Loyola University Chicago

Ruth Guthrie (guthrie@uor.edu)

James Pick (pick@uor.edu)

University of Redlands, 1200 E. Colton Ave, Redlands, CA 92373

Abstract

In the past five years, reports on the gains associated with telework have been remarkable (Murphy, 1996 and Hesse, et. al., 1991). Productivity can be increased by 30%, workers are more satisfied with their jobs and telework could reduce traffic and pollution problems. There is also research that speaks about the resistance to telework. Firms are reluctant to adopt telework programs and employees are reluctant to give up traditional work structures (Westfall, 1997). Part of this reluctance can be described in terms of ethics and evolving behavioral norms. New technology is often accompanied by suspicion and skepticism. Telework is posing new questions about rules of conduct, work ethic and work privacy.

This paper will examine ethical scenarios that arise in teleworking environments. Most of the scenarios posed examine issues of people who telework from home offices. This paper will define teleworking ethics, describe some scenarios used in examining ethical issues in telework and show the results of a recent survey of 127 Los Angeles area professionals. Results of the survey show that organizational level, gender and telecommuting experience do not strongly influence ethical decisions in the given scenarios. Age is a factor in assessing ethical scenarios.

Introduction

Throughout history, technological innovation has created conflict. In the late 1700s, Claude Chappe introduced the first optical telegraph system across France. Peasants, believing that the device was a spy mechanism destroyed several stations. Technology prevailed, and the optical telegraph was credited by Napoleon as helping him outwit his enemies because of its revolutionary, fast communication. Cashless society and electronic commerce offer new freedoms. However, people may sacrifice privacy about their buying preferences and become victims of massive target marketing campaigns. Perhaps this has occurred already.

New technologies are often evoke resistance and skepticism, only to be widely adopted later on. Cars, X-rays and ATM machines are examples of technologies where this has occurred.

Advances in information technology are creating renewed interest in telework and telecommuting. Telework is work done remotely from an employees traditional workspace. This can include remote or home offices, airports and hotels. Four forms of telework identified by Gray (1996) are:

• Home-Based Teleworking - Working from home.
• Telework Centers -Working from a remote office as a secondary location to the traditional office. The center may have office support and technological links to the central office. The office space may be used by different people on a regular basis.
• Found Alternative Workplaces - A virtual office. Hotel rooms, other firms, airports..etc..
• Designed Alternative Workplaces - High technology conference centers where dispersed employees meet. For example, Kinko's teleconferencing centers.

A person can telecommute a few days of the week or they can work remotely by themselves.

Networks, telephones and faxes, collaborative writing tools, e-mail, voice mail, desktop video conferencing, and the Internet are some tools that enable people to telework. The benefits of telework are higher productivity, job satisfaction and reduction of environmental problems (Murphy, 1996 and Hesse, et. al., 1991). Some of the disadvantages cited are loss of communication with a central office, fear of co-worker resentment and that telecommuting might hinder one's professional development (DeSanctis, 1984).

As with all technological change, the emergence of telework is not without conflict. Companies are reluctant to adopt telework programs even though statistical evidence indicates higher productivity, cost savings and other advantages (Westfall, 1997). Flattened organizations, a trend towards employee empowerment and the emergence of knowledge workers are all factors that are forcing management to re-examine the traditional activities of planning, organizing, staffing, directing and controlling (Fayol, 1949). A manager today has a massive task in organizing hundreds of individuals into a collaborative team to advance organizational goals. Empowerment and self managed work teams allow burdened managers to cope with increasing demands on their time and responsibility. An underlying key to this development is that of manager-employee trust. The reluctance of some firms to adopt telework programs may be an indication of their inability to transition into a different relationship with their employees. While productivity demands specialists and knowledge work, a strong tradition of management by control is still evident.

This paper explores ethical issues of telework with eighteen ethical scenarios. The scenarios are deliberately vague to generate discussion in MBA courses and to encourage students to explore their beliefs about work and what corporate policies should encompass. The scenarios are useful in that they give us a descriptive, 'snap shot' of ethical trends in technology. The ethical norms and accepted standards for telework are still evolving. The scenarios are useful in that they concretely illustrate views of telework that can often be resolved with corporate policy.

What are Teleworking Ethics

Ethics deals with our morals and values as people. Ethics are a system of principles that tell us what acts are 'right' and 'wrong'. A variety of philosophies give us a framework to form our ethical decisions and discuss our values as they relate to society as a whole. Different philosophical views may result in different decisions regarding ethical behavior. A utilitarian, when faced with the problem of copying unlicensed software, could argue that happiness is maximized when fewer people have to pay for the software. An individual ascribing to deontological theories, that people should act out of duty, would conclude that everyone should purchase their own software and abide by the published licensing agreement. An ethical relativist might choose to interpret situations in terms of differing contexts. In the United States, breaking into a corporate computer is illegal and viewed as analogous to a physical break in or robbery. In Holland, the responsibility lies with the computer manager. If someone hacks in, the fault lies with the computer department for creating an inferior firewall.

Philosophical theories given above can be applied to abortion, murder or adultery. The situations, denying a producer the fruits of their labor and invading an unauthorized property, have existed since the dawn of man. Some argue that computer ethics do not exist. The ethical dilemmas are the same as a thousand years ago, they are simply being applied to technological situations. However, computers can exacerbate every ethical situation by an order of magnitude. Mason (1984) identified four issues of the information age: privacy, access, property and accuracy. Ten years ago, privacy, access, property and accuracy were highly localized. Technology destroys the geographic, temporal and quantity boundaries that used to minimize the impact of information. In a small village, people know where all villagers live. In cyber society, with tools like Yahoos people finder, people know where millions of citizens reside. The amount of semi-private information available is staggering.

Teleworking ethics are an evolving code of conduct that dictate employee, managerial and corporate behavior to do 'right'. This study measures the feelings of 127 people about 'right' and 'wrong' regarding telework.

Methodology

In this study, ethical scenarios are used to examine values of people towards teleworkers. Surveys were given to 109 students and 18 faculty during faculty and class meetings. The faculty respondents were full-time and adjunct faculty at the University of Redlands. Student respondents were from a business program earning Business Administration, Information Systems and MBA degrees. Table 1 summarizes additional information about the survey participants. Participants were asked for demographic data, work related data and asked to judge eighteen telework scenarios as ethical, questionable or unethical. The scenarios cover five categories: freedom of work ethic, work place monitoring, compensation, work and family, and equity. Data from the surveys was coded and analyzed in SPSS using Chi Square, crosstabulation analysis.

Table 1 - Demographic Data

This study is similar in design to a study of ethical values in computing (Benham and Wagner, 1995). In the computer ethics study, professionals and student reviewed scenarios and made ethical judgments. Results showed that students had more liberal views of ethical behavior than Information Systems professionals did regarding computing.

The following hypotheses were explored by reviewing scenario outcomes separately:

H1: People at lower organizational levels are more traditional in their attitude about work ethic than those at higher organizational levels.

A person at a lower organizational level, where the work is highly structured or routine and highly supervised, may regard telework less favorably. For example, a secretary or clerk performs a job that depends largely on their physical presence. This being their work experience, they may regard work-from-home scenarios less favorably than people in higher level, more flexible jobs.

H2: People who have telecommuted are more liberal in their views of work ethic than people who have never teleworked.

A person who has held a telecommuting position is likely to be more accepting of telework scenarios because they have already experienced it as a productive way of accomplishing work. Factors like communication, raises, co-worker resentment have already been settled for these individuals while they may be mysterious or daunting to people who have not experienced telework.

H3: There is no gender bias towards employees who telework or managers of teleworkers regarding the scenarios posed.

People might be more supportive of women as teleworkers, assuming it eases child, family and work conflicts. People may be more supportive of a female teleworking scenarios than male because of the traditional view of women as primary care givers to children.

H4: Age plays no role in ethical views of telework scenarios.

A younger person who grew up in a more volatile job market and in an age of electronic communication will view teleworking scenarios more liberally than a person who has experienced most of their career in a traditional work-form environment.

Results

The survey results indicate a mixed response regarding the ethical status on the range of questions. As seen in Table 2, the overall averages of ethical versus questionable versus unethical slightly favor the ethical (41.5 percent), with 35.3 percent questionable, and 23.2 percent unethical. This would indicate generally a tolerance of ethical dilemmas and willingness to give the benefit of the doubt to the ethical side of problems. It may also be that the entire area of telecommuting ethics is a new one that lacks ethical and behavioral norms. It was very surprising that 19.2% (Q14) of respondents felt that monitoring a personal phone bill was acceptable and that 24% (Q16) of respondents felt it was ethical to stop at an employees house to check if they are working. Though these scenarios were largely judged as unethical or questionable, the large ethical response group suggests problems with work place privacy.

Table 2. Percentage Responses for Ethical Scenarios for Telecommuters

Respondents differed greatly on the specific ethical issues. Seven situations were regarded as predominantly ethical (Q. 2,6,9,10,13, 17, 18). For many of them, a sense of fair play may be the justification leading to the choice of ethical. For question 2., the fairness involves completion of work tasks, i.e. fairly meeting work demands, before undertaking personal work. In question 6, the telecommuters may be perceived to have earned fairly through higher productivity their pay increases. For question 9, it may be thought that kids would not interfere with work to a significant extent (this may be viewing kids ideally). Keeping a log of telecommuting workers connect time is viewed as ethical. Perhaps the reason here is that many companies track connect time for traditional workers, especially for clerical and other lower level employees. Extending this to telecommuters could logically be viewed as ethical. Similarly, telephone spot checks of telecommuters is regarded as ethical. This contrasts with respondents' mixed views of spot checking by stopping by telecommutersí houses. The last response regarded as ethical is for substituting telecommuting location to work at a wife's conference location. This may reflect a view in today's mobile society that people are moving around more and sometimes doing their work away from designated locations.

The questionable responses (Q. 1,3,4,7,12,15,16) are ones with considerable divergence of opinion about ethics. Some of this divergence of opinion will be better understood when the effects of demographic attributes such as age and sex are discussed. For question 3 on finishing telecommuting work early, the mixed opinion on leaving the home workplace differs from question 2, where staying around the home for phone calls assuages concerns. Working at two full-time telecommuting jobs has mixed results. Often traditional moonlighting is a controversial issue and one where organizations lack clear-cut policy. The split opinion on question 7 regarding expectation that telecommuting workers will provide their own technology may be due to its being contrary to a basic premise of fair opportunity i.e. not dependent on personal assets/resources. Question 12. responses on doubling up on personal phone calls are split, although tilted towards ethical. The difference here may be due to differences in perceptions about the extent of interference with work. As pointed out already, it is not surprising that spot checking telecommuters by driving by their homes (Question 16) elicited mixed response, since may people would regard invasion of the home space as intrusive. Also, question 15 on a manager's driving by homes brought mixed response, although somewhat less ethical that question 16. There reason may be that the person driving by in Question 15 is clearly identified as a manager, which may be more threatening.

The responses regarded as unethical often involve situations of unequivocal inequity or lack of fairness. For question 5., there may be a perceived violation of even-handedness by favoring in-house employees with raises. For question 11, respondents are likely concerned with perceived unfair assumptions made about the telecommuter. For question 14., there may be a concern about invasion of privacy, in particular that workers' personal (i.e. not business) phoning is being monitored. Many Americans are sensitive about invading personal territory whether one's home or phone bill. Nevertheless, one fifth of respondents felt this was ethical.

To sum up the overall findings, there is a surprising degree of overall acceptance as ethical of many of these ethical scenarios. At the same time there is a large divergence of opinion for specific questions, with about two thirds of respondents at one polar extreme or the other in regarding the scenarios i.e. ethical or unethical. One powerful interpretation for these survey responses is that sense of fairness (or lack of it) may often be invoked as an explanation. This may tell managers responsible for telecommuting that they need to point out to employees that a basic even handedness is present, and what that even handedness consists of.

Analysis and Discussion of Cross Tabs

Cross tabulation analysis was performed to test the hypotheses in this paper. This section will discuss the results of this analysis related to the four hypotheses.

Telework and Organizational Level

H1: People at lower organizational levels are more traditional in their attitude about work ethic than those at higher organizational levels.

Occupational position was rated into five levels from clerk (level 1) to mid-level manager (level 3) to top executive (level 5). The significant results for occupation are shown in Table 3.

Table 3 - Significant Results Regarding Telework and Organizational Level

The hypothesis is rejected, since only question 18 supports the hypothesis. For question 4, the lower level respondents appear less traditional, i.e. the opposite from the hypothesis.

That organizationally lower level respondents view moonlighting as more ethical may indicate the lack, or perceived lack of strategic importance of their jobs or dissatisfaction with low pay.

Telework and Past/Present Telecommuting Experience

H2: People who have telecommuted are more liberal in their views of work ethic than people who have never telecommuted.

A question on the survey asked if the respondent (1) currently telecommutes, (2) has telecommuted in the past, or (3) never telecommuted. The significant crosstabulation results from the questionnaire are shown in Table 4.

Table 4 - Significant Results Regarding Telework and Telework Experience

The hypothesis is not supported, since only for question 12. are telecommuters more liberal in their views of work ethic than non-telecommuters. The two other significant associations are opposite to the hypothesis and the other fifteen questions showed no associations.

People who have telecommuting experience are more sensitive to compensation issues regarding salary and carpel tunnel syndrome. It is understandable that they would be more sympathetic on issues like these considering their experience. The two scenarios are indicative of institutional support for telecommuting. If the infrastructure does not support teleworking forms, employees will have little incentive to adopt them and will feel insecure about support for their job. It was interesting that people with telework experience felt more comfortable with personal calls during routine work than non-teleworkers. This is perhaps indicative of a reality of telework. If a person works from their home, the pull of household obligations will certainly gain attention more so than in the office. However, traditional work environments have personal phone calls and distractions too. The advantage for the firm and society is that the teleworker is more satisfied having met their obligations and is also more productive.

Telework and Gender

H3: There is no gender bias towards employees who telework or mangers of teleworkers regarding the scenarios posed.

There were two versions of the questionnaire administered to check for gender bias in perceived scenarios. The same scenarios were presented for all questionnaires, but for 75 there were male scenarios i.e. the telecommuters or managers in the questions were males, while for 48 there were female scenarios i.e. the telecommuters or managers in the questions were females. The two versions of the questionnaire were tested for associations with results for the 18 survey questions. The significant results are shown in Table 5.

Table 5 - Significant Results Regarding Telework and Gender

The hypothesis is supported, since there are only three questions with gender bias and fourteen with no gender bias. The only highly significant question with gender bias (p<0.05) is for question 1. This result may relate to stereotypes of males as having more traditional time structure to their work schedules.

The significant results show more tolerance for women's flex time than men. This may be because people are more supportive of women as caregivers or home makers than men. People supported a man's decision to give higher raises to in-house employees to a greater extent that a woman making the same decision. This may be that people are bias towards accepting the logic of merit increases from a male boss rather than a female one. It was also strange that people viewed a 'spot-check' call from a male boss as more ethical than coming from a female boss. The outcomes of these scenarios 5 and 17 are disturbing in that they raise doubt about both sexes ability to accept women as managers.

Telework and Age

H4: Younger people are more traditional in their views on telecommuting ethics than older people.

The survey population was divided into five age groups, less than 30, 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s. Age was tested for associations with the eighteen survey questions. The significant results are shown in Table 6.

Table 6 - Significant Results Regarding Telework and Age

The hypothesis is partially supported. For questions 1, 8, and 14, there are clear associations between younger age and more traditional attitudes towards telecommuting ethics. For questions 5 and 11, there is a bi-polar response, in which the youngest and oldest age groups are more traditional but the middle groups are less traditional. These results would seem to give partial support to the hypothesis.

Several scenarios had significant results regarding age. Younger respondents are more traditional in their view of work than middle age and older respondents. In a few scenarios, oldest and youngest respondents had similar ethical views, while middle aged respondents differed. Younger respondents are more strict about flexible work starting times and stopping work because of a failed network. The younger respondents appear to have a strong traditional work ethic. Younger workers also felt more strongly that monitoring personal phone bills was invasive. They and older respondents felt that failure of a firm to compensate for home-work related injuries was unethical.

The significant results regarding age cause one to speculate about where work ethic comes from. It comes from one's family values, from one's own work experience and from societal and political experiences one has growing up. This may prove to be an interesting area for future research. It may be interesting to look at eras of high economic stress, political conservatism or government distrust to see if people who grew up in those times have attitudes about telework, or technology in general, reflecting their sociopolitical upbringing.

Conclusion

The wide range of responses in Table 2 show that a telework ethic has not yet emerged. This may be in part due to the slow adoption of telecommuting work forms in different industries. Despite the promise of higher productivity and job satisfaction, telecommuting accounts for only 2% of the workforce (Westfall, 1997). If a critical mass of telecommuting workforce existed, many of the ethical issues posed in the scenarios would be moot. Society would converge on a norm that would guide the telework ethic.

Age and gender may prove to be interesting areas for future research. Unexpectedly, organizational level had little to do with ethical judgment of the scenarios posed in this study. However, much like traditional work forms, gender and age create issues in equity, compensation and manager-employee relationships.

Firms adopting telecommuting programs have an opportunity to set up corporate policies that are clear in describing what types of behaviors are acceptable for teleworkers and their managers. The clear description of behavioral expectation may allay of the reluctance to become a teleworker.

The long range view of a telework society brings greater ethical dilemmas. It is easy to envision a society where work-at-home employees become contract labor, having no medical insurance, equipment support or other benefits of a captive employee. Households and families would artificially support the office supply and support and compensation costs of larger companies. It is also easy to envision work invading home lives and relationships that have traditionally had protection from invasive work tasks and goals. In this sense, technology is a double edged sword. Issues will arise about invasion of privacy, corporate commitment to employees and about our own ability to stop working and maintain a balance between work and home life. The promise is that we could be free of the burden of commuting, stay closer to our families and neighborhoods and become members of a new-local village.

References

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