The new generation office environment: A preliminary study

This paper reports the results of a preliminary study of a mw work environment, the home office (HO). This study was designed to develop a test instrument that would facilitate the investigation of a set of variables that might influence the corporate decision to relocate employees from the employer's office space to the employees' homes. This decision to relocate a portion of the work force is made possible through recent advances in the fields of personal computing, networks and telecommunications. Additionally, the paper seeks to identify the variables that will affect both the employer and the employee. Some of these variables may include: employee productivity, employee comfort ability of employees to complete assignments, employee needs to socialize, and costs of employment. This report does not attempt to generalize concerning the population of home office employees, nor does it attempt to generalize the current employer perspective of the telecommuting employee, but rather it attempts to identify numerous variables that should be investigated in more detail.