King had left it in the underground stream.
The fact that Rawley was exhorted to “take victuals for the
journey” meant a distance of a good many miles, perhaps, which
they must travel from El Dorado. Then, they were to go to the top of
a very high mountain and pass over on the other side. Johnny
Buffalo argued that the start was to be made from El Dorado merely
because the mountain would be most visible from that point. It would
be rough country, he contended. The code mentioned cliffs and great
heaps of stones and clefts in jagged rocks, with a deep pit, “Hid from
the eyes of all living,” for the final goal. He thought it more than likely
that Grandfather King’s gold mine was still undiscovered. And toward
the last, Rawley had been much more inclined to believe him. He
had read diligently all the mining information he could get concerning
this particular district, as far back as the records went. Nowhere was
any mention made of such a rich placer discovery on—or in—a
mountain.
 He was thinking all this as he drove the devious twistings and
turnings of the canyon road. Another mine or two they passed; then,
nosing carefully down a hill steeper than the others, they turned
sharply to the left and were in the final discomfort of the “wash.” A
veritable sweat box it was on this particular hot afternoon in July. The
baked, barren hills rose close on either side. Like a deep, gravelly
river bed long since gone dry, the wash sloped steeply down toward
the Colorado. Rawley could readily understand now the solicitude of
the storekeeper. The return was quite likely to be a time of
tribulation.
He had expected to come upon a camp of some sort. But the
canyon opened bleakly to the river, the hot sand of its floor sloping
steeply to meet the lapping waves of the turgid stream. At the
water’s edge, on the first high ground of the bank, were ruins of an
old stamp mill, which might have been built ten years ago or a
hundred, so far as looks went.
He left the car and climbed upon the cement floor of the old mill.
What at first had seemed to be a greater extension of the plant he
now discovered was a walled roadway winding up to the crest of the
hill. He swung about and gazed to the northward, as the Bible code
had commanded that he should travel. A mile or so up the river were
the walls of a deep canyon,—Black Canyon, according to his map.
Farther away, set back from the river a mile, perhaps two miles, a
sharp-pointed hill shouldered up above its fellows. This seemed to
be the highest mountain, so far as he could see, in that direction. If
that were the “great and high mountain” described in the code, their
journey would not be so long as Johnny Buffalo anticipated.
The nearer view was desolation simmering in the heat. A hundred
yards away, on the opposite bank of the wash, the forlorn ruins of a
cabin or two gave melancholy evidence that here men had once
worked and laughed and loved—perchance. He looked at the
furnace yawning beside him, and at the muddy water swirling in
drunken haste just below. It might have been just here that his
grandfather had landed from the steamboat Gila and had watched
the lovely young half-breed girl in the crowd come to welcome the
boat and passengers.
 He started when Johnny Buffalo spoke at his elbow. How the
Indian had reached that spot unheard and unseen Rawley did not
know. Johnny Buffalo was pointing to the north.
“I think that high mountain is where we must go,” he said. “It is
one day’s travel. We can go to-day when the sun is behind the
mountains, and we can walk until the stars are here. Very early in the
morning we can walk again, and before it is too hot we can reach the
trees where it will be cool.”
“We have a lot of grub and things in the car,” Rawley objected. “It
seems to me that it wouldn’t be a bad plan to carry the stuff up here
and cache it somewhere in this old mill. Then if your friend Queo
should show up, there won’t be so much for him to steal. And if we
want to make a camp on the mountain, we can come down here and
carry the stuff up as we need it. There’s a hundred dollars’ worth of
outfit in that car, Johnny,” he added frugally. “I’m all for keeping it for
ourselves.”
Johnny Buffalo looked at the mountain, and he looked down at the
car,—and then grunted a reluctant acquiescence. Rawley laughed at
him.
“That’s all right—the mountain won’t run away over night,” he
bantered, slapping his hand down on Johnny Buffalo’s shoulder with
an affectionate familiarity bred in the past month. “I’ve been juggling
that car over the desert trails since sunrise, and I wouldn’t object to
taking it easy for a few hours.”
Johnny Buffalo said no more but began helping to unload the car.
It was he who chose the trail by which they carried the loads to the
upper level, cement-floored, where no tracks would show. He chose
a hiding place beneath the wreckage of some machinery that had
fallen against the bank in such a way that an open space was left
beneath, large enough to hold their outfit.
A huge rattlesnake protested stridently against being disturbed.
Rawley drew his automatic, meaning to shoot it; but Johnny Buffalo
stopped him with a warning gesture, and himself killed the snake
with a rock. While it was still writhing with a smashed head, he
picked it up by the tail, took a long step or two and heaved it into the
river, grinning his satisfaction over a deed well done.
 Rawley, standing back watching him, had a swift vision of the old
Indian paddling solemnly about the yard near the west wing. There
he was an incongruous figure amongst the syringas and the roses.
Here, although he had discarded the showy fringed buckskin for the
orthodox brown khaki clothes of the desert, he somehow fitted into
his surroundings and became a part of the wilderness itself. Johnny
Buffalo was assuredly coming into his own.
 CHAPTER SIX
TRAILS MEET
By sunrise they were ready for the trail, light packs and filled
canteens slung upon their shoulders. The car was backed against
the bluff that would shade it from the scorching sunlight from early
afternoon to sundown. Beside it were the embers of a mesquite-
wood fire where they had boiled coffee and fried bacon in the cool of
dawn. As a safeguard against the loss of his car, Rawley had
disconnected the breaker points from the distributor and carried
them, carefully wrapped, in his pocket. There would be no moving of
the car under its own power until the points were replaced. And
Johnny Buffalo had advised leaving a few things in the car, to ward
off suspicion that their outfit had been cached. Furthermore, he had
cunningly obliterated their tracks through the deep, fine sand to the
ruins of the stamp mill. Even the keen, predatory eyes of an outlaw
Indian could scarcely distinguish any trace of their many trips that
way.
They crossed the wash, turned into the remnant of an old road
leading up the bank to the level above, and followed a trail up the
river. Once Johnny Buffalo stopped and pointed down the bank.
“The ferryboat went there,” he explained. “Much land has been
eaten by the river since last I saw this place. Many houses stood
here. They are gone. All is gone. My people are gone, like the town.
Of Queo only have I heard, and him the white men hunt as they hunt
the wolf.”
Rawley nodded, having no words for what he felt. There was
something inexpressibly melancholy in this desolation where his
grandfather had found riotous life. Of the fortunes gathered here, the
fortunes lost—of the hopes fulfilled and the hopes crushed slowly in
long, monotonous days of toil and disappointment—what man could
tell? Only the river, rushing heedlessly past as it had hurried, all
those years ago, to meet the lumbering little river boats struggling
against its current with their burden of human emotions, only the
river might have told how the town was born,—and how it had died.
Or the grim hills standing there as they had stood since the land was
in the making, looking down with saturnine calm upon the puny
endeavors of men whose lives would soon enough cease upon earth
and be forgotten. Rawley’s boot toe struck against something in the
loose gravel,—a child’s shoe with the toe worn to a gaping mouth,
the heel worn down to the last on the outer edge: dry as a bleached
bone, warped by many a storm, blackened, doleful. Even a young
man setting out in quest of his fortune, with a picturesque secret
code in his pocket, may be forgiven for sending a thought after the
child who had scuffed that coarse little shoe down here in El Dorado.
But presently Johnny Buffalo, leading the way briskly, his sharp
old eyes taking in everything within their range as if he were eagerly
verifying his memories of the place, turned from the trail along the
river and entered the hills. His moccasined feet clung tenaciously to
the steep places where Rawley’s high-laced mining boots slipped.
The sun rays struck them fiercely and the “little stinging gnats” which
Grandfather King had mentioned in his diary were there to pester
them, poising vibrantly just before the eyes as if they waited only the
opportunity to dart between the lids.
The thought that perhaps his grandfather had come that way, fifty
years ago, filled the toil of climbing up the long gully with a peculiar
interest. Fifty years ago these hills must have looked much the
same. Fifty years ago, the prospect holes they passed occasionally
may have been fresh-turned earth and rocks. Men searching for rich
silver and gold might have been seen plodding along the hillsides;
but the hills themselves could not have changed much. His
grandfather had looked upon all this, and had divided his thoughts,
perhaps, between the gold and his latest infatuation, the half-breed
girl, Anita. And suddenly Rawley put a vague speculation into words:
“Hey, Johnny! Here’s a good place to make a smoke, in the
shade.” He waited until the Indian had retraced the dozen steps
between them. “Johnny, there was a beautiful half-breed girl here,
when Grandfather made his last trip up the river. She was half
Spanish. My grandfather mentioned her once or twice in his diary.
Do you remember her?”
 “There were many beautiful girls in my tribe,” Johnny Buffalo
retorted drily. “What name did he call her?”
“Anita. It’s a pretty name, and it proves the Spanish, I should say.”
The old man stared at the opposite slope. His mouth grew thin-
lipped and stern.
“My uncle, the chief, was betrayed in his old age. His youngest
squaw loved a Spanish man with noble look. I have the tale from my
older brothers, who told me. The child she bore was the child of the
Spanish gentleman. My uncle’s youngest squaw—died.” Johnny
Buffalo paused significantly. “The child was given to my mother to
keep. Her name was Anita. She was very beautiful. I remember.
Many visits Anita made with friends near this place. I think she is the
same. It was not good for my sergeant to look upon her with love. I
have heard my brothers whisper that Anita looked with soft eyes
upon the white soldiers.”
Rawley’s young sympathies suffered a definite revulsion. If his
grandfather’s dulce corazon were a coquette, her fruitless waiting for
his return was not so beautifully tragic after all. There were other
white soldiers stationed along the river, Rawley remembered, with a
curl of the lip. His romantic imagination had not balked at the savage
blood in her veins, since she was a beauty of fifty years ago. But he
was a sturdy-souled youth with very old-fashioned notions
concerning virtue. He finished his smoke and went on, feeling
cheated by the cold facts he had almost forced from Johnny Buffalo.
They reached the head of that gulch, climbed a steep, high ridge
where they must use hands as well as feet in the climbing, and dug
heels into the earth in a descent even steeper. Rawley told himself
once that he would just as soon start out to follow a crow through
this country as to follow Johnny Buffalo. One word had evidently
been omitted from the Indian’s English education by Grandfather
King,—the word “detour.” Rawley thought of the straight-forward
march of locusts he had once read about and wondered if Johnny
Buffalo had taken lessons from them in his youth.
However, he consoled himself with the thought that a straight line
to the mountain would undoubtedly shorten the distance. If the
Indian could climb sneer walls of rock like a lizard, Rawley would
attempt to follow. And they would ultimately arrive at their
destination, though the glimpse he had obtained of the mountain
from the ridge they had just crossed failed to confirm Johnny
Buffalo’s assertion that it was one day’s travel. They had been
walking three hours by Rawley’s watch, and the mountain looked
even farther away than from El Dorado. But Johnny Buffalo was so
evidently enjoying every minute of the hike through his native hills
that Rawley could not bear to spoil his pleasure by even hinting that
he was blazing a mighty rough trail.
They were working up another tortuous ravine where not even
Johnny Buffalo could always keep a straight line by the sun. In
places the walls overhung the gulch in shelving, weather-worn cliffs
of soft limestone. Bowlders washed down from the heights made
slow going, because they were half the time climbing over or around
some huge obstruction; and because of the rattlesnakes they must
look well where a hand or a foot was laid. Johnny Buffalo was still in
the lead; and Rawley, for all his youth and splendid stamina was not
finding the Indian too slow a pacemaker. Indeed, he was perfectly
satisfied when the dozen feet between them did not lengthen to
fifteen or twenty.
The mounting sun made the heat in that gully a terrific thing to
endure. But the Indian did not lift the canteen to his mouth; nor did
Rawley. Both had learned the foolishness of drinking too freely at the
beginning of a journey. So, when Johnny Buffalo stopped suddenly
in the act of passing around a jutting ledge, Rawley halted in his
tracks and waited to see what was the reason.
The Indian glanced back at him and crooked a forefinger. Rawley
set one foot carefully between two rocks, planted the other as
circumspectly, and so, without a sound, stole up to Johnny Buffalo’s
side. Johnny waited until their shoulders touched then leaned
forward and pointed.
Up on the ridge a couple of hundred yards before them, a man
moved crouching behind a bush, came into the open, bent lower and
peered downward. His actions were stealthy; his whole manner
inexpressibly furtive. His back was toward them, and the ridge itself
hid the thing he was stalking.
“He’s after a deer, maybe. Or a mountain sheep,” Rawley
whispered, when the man laid a rifle across a rock and settled lower
on his haunches.
“Still, it is well that we see what he sees,” Johnny Buffalo
whispered back. “We will stalk him as he stalks his kill.”
The Indian squirmed his shoulder out of the strap sling that held
his rifle in its case behind him. With seeming deliberation, yet with
speed he uncased the weapon, worked the lever gently to make sure
the gun was chamber loaded, and motioned Rawley to follow him.
In the hills the old man had somehow slipped into the leadership,
and now Rawley obeyed him without a word. They stole up the side
of the gulch where the man on the ridge could not discover them
without turning completely around; which would destroy his position
beside the rock and risk the loss of a shot at his game. He seemed
wholly absorbed in watching something on the farther side of the
ridge, and it did not seem likely that he would hear them.
A little farther up, a ledge cutting across the head of the gulch hid
him completely from the two. An impulse seized Rawley to cross the
gulch there and to climb the ridge farther on, nearer the spot which
the man had seemed to be watching. He caught the attention of
Johnny Buffalo, whispered to him his desire, and received a nod of
understanding and consent. Johnny would keep straight on, and so
come up behind the fellow.
Unaccountably, Rawley wanted to hurry. He wanted to see the
man’s quarry before a shot was fired. So, when a wrinkle in the ridge
made easy climbing and afforded concealment, he went up a tiny
gully, digging in his toes and trying to keep in the soft ground so that
sliding rocks could not betray him.
Unexpectedly the deep wrinkle brought him up to a notch in the
ridge, beyond which another gully led steeply downward.
Immediately beneath him a narrow trail wound sinuously, climbing
just beyond around the point of another hill. He could not see the
man up on the ridge, but he could not doubt that the rifle was aimed
at some point along this trail. He was standing on a rock,
reconnoitering and expecting every moment to hear a shot, when the
unmistakable sound of voices came up to him from somewhere
below. He listened, his glance going from the ridge to the bit of trail
that showed farther away on the point of the opposite hill. The
thought flashed through his mind that the man with the rifle could
easily have seen persons coming around that point; that he must be
lying in wait. Whoever it was coming, they must pass along the trail
directly beneath the watcher on the ridge. It would be an easy rifle
shot; a matter of no more than a hundred yards downhill.
He stepped down off the rock and started running down the steep
gully to the trail. He was, he judged, fully a hundred yards up the trail
from where the man was watching above. He did not know who was
coming; it did not matter. It was an ambush, and he meant to spoil it.
So he came hurtling down the steep declivity, the lower third of which
was steeper than he suspected. Had he made an appointment with
the travelers to meet them at that spot, he could not possibly have
kept it more punctually. For he slid down a ten-foot bank of loose
earth and arrived sitting upright in the trail immediately under the
nose of a bald-faced burro with a distended pack half covering it
from sight.
There was no time for ceremony. Rawley flung up his arms and
shooed the astonished animal back against another burro, so
precipitately that he crowded it completely off the trail and down the
steep bank. Rawley heard the sullen thud of the landing as he
scrambled to his knees, glancing apprehensively over his shoulder
as he did so. There had been no shot fired, but he could not be
certain that the small flurry in the trail had been unobserved.
“Get back, around the turn!” he commanded guardedly and drove
before him the two women who had been walking behind the burros.
The first, a fat old squaw with gray bangs hanging straight down to
her eyebrows, scuttled for cover, the lead burro crowding past her
and neatly overturning her in the trail. But a slim girl in khaki
breeches and high-laced boots stood her ground, eyeing him with a
slight frown from under a light gray Stetson hat.
“Get back, I say! A man on the ridge is watching this trail with a
rifle across a rock. It may be Queo—get back!” He did not stop with
words. He took the girl by the arm and bustled her forcibly around
the sharp kink in the trail that would, he hoped, effectually hide them
from the ridge.
“Are you quite insane?” The girl twitched her arm out of his grasp.
“Or is this a joke you are perpetrating on the natives? I must say I fail
to see the humor of it.”
 “Climb that gully to the top and sneak along the ridge a couple of
hundred yards, and you will see the point of the joke,” Rawley
retorted with an access of dignity, perhaps to cover the extreme
informality of his arrival.
“And why should any one—even Queo—want to shoot us?” True
to her sex, the girl was refusing to abdicate her first position in the
matter.
“How should I know? He may not be watching for you, particularly.
From the ridge he probably saw your pack train around the turn
above here, and he may have thought you were prospectors. I don’t
know; I’m only guessing. What I do know is what I saw: a man with a
rifle laid across a rock, up there, watching this trail. It may not be you
he’s after; but I wouldn’t deliberately walk into range just to find out.”
“What would you do, then? Stay here forever?”
“Until my partner and I eliminate the risk, you’d better stay here.”
Rawley’s tone was masterful. “I only came down to warn whoever
was coming—walking into an ambush.”
The girl eyed him speculatively, with an exasperating little smile.
“It all sounds very thrilling; very tenderfooty indeed. And in the
meantime, there’s poor old Deacon down there on his back in the
ditch. Do you always—er—arrive like that?”
Rawley turned his back on her indignantly and discovered the old
squaw sitting solidly where the lead burro had placed her. She was
very fat, and she filled that portion of the trail which she occupied.
The red bandana was pushed back on her head, and her gray
curtain of bangs was parted rakishly on one side. She was staring at
Rawley fixedly, a look of terror in her eyes.
He went to her, meaning to help her up. Now that he recalled that
first panicky moment, he remembered that the burro had deposited
her with some force in her present position. She might be hurt.
But the old squaw put up her hands before her, palms out to ward
him off. She cried out, a shrill expostulation in her own tongue which
caused the girl to swing round quickly and hurry toward her.
“No, no! He isn’t a ghost! Whatever made you think of such a
thing? He doesn’t mean to harm you—no, he is not a spirit. He
merely fell down hill, and he wants to help you up. Are you hurt—
Grandmother?” Her clear, gray-brown eyes went quickly, defiantly to
Rawley’s face.
That young man could not repress a startled look, which traveled
from the slim girl, indubitably white, to the squaw whimpering in the
trail. She must be trying her own hand at a joke, he thought, just to
break even with his fancied presumption in halting their leisurely
progress down the trail.
From up on the ridge a rifle cracked. The three turned heads
toward the thin, sinister report. They waited motionless for a
moment. Then the girl spoke.
“That wasn’t fired in our direction,” she said, and immediately
there came the sound of another shot. “And that’s not the same
gun,” she added. “That sounds like an old-fashioned gun shooting
black powder. Didn’t you hear the pow-w of it?”
“That would be Johnny Buffalo—my Indian partner,” said Rawley.
“You folks stay here. I’m going back up there and see what’s doing.”
“Is that necessary?” The girl looked at him quickly. “I think you
ought to help turn Deacon right side up before you go.” She leaned
sidewise and peered down over the bank. “He’s in an awful mess.
His pack is wedged between two bowlders, and his legs are sticking
straight up in the air.”
Rawley sent a hasty glance down the bank. “He’s all right—he’s
flopping his ears,” he observed reassuringly. “I’ll be back just as soon
as I see how Johnny Buffalo is making out. That fellow may have got
him. You stay back here out of sight. Promise me.” He looked at her
earnestly, as if by the force of his will he would compel obedience.
Her eyes evaded the meeting. “Pickles will have to be rounded
up,” she said. “He’s probably halfway to Nelson by this time. And
there’s Grandmother to think of.”
“Well, you think of those things until I get back,” he said, with a
swift smile. “I can’t leave my partner to shoot it out alone.”
 CHAPTER SEVEN
NEVADA
He ran to the point of rocks, gathered himself together and
cleared the trail and the open space beyond in one leap. How he got
up the steep bank he never remembered afterward. He only knew
that he heard the sharp crack of the first rifle again as he was
sprinting up the little gully that had concealed his descent. He gained
the top, stopped to get his bearings more accurately and made his
way toward the spot where he had seen the man with the rifle.
It occurred to him that he had best approach the spot from the
shelter of the ledge where he had separated from Johnny Buffalo. At
that point he could pick up the Indian’s tracks and follow them, so
saving time in the long run.
Johnny Buffalo’s moccasins left little trace in the gravelly soil. But
here and there they left a mark, and Rawley got the direction and
hurried on. Fifty yards farther up the ridge he glimpsed something
yellowish-brown against a small juniper. A few feet farther, he saw
that it was Johnny Buffalo, lying on his face, one arm thrown outward
with the hand still grasping the stock of his rifle.
He snatched up the rifle, crouched beside the Indian and
searched the neighborhood with his eyes, trying to get a sight of the
killer. In a moment he spied him, away down the deep ravine up
which he and Johnny Buffalo had toiled not half an hour before. The
man was running. Rawley raised the rifle to his shoulder, took careful
aim and fired, but he had small hope of hitting his target at that
distance.
At the sound of the shot so close above him, Johnny Buffalo
stirred uneasily, as if disturbed in his sleep. The man in the distance
ducked out of sight amongst the bowlders; and that was the last
Rawley saw of him at that time.
“I must apologize for not taking you more seriously when you
warned me,” said the girl, just behind him. “Is this—?”
 “My partner, Johnny Buffalo. He isn’t dead—he moved, just now—
but I’m afraid he’s badly hurt.” Rawley lifted anxious blue eyes to her
face.
“We can carry him down to the trail. Then, if Deacon is all right
when we get him up, we can put your partner on him and pack him
home. It’s only a mile or so.”
“It might be better to take him to Nelson,” Rawley amended the
suggestion. “I could get a car there and take him on to Las Vegas,
probably. Or some mine will have a doctor.”
“It’s farther—and the heat, with the long ride, would probably finish
him,” the girl pointed out bluntly. “On the other hand, a mile on the
burro will get him home, where it’s cool and we can see how badly
he’s hurt. And then, if he needs hospital care, Uncle Peter can take
him down to Needles in the launch, this evening when it’s cool. I
really don’t mean to be disagreeable and argumentative, but it
seems to me that will be much the more comfortable plan for him.
And I can’t help feeling responsible, in a way. I suppose he was
trying to protect us, when he was shot.”
Rawley looked up from an amateurish examination of the old man.
The bullet wound was in the shoulder, and he was hoping that it was
high enough so that the lung was not injured. His flask of brandy,
placed at Johnny’s lips, brought a gulp and a gasp. The black eyes
opened, looked from Rawley to the girl and closed again.
“There! I believe he’s going to be all right,” the girl declared
optimistically. “I’ll take his feet, and you carry his shoulders. When
we get him down to the trail, I’ll have Grandmother look after him
until we get the burros straightened out. Queo—or whoever it was—
did you see him?”
Rawley waved a hand toward the rocky ravine. “You heard me
shoot,” he reminded her. “Missed him—with that heirloom Johnny
carries. He was running like a jackrabbit when I saw him last. Well, I
think you’re right—but I hate to trouble you folks. Though I’d trouble
the president himself, for Johnny Buffalo’s sake.”
“It’s a strange name,” she remarked irrelevantly, stooping and
making ready to lift his knees. “He must be a Northern Indian.”
 “Born in this district,” Rawley told her. “Grandfather found him in
the desert when he was a kid. I suppose he gave him the name—
regardless.”
Until they reached the trail there was no further talk, their breath
being needed for something more important. They laid the injured
man down in the shade of a greasewood, and the girl immediately
left to bring the old squaw. She was no sooner gone than Johnny
Buffalo opened his eyes.
“It was Queo,” he said, huskily whispering. “I thought he was
shooting at you. I tried to kill him. But the damn gun is old—old. It
struck me hard. I did not shoot straight. I did not kill him. Queo
looked, he saw me and he shot as he ran away. The gun has killed
many—but I am old—”
“You’re all right,” Rawley interrupted. “Quit blaming yourself. You
saved two women by shooting when you did. Queo was afraid to
stay and shoot again when he knew there was a gun at his back. He
has gone down the ravine where we came up.”
“Who was the white girl?” Even Johnny Buffalo betrayed a very
masculine interest, Rawley observed, grinning inwardly. But he only
said:
“I don’t know. She was on the trail, with an old squaw and two
burros. It was they that Queo was laying for, evidently. Don’t try to
talk any more, till I get you where we can look after you properly.
Where’s your pack? I didn’t see it, up there.”
“It is hidden in the juniper. I did not want to fight with a load on my
back.”
“All right. Don’t talk any more. We’ll fix you up, all fine as silk.”
The girl was returning, and after her waddled the squaw, reluctant,
looking ready to retreat at the first suspicious move. Rawley stood
aside while the girl gave her brief directions in Indian,—so that
Johnny Buffalo could understand, Rawley shrewdly suspected, and
thanked her with his eyes. The squaw sidled past Rawley and sat
down on the bank, still staring at him fixedly. His abrupt appearance
and the consequent stampede of the burros had evidently impressed
her unfavorably. The look she bestowed upon Johnny Buffalo was
more casual. He was an Indian and therefore understandable, it
seemed.
The narrow canyon lay sun-baked and peaceful to the hard blue
of the sky. With the lightness which came of removing the pack from
his shoulders, Rawley walked up the trail and around the turn to
where the burro called Deacon still lay patiently on his back in the
narrow watercourse below the trail. He slid down the bank and
inspected the lashings of the pack.
“We use what is called the squaw hitch,” the girl informed him
from the trail just above his head. “If you cut that forward rope I think
you can loosen the whole thing. The knot is on top of the pack, and
of course Deacon’s lying on it.” A moment later she added, “I’ll go
after Pickles, unless I can be of some use to you.”
Privately, Rawley thought that she was useful as a relief to the
eyes, if nothing else. But he told her that he could get along all right,
and let her go. The girl piqued his interest; she was undoubtedly
beautiful, with her slim, erect figure, her clear, hazel eyes with
straight eyebrows, heavy lashes, and her lips that were firm for all
their soft curves. But Johnny Buffalo’s life might be hanging on
Rawley’s haste. However beautiful, however much she might attract
his interest, no girl could tempt him from the chief issue.
By the time she returned with Pickles, Rawley had retrieved
Deacon and was gone down the trail with him. She came up in time
to help him lift Johnny Buffalo on the burro and tie him there with the
pack rope. She was efficient as a man, and almost as strong,
Rawley observed. And although she treated the squaw with careful
deference, she was plainly the head of their little expedition,—and
the shoulders and the brains.
Only once did the squaw speak on the way to the river. The girl
was walking alongside Deacon, steadying Johnny Buffalo on that
side while Rawley held the other. They were talking easily now, of
impersonal things; and when, on a short climb, the burro stepped
sharply to one side and Johnny Buffalo lurched toward the girl,
Rawley slipped his arm farther behind the Indian. His fingers clasped
for an instant the girl’s hand. The squaw, walking heavily behind,
saw the brief contact.