Editorial
Future of work discussions can feel as if we're repeating ourselves. Despite living in an age where data is supposed to be the new oil, managers and organizations choose to ignore the evidence before them and revert to norms. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the work from home debate, where evidence continues to be cast aside in favor of hunches and gut feel.
A common complaint around remote work is that it stifles creativity, collaboration and innovation. Multiple studies, including one from the University of Chicago, suggest that remote working impedes innovation. What these studies generally assume, however, is that management stays the same. Research from INSEAD found it is relatively easy to virtually replicate the social proximity of a physical workplace if an organization commits to doing so.
Remote Work Can Boost Innovation
A recent study in The International Journal of Human Resource Management corroborated the more nuanced picture the INSEAD research painted. The researchers explored why remote working produces good results for some organizations and not for others. The study focused on how national cultural differences influence whether remote work helps or hinders innovation.
“Building upon the culture fit perspective, the current study aims to examine the vital role of national culture in shaping the relationship between remote work adoption and firm innovation," the researchers explained.
The study suggested that the right cultural fit is key to ensuring remote work is successful, and what's more, as innovative as working face-to-face.
The Cultural Keys to Successful Remote Work
The researchers reaffirmed remote work can be innovative, but leaders need to get their management approach right for it to work.
The researchers drew on Hofstede’s cultural dimensions framework, which identified six categories that define culture, with a focus on power distance. For instance, low power distance cultures tend to be higher quality and have less disparity between people, even of different status. Organizations tend to be flatter, participative leadership is the norm and individual autonomy is a key part of the culture.
The research hypothesized that remote work thrives in cultures such as these, as people are more attuned to the decentralized and flexible nature of remote work.
The researchers based their conclusions on data from over 8,000 firms from 21 countries, with the data harvested from the World Bank Enterprise Surveys (WBES) and COVID-19 Follow-up Surveys (COV-FS). They measured the innovation of a firm by looking at the number of new products and services they introduced while working remotely during the pandemic.
Culture Matters
The results found remote work can positively impact a firm's innovation output, but, as the hypothesis suggested, this is strongly moderated by cultural aspects. The sweet spot was when the culture was largely:
- Low power distance, where employees are encouraged to act autonomously.
- High indulgence, where freedom and personal gratification are valued.
- Short-term orientation, which the study found associated with greater innovation under remote work.
"Our findings reveal that remote work adoption had a positive impact on firm innovation — and this positive relationship was stronger in low power distance and high indulgent cultures," the researchers explain.
The Difference Between High-Trust and Low-Trust Culture
The importance of company culture to the success of remote work should surprise no one. Organizations that foster a sense of independence, promote collaboration and prioritize the interests of employees are more successful with remote work, according to research from the Georgia Institute of Technology.
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This should be music to the ears of any enlightened manager, as the strong links between employee autonomy and motivation and productivity are well known. What's more, it's also well known that employee engagement is higher when employees are trusted, which is undermined when managers insist they return to the office to be supervised, or install punitive surveillance software to snoop on them remotely.
The Georgia Tech team also found that working with employees to ensure their hours suited them and their team brought the best out of existing employees and attracted new talent to the organization.
Again, none of these findings are particularly new or groundbreaking. Many of the lessons have become integral parts of "enlightened" managerial practices over the past decade or so. All we can do is keep repeating the evidence until more managers adopt it.
Editor's Note: Want more advice on making remote work work? Read on:
- How to Organize Your Remote Workforce for Collaboration, Not Chaos — “Powerpoint proximity” isn’t enough to foster collaboration in the age of distributed work.
- Back to the Office, Sometimes: The State of Hybrid Work Today — Who decides how often you’re in the office? A look at the latest stats and stories in the never-ending 'where do we work' saga.
- Return to Office Myths, Realities and the Future of Work — It's time we have an honest and open conversation about the way we work, and it starts by unpacking some of the biggest RTO myths.
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